My journey into researching the JFK assassination began in 1997. I was a senior in college, finishing my last semester with a class entitled "Politics & Scandal". We spent most of that semester steeped in the Nixon administration, examining the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, Spiro Agnew's bribery scandal, Gerald Ford's corrupt bargain, & the Watergate affair. During one of the Watergate sessions, I remember asking the professor, "Why did he do it? Why would Nixon, on his way to a landslide re-election in '72, order a dirty trick against the Democrats? He didn't need to do it. Nixon was a smart guy...why did he do it?"

​

One year later, during my own Watergate unit with my first group of high school seniors, a football player (not my best student) asked the same question. After I had finished regurgitating all the information I had learned from my professor, this young man shook his head dismissively and asked, "Why would he do it? Was Nixon stupid or something?" I shrugged and sighed before giving him the same answer my professor had given me the year before. "I honestly don't know."

​

Though I didn't know it at the time, that single question changed my life. I began researching the Watergate scandal to find the answer. I focused like a laser on all things Nixon and something unexpected happened. All leads kept pointing backwards...to November 22, 1963! There were so many connections between the two events, researching one meant researching the other. I was hooked. Admittedly, when I began this journey, I had no intention of researching the JFK assassination. As far as I was concerned, it was an open-and-shut case. Lee Harvey Oswald - a random lone-nut - acted alone in killing President Kennedy. Twenty-five years later, I can safely say that what I didn't know about our own history was a LOT. I can also say this: In twenty-five years of teaching history, NO topic has generated and continues to generate more interest from my students than the JFK assassination. Still. Sixty years later.