Whenever the anniversary of the JFK Assassination comes around, it generates special memories. I turned 19 that day, and our regular lunch bunch at Mrs. "B's" Boarding House was interrupted by Cronkite's TV News Bulletin. During school hours (I was a "scholastically probated" sophomore at the University of Texas), we could only turn the TV on during lunch - to the one-and-only "channel" Austin had - so that one of our guys could watch some soap opera. Since he was a non-scholarship linebacker on the football team, no one made fun of him .

Anyway, Cronkite delivered his now, much replayed emotional bulletin, and we just sat there ... stunned. The President was to be in Austin that night. Two of our guys were looking forward to making some extra bucks waiting tables at a banquet for the occasion.

I headed for the campus radio station, where I had a part-time student job playing folk music albums on weekends, and reading "wire copy" newscasts. I manufactured a KUT-FM News "Press Pass", for whatever that was worth, and six hours later, checked into the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. I had to scrape up the "cash" -- no credit card ... no news budget ... hell, no News Department!

I confess my "coverage" amounted to watching the TV in the Adolphus, and phoning in "reports" to the station. It took until Sunday morning to muster enough guts to head over to the Dallas Police Station -- where it was as easy to get in as Jack Ruby said it was -- and, well, we all know what happened in the basement of the Police Department that morning.

Over the years, I've absorbed just about every serious study on the Kennedy Assassination, including the little known Texas Attorney General's investigation into the jurisdictional disputes. And I'm "80%-to-20%" convinced that Oswald acted alone. But the possibility of that 20-percent still lingers in my mind. In fact, the only motion picture I've actually physically-sat-down-in-a-theater-to-watch in the past 25 years has been ... you guessed it ... "JFK". And, I saw it, twice.

The "what if"'s about President Kennedy's presidency also cause reflection. What would a second Kennedy term have meant. Landslide re-election over Nixon? Perhaps no extended Viet Nam? And, what about LBJ - would he have assumed the role in '68? And, yes, what about Nixon? Gee, perhaps no Watergate, and reporters today might have to use a little imagination, instead of slapping the "Gate" suffix on every other variant story that comes along!

We'll never know. But I'll certainly be watching all the anniversary coverage this week ... remembering ... and, of course, wondering.