On November 21, 1963, more than 100,000 people in San Antonio were waiting.
An estimated 125,000 people lined the streets downtown to catch a glimpse of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jaqueline Kennedy as they made their way down a 26-mile parade route that ended at Brooks Air Force Base.
A passing glimpse is all most in that crowd would get, if the light and the angles were just right, but it was a glimpse so many people were drawn to.
“It was electric,” said former U.S. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, who was 18 years old when he waited along the parade route to see the president.
“There was so much in the way of true emotional feeling for the president. He was beloved and very popular in San Antonio, especially, you know, in the Hispanic community,” Gonzalez said. “He was a Catholic. You’ve got to remember the first Catholic ever elected.”
Kennedy the mediator
Though some people in San Antonio did protest Kennedy’s visit, he came to the city as not only a popular president but one also serving as a mediator for Texas Democrats as Kennedy looked to gain Texas electoral votes in the upcoming 1964 election.
“The visit to San Antonio was sort of a microcosm of the issues that Kennedy and the Democrats were facing as they were going into that election,” said Michelle Everidge, Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of the Witte Museum.
There was political infighting among Texas democrats in 1963 and JFK’s visit was an attempt to resolve that.
Among the state democrats making that effort was Gonzalez’s father, U.S. Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez, who was the first Mexican-American from Texas elected to U.S. Congress in 1961.
“The organization was Viva Kennedy,” Charlie Gonzalez said. “That’s what it was. Viva Kennedy.”
The Kennedy’s had allure unlike any presidential couple before. There was an element of Hollywood, romance, aristocracy and a promise of a new dream of America’s future.
Along the parade route, the motorcade slowed down at The University of The Incarnate Word where Jacque Kennedy was given a bouquet of yellow roses.
Eventually, President Kennedy stopped at Brooks Air Force Base, which today is a mixed-used development known as Brooks.
But in 1963, “this was really the center of all the research for the Air Force. And that’s why Kennedy came here. He came here to dedicate the Aerospace Medical and Health Center,” said Rudy Purificato, an Air Force historian who produced the documentary The Story of Brooks.
“This is the actual location of John Kennedy’s last public address,” he said. “Ten-thousand people gathered out on this lawn.”
Kennedy gave his speech on a stage built in front of what is now the UIW School of Osteopathic Medicine.
“The speech that he gave really was that attempt at bipartisanship and trying to court the Republican vote here in Texas,” Everidge said. “It was this idea that the space race would be really a bipartisan effort and that anything we did to further the space race in the United States would also serve the people living here at home.”
Alamo Heights dedicates JFK Memorial
The airmen experiment
After his speech, Kennedy walked through the Aerospace Medical and Health Center to witness an experiment.
The facility is still in use today, but not by the military.
KBR operates in the space where Kennedy once stood to witness that experiment, which is now adorned with a plaque that reads, “The President John F. Kennedy Window.”
“Inside the chamber when Kennedy was here was where four airmen, recent graduates from basic training over Lackland, who volunteered to be part of a 30-day study in this chamber,” said Tony Wurmstein, aerospace physiologist and KBR Operations Manager.
The chamber, which is still used for research today, is about 30 feet long, 8 feet wide and 8 feet tall.
The airmen were inside the chamber 24/7 for 30 days.
“It was a 100% oxygen environment, so very low pressure,” Wurmstein said.
The goal of the experiment was to assess human performance in that kind of environment.
“That’s so different from what we have here at sea level, which is 21% oxygen, about 14.7 PSI,” Wurmstein said. “So they knew that was what they wanted to use to get to the moon.”
President Kennedy spoke with one of the airmen in the chamber via intercom.
“No one really knows what they talked about because the only two people on the intercom were Kennedy and this young airman,” Wurmstein said.
“These are museum pieces but they never break,” he said, referencing the instruments inside the chamber. “They don’t make stuff like that anymore.”
The chamber is still in use daily at KBR.
“Our business here is the research into human performance at altitude and hopefully in the near future in space,” Wurmstein said.
Space was the “new frontier” that Kennedy emphasized during his time in office.
“This new frontier included everyone,” Gonzalez said. “Blacks, Latinos, women, everybody. It really was ahead of its time in many ways. It was the beginning of something.”
After his visit concluded in San Antonio, the President and First Lady traveled to Houston.
November 22, 1963
President Kennedy was fatally shot while riding in an open-air limousine in Dallas in Dealy Plaza.
“I get emotional now,” Gonzalez said. “The grief was tremendous and overwhelming.”
Henry B. Gonzalez was traveling in the motorcade a few cars behind Kennedy.
His car followed the limo to Parkland Hospital as the emergency unfolded and the Secret Service scrambled to determine the threat.
“He didn’t really want to talk about it, but it was the end of a dream. It really was,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t think dad ever got over it.”
President Kennedy was supposed to return to San Antonio for the dedication of Kennedy High School, the first in the country to be named after him.
“A lot of people who were alive in 1963 can tell you exactly where they were when they heard the news,” Everidge said. “And I think that just magnified the importance of that visit to San Antonio.”
“It’s like the whole world stood still,” Gonzalez said. “Everything shut down. Everything.”
“A lot of dreams died,” he said.
But work on the dream of returning to that final frontier is still alive in San Antonio at the place where President John F. Kennedy visited on his final full day.
