MONROE - They called him Jack, and today, 50 years after his assassination, some people still call President John F. Kennedy by his first name, as if he had grown up in their neighborhood.

"We loved him," Sherry Anderegg of Monroe said, punctuating the word "loved."

Anderegg is the archivist at Turner Hall, a center of Swiss heritage and community activities. Among her multi-volume historical clippings for Turner Hall, then-Sen. Kennedy's 1960 visit to Monroe takes up about three pages.



Remembering Kennedy 1960

She recalls the day Kennedy came to town, but she wasn't able to attend the rally.

"I probably had to work," she said.

Kennedy was campaigning for the presidential primary during that famous Turner Hall day; it was April 1, and the coffee being served at 4:30 p.m. was free. The reception was sponsored by the Monroe Kennedy for President Club; Phillip J. Teehan was the club president. Kennedy was caught on film talking with people from the community, and one photo is still displayed behind glass in the hall's Ratskeller restaurant.

Richard Lafferty and his wife Joan, originally from New Bedford, Mass., coordinated the event. Their son, Mike Lafferty, Milwaukee, was only 2 at the time.

Being Democrats and from Kennedy's home state, his parents "knew Kennedy was coming through" Wisconsin, Mike Lafferty said, and so they organized a rally. Richard Lafferty had the privilege of introducing Kennedy on stage.

A photo of that moment, shown with this story, "hung in every office dad ever had his whole life," Lafferty. "It was the proudest day of his life."

A news article from Turner Hall archives reported more than 600 people attended the reception. Children groups sang "High Hopes."

Kennedy told the crowd he was vigorously campaigning in Wisconsin, because the state was one of the few that gave voters the opportunity to name their candidate in a primary election. The candidate spoke of handing the problem of "farm surpluses," explained his plan for agriculture price supports and supporting health and medical insurance under Social Security.

Richard Lafferty died in 2001. But, to this day, Mike Lafferty is "fascinated by all the Kennedy stuff," and still has his dad's handwritten speech for Kennedy's introduction.

The photo on display at Turner Hall shows Richard Lafferty behind local nonagenarian, Spencer Bowen, talking to Kennedy. Bowen was 94 years old at the time.

Bowen's granddaughter, Martha Etter, Monroe, was only 14 at the time, and didn't go to the Kennedy rally.

"I probably wasn't interested in it," she said.

Her younger brother wasn't much better; he handed his school books to his grandfather and bounded away. Those are little Johnny T. Etter's books in Bowen's hand in the picture at Turner Hall.

But Grandfather Bowen was definitely interested. The Etters sat down to "political talk at the dinner table every night," with her father J.T. Etter at one end of the table serving the supper and Spence Bowen at the other end, she said.

"He didn't miss anything," Etter said. "He probably gave (Kennedy) an earful. He had his opinions, and he was very capable of discussing any issue with Kennedy, and giving his opinion."

Kennedy made a stop the next day in Brodhead.

The Brodhead Historical Society has a rare photograph taken by the Brodhead Independent Register in its collection showing Brodhead native Guy Pierce introducing Kennedy on April 2, 1960. The event is believed to have been held in a building along W. Exchange St. on the Square. Pierce is the son of Dwight Pierce of Brodhead.

According to the photograph's caption, the only question to Kennedy was from a "youngster, 'Why can't we kids chew gum in school?' Showing his sense of humor, and an understanding of American youth, (Kennedy) answered, 'I think it would be alright to chew gum on Monday mornings.'"

It was the youth and young adults who most wanted to see Kennedy, Anderegg said.

"When he ran (for office), we just had this ... young people just loved him," she said. "He made government seem ... there was more trust."



Remembering Kennedy's Death 1963

But memories of his stop in Monroe pale in comparison to those of Nov. 22, 1963, the day Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas.

Anderegg still has her own personal collection of historic publications about Kennedy's death, including "Four Tragic Days" by the Milwaukee Journal and "The Torch is Passed, the AP story of The Death of A President," by the Associated Press.

A young woman in her first job as a secretary at Pauly Cheese Company, Anderegg was going to the post office at 4:30 p.m., when she heard a radio station broadcast the news. She said she didn't believe it until she heard the news from Walter Cronkite later that evening on television. Cronkite was the most trusted newscaster at the time, she said.

"Folks were in shock; everything was a blur for a while," she said. And for days, people "just watched, and watch and watched" their televisions for more news, she added, "like they did when the Twin Towers were hit. We couldn't pull ourselves away from the TV."

She recalled Kennedy's wife Jackie received more than 800,000 condolence letters.

"She was such a lady," Anderegg said. "As much as it affected her, she never said one bad word about anyone - not even the people who killed him."

The people who killed him - not the person who killed him, Lee Harvey Oswald who was, according to five government investigations, the sniper who assassinated John F. Kennedy.

Is she one of the many people who believe Oswald did not act alone?

"Not at first," she said. "But conspiracy theories began almost from the beginning."

"Everything was always so secret," she said, "the autopsy, the records, they wouldn't comment.

"It never got put to rest," she said. "At least, I felt that it didn't."

Neal Trickel, Monroe, was only 9 years old when Kennedy was killed. He was playing with other children in the parking lot at school, when another young student told them the president had been shot.

"We thought it was BS, and kept playing," Trickel said.

But coming in from recess, the children noticed something was wrong. The teachers were quiet, and the radio was on.

What effect did the news have on the children?

"I knew it was something I'd never seen before," he said.

It wasn't until the late 1980s that Trickel started digging into the assassination of Kennedy and brewed some of his own theories counter to the official government report.

Trickel doesn't believe Oswald, "a low-level intelligence agent" for Russia, was involved in the assassination, unless he was acting on orders to create a distraction.

"The main thing they were doing was getting everybody looking the other way," Trickel said.

At a gun show, Trickel made friends with Allan Williamovsky, a firearms examiner for the Wisconsin State Crime Lab in Madison. Williamovsky was also interested in the Kennedy assassination and considered it an unsolved case, according to Trickel.

Over the years, Trickel bought a lot of Williamovsky's personal collection of books and artifacts of famous killings and killers. But there was one trunk of items that Trickel was not allowed to buy, and then Williamovsky died unexpectedly.

Two years ago Williamovsky's daughter contacted Trickel and offered to sell him the trunk.

Trickel said he had often thought about that trunk and laughed when it was offered to him for sale.

"I knew there was something in that trunk that Allan was saving for the very end," he said. "When collectors sell off that kind of stuff, they save the very best for last."

There was some Kennedy evidence in that trunk Trickel had never seen before.

Since then, he has been test firing bullets, examining their characteristics and comparing them to his observations from the Zapruder home movie that captured Kennedy's assassination on film. His research has his drawing his own conclusions that there was more than one Kennedy assassin.