It’s Presidents’ Week, so let me recall a time we all remember so well. 

In November of 1963, the Buffalo Airport was under construction and so were most of the other airports in America. I somehow found my way to the departure gate amidst all of the construction confusion. I was headed for Boston and a Rent a Wreck drive to Fitchburg, Mass., for a show that night. The take off was routine until about ten minutes later a fire erupted in the galley and we returned to Buffalo immediately with the cabin full of smoke. 

I had to get to Boston, no excuses, and there were no other direct flights until the next day. It took 30 minutes to get another ride to LaGuardia in New York with a connection to Boston. I checked my luggage, checked in, and boarded the plane. I was getting nervous because the time was slipping away.

At LaGuardia, I climbed into a DC3, the last of the tail dragging commercial airplanes that had been around since the mid-1930s. Climbing into the back seat and slipping my film under the seat I tried to relax. The flight left 15 minutes late, as soon as the man in a hurry climbed aboard and sat down beside me. 

He looked familiar to me, but I was focusing my brain on the show in Fitchburg in three hours and I was still in New York. I said, “Hello,” but I could tell he didn’t want to talk to anyone as he pulled out a thick handful of letters and quickly started making notes on every one of them. I glanced over when we became airborne and the letter he was making a note on was addressed to Senator John F. Kennedy.

Did I take some of his very valuable time with needless chatter about who knows what? Or should I show him the respect of silence that I cherish so much when I am flying? He finished making notes on every letter he had to and when we got to the gate in Boston, John F. Kennedy was the first person off of the plane and was confronted by a blast of flashbulbs from the many reporters that were waiting for him. 

Would being able to write about having a conversation with John F. Kennedy change my life, or anyone else's? I don’t think so. We had absolutely nothing in common except getting to Boston as soon as possible.

Several years later my life was changed when John F. Kennedy was killed in Texas. I was doing a personal appearance in a ski shop in Teaneck, N.J., with a showing of my feature film scheduled at the high school that night. I immediately called my local sponsors to find out what they wanted me to do about their show. 

I said, “I think we should go ahead with the show tonight because people will be numb with pain and they will come to the high school whether we are there or not.” He called me back in a few minutes and the sponsoring club agreed to go ahead with the show. I was very surprised when some of the customers had to sit in the aisles. The auditorium was way beyond sold out.

What should I say to all of the people who showed up? I said, “We have all suffered a tragedy today that has changed our lives forever. No one’s life will ever be the same.

“I think the best way to deal with this tragedy is to watch the weather report and as soon as any ski resort opens get there as quickly as possible. You will be a different person at the bottom of every ski run. I use a medical term in describing your mood after a ski run. I call it a psychological enema.”

I caught everyone in the packed auditorium off guard and they put the agony of the last hours behind them and watched men and women skiing all over the world in pursuit of freedom. I think the show was a success even with Kennedy’s assassination.

I had personal appearance shows scheduled every night for the next three weeks and so I started calling my sponsors in Lynn, Mass., Garden City, Long Island, and Worcester, Mass. I got the same reply from all three of them. “The people that control the use of the auditoriums have cancelled everything for the next four days.”

I had been showing my films seven nights a week in November since 1956 and I didn’t know what to do with those four days off. By this time in my career my nightly guarantee was already as high as $400 a night. I knew I was going to lose that amount of money. When I talked to my wife in Hermosa Beach, Calif., we decided I would jump on an airplane and spend the next three or four days on the beach with the family. 

I still don’t think it would have made any difference in his life or mine if Kennedy and I had talked on that New York/Boston flight. I do know that a lot of people who came to the Teaneck High School auditorium the night of the assassination had an hour and a half of fun in the middle of a terrible time in their lives. 

(Learn about the Warren Miller Freedom Foundation.)  

Photo Sen. John F. Kennedy Courtesy United States Congress