Dallas residents remember JFK slaying

DALLAS, Nov. 22 (UPI) -- Dallas residents say their lives were affected by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in the city 46 years ago Sunday.

Those who were old enough to remember the president's assassination first-hand told Sunday's Dallas Morning News it had varying effects on them.

"I was looking through some old newspapers the other day, and it all started to come back," said Doris Falls, 73, who was in labor with twin boys at Dallas' Parkland Memorial Hospital when the motorcade bearing the fatally wounded Kennedy pulled up. "It was both a happy day and a sad day. It was a terrible mood in that hospital. People were scared. Nobody knew what was going on, and security was everywhere."

"There was a struggle about whether we should hunker down all weekend long or try to pull ourselves out of it," added Gary Mack, curator of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. "That same emotion was felt all over the country, but it was just more intense in Dallas."

"My father called me from downtown and told me the president had been shot, and I thought he was joking," Sharon Boyd of McKinney, Texas, told the Morning News.