When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated 50 years ago this month in Dallas, there were only four local television stations broadcasting news in Hawaii: KONA, KHVH, KGMB and KTRG.
In June 1963, Kennedy visited Oahu, riding in the same vehicle in which he would later be assassinated. There is no local news film to help recall these events, just memories from the broadcasters who did their best to inform the public.
This month we look back at local television coverage of that tragic day — Nov. 22, 1963 — with recollections from some broadcasters who covered it.
During the early 1960s, television in the islands was black and white, and radio dominated local news coverage. In 1961, KGMB radio carried more than two hours of daily news, while KGMB television offered 45 minutes of news per day. The primary television news anchors for KGMB at the time were Richard Whitcomb and Bob Barker.
On KONA (now KHON) television, the news anchors were John Kernell and Norman Reyes. On syndicated station KTRG (now KHNL), news was covered by longtime Honolulu newsman Wayne Collins.
The fourth local station to cover news was KHVH (now KITV) television. The anchors at KHVH were John Galbraith and Bob Sevey.
Longtime Honolulu radio and television newsman Bob Miller, who worked as a reporter and anchor for KGMB, KHON and KHVH, has vivid recollections of that day. When he got to work at KHVH at about noon that Friday, Miller was surprised to see fellow newsman Bob Sevey standing in front of a large rear-projection screen with the studio lights blazing.
"I hadn’t been listening to the radio that morning, and I hadn’t yet put a radio in my Renault Alpine, so I had no idea what Sevey was doing," Miller said. "But I quickly found out. By all accounts Bob Sevey gave a bravura performance that day, working with only the news that came off the teletype. It wasn’t till later in the afternoon that the first tapes arrived in Honolulu with what had been filmed earlier in the day on the ABC Network."
These days it’s easy to forget the primitive state of television broadcasting that existed 50 years ago, Miller said.
"There was no green screen in those days," he said. "That’s why Sevey was doing his stuff standing before a rear-projection screen. And the screen was showing images of 3-by-4-inch Polaroid transparencies."
Sevey, who died in 2009, shared his memories of that day during an interview with me several years ago. It was about 8 a.m. in Hawaii when the first radio bulletin from Dallas was heard in the islands, he said.
"At KHVH-TV, the ABC affiliate, we interrupted regular programming with voice-over updates based on wire service and radio reports," Sevey told me. "At 9:15 a.m. we learned that President Kennedy was dead. My memory of the next few hours is blurred. I know that I went on camera with a handful of wire copy and a transistor radio plugged into one ear and stayed there for what seemed like forever."
The station kept that up for eight hours, Sevey said.
"We did the best we could with what we had — wire copy, radio audio, slides and photos, local reaction live and on film, and long intervals of still photos of JFK accompanied by somber music," Sevey said. "The photos and music replaced regular programming for the next 72 hours."
Similar marathon broadcasts followed over the weekend, but by Monday the station had worked out a programming plan with the network and returned to the normal broadcast format, Sevey told me.
"Looking back at it, I think the public interest, in a time of public shock and grief, was well served," Sevey said. "And that’s the way it was, or at least the way I remember it."
Despite the tragedy, the Kennedy assassination helped put television news on the map. Walter Cronkite, who delivered the news to the nation on CBS that the president had died, became a household name. Sevey would become our local version of Cronkite, and a mainstay on local television news for more than 25 years.
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A.J. McWhorter, a collector of film and videotape cataloging Hawaii’s TV history, has worked as a producer, writer and researcher for both local and national media. Email him at flashback@hawaii.rr.com.
