Kennedy’s assassination was a tragedy that shocked, devastated the nation

Today marks the 60th anniversary of one of America’s biggest tragedies and noteworthy events, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.

President and Mrs. Kennedy greeted an enthusiastic crowd near a fence at Love Field before embarking on a motorcade through downtown Dallas.

As the cavalcade reached Dealey Plaza and the cars drove toward the Stemmons Freeway, a shot rang out.

Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally had been shot while riding together in an open car through downtown Dallas on their way to the Trade Mart.

The tragic event jarred the nation and fueled a multitude of conspiracy theories about whether Kennedy was killed by a single gunman acting alone in the Texas School Book Depository.

The president and his entourage had arrived aboard Air Force One on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, after a very short flight from Caswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth.

Paul Landis stood guard outside Parkland Memorial Hospital’s Trauma Room No. 1 as Father Oscar Huber rushed past, dressed in his Roman collar. It was just before 1 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963. Less than half an hour earlier, Landis had been riding on the running board of a Secret Service car when he witnessed Kennedy’s murder up close as the motorcade drove through Dallas’s Dealey Plaza.

Now, as the 28-year-old agent kept an eye on his official protectee, the stunned First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, he watched Huber enter the trauma room to deliver Kennedy’s last rites.

“Si capax,” Huber whispered into the president’s ear. Translated from Latin, his prayer went: “If it is possible, I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

Landis, 88, is one of the few survivors who had a firsthand view of the tragedy. He is only now telling his whole story, in a book published last month, titled “The Final Witness.”

Sixty years after the assassination, the events of Nov. 22, 1963, have come to seem like a chapter firmly rooted in history, the subject of debate — and conspiracy theories — among many people born multiple generations later. But to Landis, his memories from Dealey Plaza and Parkland remain immediate, and the revelations those memories bring are helping reshape our understanding of that fateful day.