BStrong
Penultimate Amazing
I had an unusual childhood.
My father had served in the Marines and fought in Korea, had gone into law enforcement afterwards, was a trained armorer and firearms instructor, owned the first indoor rifle range in the area where we lived, and was a firearms dealer.
His older brother had joined the Marines before WWII, fought in and lived through the Pacific, stayed in the Corps and fought again in Korea. He then retired from the Corps, and joined the FBI - with no college degree - (more later) and was a huge influence on me in every way.
Our ancestry is Sicilian, and our relatives ended up settling in New Orleans.
One branch moved out to California post WWII, and that's how we got here.
I remember the day JFK was assassinated vividly, and the intent of this post is to explain a pov - not just about the assassination, but the political environment at the time as well as beliefs about the act of the assassination itself.
In retrospect, one would think that JFK was a beloved president, Camelot and all that, but the truth is that there were many people that not only had no use for the man, he was actively hated by a whole cross section of the country.
My father and uncle were two of the haters.
Both thought that JFK had "sold the Cubans down the river" at the Bay of Pigs, and that he was soft on communism in general (the avoidance of doomsday over the missle crisis was another strike against him with them) and when the women weren't around, the running joke was that "if it didn't have hair around it, Jack wasn't interested." It took me a few more years to get the joke.
The Mafia.
Disclaimer: My family has nothing to do with criminal behavior other than breaking the posted speed limit. A branch of our family that stayed in NOLA are lowlife petty criminals, to the point that I once had difiiculty in passing a security check for a clearance due to their activites.
The Mafia served as an all-purpose boogeyman when I grew up. Known mafiosi were to be avoided. When avoidance was immpossible, silence or respect was the only two approved responses. Mafosi were less plentiful in the environment where I was raised, but they were in no way unkown. Stories of bad things that happened when one became involved in any way with these types were drilled into all the kids on a regular basis.
On one of my first trips home to NOLA when I was a kid, 4 or 5 years old, I remember one of my cousins telling me that "the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain is covered with guys that made Carlos mad." I asked him who "Carlos" was and he told me that "Carlos" was the mafia boss. This scared me a bunch, because I didn't want to end up on the bottom of the lake, and I didn't know how to keep this Carlos from being mad at me.
My father sensed something was up, and asked me what was wrong (my father had a sense of humor on him, that was one of his strongest character traits) I told him about what I was told, and that I was scared because I didn't know how to keep from making Carlos mad.
This is what dad told me:
"Stay out of the whorehouses and don't gamble, he won't know you're here."
My uncle was more a force of nature than human. He was very polite and softspoken. He wasn't as tall as my father, but didn't have a once of fat on him, even long after he retired. He wasn't educated, he received his HS diploma while in the Marines, but he was interested in the world around him, and read everything he could get his hands on - a habit I took from him.
He wasn't much of a joker the way my dad was, but with the family, he warmed up about as much as he was able to.
He never married, but his taste in women is another thing that rubbed off on me. The reason he gave for never marrying made sense to me - first he was in the Corps, and never knew whare and what he'd be doing, and then with the Bureau he traveled extensively too. I've followed in his footsteps in that way as well, for a variation of the same reasons.
He once showed up to a family get together at Thanksgiving, or Christmas, I can't remember which, but man do I remember the gal he brought. Every old noni in the house hated her immediately, and every young girl in the house got self conscious, because this woman looked like a movie star - think Tina Louise in Gilligan's Island, sequined dress and all - and she was a live wire, a stewardess for Pan Am he met going or coming, and she was immediately the life of the party.
How my uncle got into the Bureau and what he did exactly was mysterious, because A) the Bureau required a college degree, either law or a CPA at the time and he had neither, and B) his true skill was marksmenship and NCO combat leadership. He never got too specific, and accepted my dad's theory (spoken in jest) that "with his face, they bring him in with some hardcase bank robber, the guy takes one look and confesses."
November 22 1963.
Dad was pretty vocal about JFK getting exactly what he deserved. He also wondered aloud about the whereabouts of his brother - Another disclaimer - I do not believe and my father did not believe that my uncle shot JFK. My father just knew that doing so as was being reported was well within his brother's skill set, and his brother hated JFK.
When the word got out about the identity of the shooter, my father had an immediate comment: "that ******* won't last a week..." when he didn't, I truely believed that my dad was in possession of some sort of insight I couldn't quite understand.
What I was raised to believe was this:
JFK was killed by the mafia because of RFK's campaign against them going back to the senate hearings in the 1950's, and whatever else LHO had been, he was only some part of a conspiracy, one designed to keep the heat off the mafia. No details later revealed about anti-Castro plans in the WH were known at that time, and no known involvement between the CIA/Mafia in the anti-Castro operation was known either, at last afaik. If my uncle had any such information, he never revealed it at the time to me.
As I grew up and went out into the world, I became aware first hand of facts about ballistics and GSW's that contradicted the various CT ******** I find myself discussing on this forum, as well as my experience with the general failure of any covert endeavor that involves more than two dedicated individuals.
I've read both the CT supporters books as well as the books written by individuals defending the WC conclusions, they all have their problems in one way or another, but I've come to the conclusion myself based on my training and experience along with my review of the available evidence that LHO acted on his own in the murder of JFK.
My father had served in the Marines and fought in Korea, had gone into law enforcement afterwards, was a trained armorer and firearms instructor, owned the first indoor rifle range in the area where we lived, and was a firearms dealer.
His older brother had joined the Marines before WWII, fought in and lived through the Pacific, stayed in the Corps and fought again in Korea. He then retired from the Corps, and joined the FBI - with no college degree - (more later) and was a huge influence on me in every way.
Our ancestry is Sicilian, and our relatives ended up settling in New Orleans.
One branch moved out to California post WWII, and that's how we got here.
I remember the day JFK was assassinated vividly, and the intent of this post is to explain a pov - not just about the assassination, but the political environment at the time as well as beliefs about the act of the assassination itself.
In retrospect, one would think that JFK was a beloved president, Camelot and all that, but the truth is that there were many people that not only had no use for the man, he was actively hated by a whole cross section of the country.
My father and uncle were two of the haters.
Both thought that JFK had "sold the Cubans down the river" at the Bay of Pigs, and that he was soft on communism in general (the avoidance of doomsday over the missle crisis was another strike against him with them) and when the women weren't around, the running joke was that "if it didn't have hair around it, Jack wasn't interested." It took me a few more years to get the joke.
The Mafia.
Disclaimer: My family has nothing to do with criminal behavior other than breaking the posted speed limit. A branch of our family that stayed in NOLA are lowlife petty criminals, to the point that I once had difiiculty in passing a security check for a clearance due to their activites.
The Mafia served as an all-purpose boogeyman when I grew up. Known mafiosi were to be avoided. When avoidance was immpossible, silence or respect was the only two approved responses. Mafosi were less plentiful in the environment where I was raised, but they were in no way unkown. Stories of bad things that happened when one became involved in any way with these types were drilled into all the kids on a regular basis.
On one of my first trips home to NOLA when I was a kid, 4 or 5 years old, I remember one of my cousins telling me that "the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain is covered with guys that made Carlos mad." I asked him who "Carlos" was and he told me that "Carlos" was the mafia boss. This scared me a bunch, because I didn't want to end up on the bottom of the lake, and I didn't know how to keep this Carlos from being mad at me.
My father sensed something was up, and asked me what was wrong (my father had a sense of humor on him, that was one of his strongest character traits) I told him about what I was told, and that I was scared because I didn't know how to keep from making Carlos mad.
This is what dad told me:
"Stay out of the whorehouses and don't gamble, he won't know you're here."
My uncle was more a force of nature than human. He was very polite and softspoken. He wasn't as tall as my father, but didn't have a once of fat on him, even long after he retired. He wasn't educated, he received his HS diploma while in the Marines, but he was interested in the world around him, and read everything he could get his hands on - a habit I took from him.
He wasn't much of a joker the way my dad was, but with the family, he warmed up about as much as he was able to.
He never married, but his taste in women is another thing that rubbed off on me. The reason he gave for never marrying made sense to me - first he was in the Corps, and never knew whare and what he'd be doing, and then with the Bureau he traveled extensively too. I've followed in his footsteps in that way as well, for a variation of the same reasons.
He once showed up to a family get together at Thanksgiving, or Christmas, I can't remember which, but man do I remember the gal he brought. Every old noni in the house hated her immediately, and every young girl in the house got self conscious, because this woman looked like a movie star - think Tina Louise in Gilligan's Island, sequined dress and all - and she was a live wire, a stewardess for Pan Am he met going or coming, and she was immediately the life of the party.
How my uncle got into the Bureau and what he did exactly was mysterious, because A) the Bureau required a college degree, either law or a CPA at the time and he had neither, and B) his true skill was marksmenship and NCO combat leadership. He never got too specific, and accepted my dad's theory (spoken in jest) that "with his face, they bring him in with some hardcase bank robber, the guy takes one look and confesses."
November 22 1963.
Dad was pretty vocal about JFK getting exactly what he deserved. He also wondered aloud about the whereabouts of his brother - Another disclaimer - I do not believe and my father did not believe that my uncle shot JFK. My father just knew that doing so as was being reported was well within his brother's skill set, and his brother hated JFK.
When the word got out about the identity of the shooter, my father had an immediate comment: "that ******* won't last a week..." when he didn't, I truely believed that my dad was in possession of some sort of insight I couldn't quite understand.
What I was raised to believe was this:
JFK was killed by the mafia because of RFK's campaign against them going back to the senate hearings in the 1950's, and whatever else LHO had been, he was only some part of a conspiracy, one designed to keep the heat off the mafia. No details later revealed about anti-Castro plans in the WH were known at that time, and no known involvement between the CIA/Mafia in the anti-Castro operation was known either, at last afaik. If my uncle had any such information, he never revealed it at the time to me.
As I grew up and went out into the world, I became aware first hand of facts about ballistics and GSW's that contradicted the various CT ******** I find myself discussing on this forum, as well as my experience with the general failure of any covert endeavor that involves more than two dedicated individuals.
I've read both the CT supporters books as well as the books written by individuals defending the WC conclusions, they all have their problems in one way or another, but I've come to the conclusion myself based on my training and experience along with my review of the available evidence that LHO acted on his own in the murder of JFK.
