40 YEARS LATER JFK KILLING A PAINFUL MEMORY.

Byline: Peggy Hager Staff Writer

Ralph Brax was a 19-year-old UCLA student, walking across the campus with a friend on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963.

They noticed a crowd gathering outside the student center and walked over.

``There was a radio we could hear blasting out. I remember saying, what's going on? And somebody said Kennedy's been shot. It was only five minutes more before we heard the announcement Kennedy had died,'' Brax said.

Brax, now a 59-year-old professor at Antelope Valley College, where he has taught U.S. history for 26 years, recalled: ``My friend and I sat down and thought about what that meant of the country, which couldn't be good,'' said Brax. ``I think people had to realize that was a very innocent time ... and the very idea that a president could be shot down in the streets of America was absolutely unthinkable. I think it was the beginning of the loss of innocence for this country.''

Ask most Americans older than 45, and they can tell you where they were and what they were doing on Nov. 22, 1963. The same goes for Antelope Valley residents.

Dea McAllister of Palmdale was a seventh-grader in San Marcos, Texas, about an hour from San Antonio. Some of her schoolmates had just returned from listening to the president speak at Brooks Air Force Base outside San Antonio.

She remembers the schoolmates returning after she had finished her P.E. class, and remembers being told to go to her next class, industrial arts. One of the things that sticks in her mind is that it was a beautiful day, and that she found a tarantula on the ground.

``I went to the next class and they said that the president had just been assassinated and the new president of the United States was LBJ. And everybody was very upset and - I was in industrial arts class - everybody got really quiet and just started carving and crying.''

McAllister, daughter of a retired Air Force man, collected newspaper and magazine articles and photographs about the president and his family and put them in a scrapbook after the assassination. She still has the magazines and scrapbook.

``It was just like: I can't believe it, because he had little kids and he was nice. And he was always talking and joking and (Jacqueline) was so pretty and she always traveled and she spoke Spanish and French,'' recalled McAllister, who is the cultural arts/theater manager for the city of Palmdale.

``To see adults be so scared and taken back ... like Walter Cronkite almost crying over that. I remember seeing that and all the news guys, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and all those big icons, if you will.''

Years later, she visited Brooks Air Force Base.

``The podium is there still at the air base where he spoke, and I got to stand behind it. It was kind of weird. That was his last public speech he gave before he was assassinated.''

Les Gerber was at work in his office in Glendale at Aerojet General Corp.

``A friend called me and told me Kennedy was shot. It was only a few minutes later he called me and told me Kennedy died. I went to the security office and I said to the guard there that the president was dead and asked him to lower the flag to half-mast. He popped into a military salute and said, `Yes, sir.' I'll never forget that. It was such a moving moment for me.''

At the time, Gerber was 35, a Korean War veteran and father of children ages 1 and 3.

``I wrote a letter to them.... I wanted them to know how their father felt about the assassination of the president,'' said Gerber, now a Lancaster resident.

``To me, it wasn't a dream world we were coming from: It was unfortunately a harsh world that once again struck the United States. It was the dreams of Kennedy, which I felt were great dreams, but the world was realistic.''

Palmdale resident Trudy Linder was a young mother of two. She was at home doing housework with the television on when she heard the news.

``All of a sudden, I heard that. It was very much of a big shock and I started to cry,'' said Linder, who is past president of the Antelope Valley B'nai B'rith unit 2386 and active in Beth Knesset Bamidbar.

``It was like it was unbelievable. It was very, very sad. He was such a young man and he had so much potential. Who knows what he could have done if he had lived his whole life?''

The assassination made her more mindful of the dangers in the world.

``It sure brought it to the front of my mind that there were a lot of kooks around,'' she said.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) This scrapbook was assembled and these articles were collected by Dea McAllister after the assassination in 1963.

(2) Dea McAllister of Palmdale thumbs through some of the Kennedy pieces she culled when she was in seventh grade.

(3) The collection of Kennedy memorabilia owned by Dea McAllister includes maps and Life magazines from the early 1960s.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer