'Kennedy is dead': Valley residents reflect on anniversary of JFK's assassination

Mike Gyrion arrived at his home from Russell Elementary School on Nov. 22, 1963 to find a copy of the Daily Inter Lake on his driveway.

As with any other delivered newspaper — the family had multiple subscriptions — Gyrion picked the paper up and brought it with him for his parents. Inside, Gyrion opened the bundled paper to see three bolded words in red ink splayed on the front page. 

“Kennedy is dead.”

For the 60 years following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Gyrion held onto that copy of the Inter Lake, a sentiment to a traumatic time and the end of what he now sees as a more optimistic political era.

“Kennedy was a national hero, is what he was,” Gyrion said. “Before Kennedy was assassinated we had this young, charismatic president … he was calm, collected and very much in control of himself. When he was killed, things changed almost immediately. Everyone got kind of jaded. We just didn’t have optimism.”

Gyrion, 67, a Kalispell native and retired industrial maintenance mechanic, spoke about the infamous autumn day in the same manner many speak about 9/11. As a kid, it was hard to get a grip on the tragedy. As an adult, he is still affected by it, he said. 

Shortly after noon on Nov. 22, 1963, Kennedy was shot in the head as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, a murder that rocked the nation and world.

Gyrion vividly recalls being at recess earlier that day and seeing a police cruiser pull up. One of his classmates, the child of the officer, ran up to the car and asked what was going on, since police were not often in the area. 

Kids soon after began sharing the news: Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. Word of his death had not been confirmed yet. After seeing the newspaper, Gyrion turned on his family’s black and white television, spending the afternoon watching Walter Cronkite, trying to digest what had happened. 

“There are very few presidents that have really impressed me like Mr. Kennedy did,” Gyrion said. “I’d like to get back to where we were before then. It was a different world; people helped each other.”

AS THE 60th anniversary of the tragedy approached, residents throughout the Flathead Valley, like Gyrion, reflected on the death of a president and the decades since.

“I think it was a tragic time in our country’s history. I just felt like he was a good leader,” said Ryan Swan, 85, originally from Livingston. 

Swan was teaching seventh grade at Evergreen Middle School on Nov. 22, 1963. While walking back from lunch duty, Swan saw the superintendent in the hallway. Together, the superintendent and Swan listened to a newscast for a minute or two before the students started filing back in. President Kennedy was dead. 

The news was shocking and Swan was astounded, he said. As his seventh graders filled the room, Swan broke the news to his students, getting choked up. 

It was interesting to discuss the event with his students as time went on, Swan said, especially after they went home and spoke with their parents about it. It was such an uncertain time, Swan said, peppered with crises like the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

Donna Smith, 78 and a former insurance agent, was at the University of Montana on Nov. 22, 1963. A Kalispell native, Smith was standing in line at a dining hall waiting to get lunch. In front of her, two boys were talking and Smith overheard them say that Kennedy had been shot. 

She ate her lunch, walked back to her dorm and saw kids gathered around the lobby TV. There was lots of crying, she remembers. 

“We didn’t have class the rest of the day,” Smith said. “Actually, I think they let us go home for Thanksgiving vacation early. It was a big deal.” 

John Kimzey, 74 and from Columbia Falls, heard the news over the public announcement system at his high school during his sophomore year gym class. 

“Everyone looked like they had bit into a lemon,” Kimzey said. “It was pretty horrific to experience at 15 years old.” 

Stephenie Robinson, 75, was also in sophomore year gym class in California. Like at Kimzey’s school, the news was announced on the public announcement system. 

“Oh it was just so ugly. I mean it. It was,” Robinson said. “And so brutal. I remember seeing all these horrible things happen on the TV. I was just a kid.”

Shortly after the assassination, Robinson’s school was rebranded to John F. Kennedy High School. Robinson was part of the school’s first official graduating class. 

Gerald Van Dyke, originally from Bozeman and now 74, was outside, playing the clarinet with his marching band during his junior year of high school. The band director stopped conducting when the school’s principal came out and they spoke for a minute or two.

“I don’t want to tell you this but President Kennedy is dead,” the band director told the students. 

There was kind of a gasp, Van Dyke said. Kennedy was kind and good, he said, and was put on a pedestal by young people. 

“He was held in a place of esteem that was for him only,” Van Dyke said. 

Reporter Kate Heston can be reached at 758-4459 or kheston@dailyinterlake.com.