This grad bore witness to the Kennedy presidency. Now he’s sharing his stories.
Norman Katz, 88, says that Northeastern’s ROTC program propelled him to a front seat of history
It was Oct. 27, 1962, or what historians call “Black Saturday,” the most dire of the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis. A U.S. U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba, that morning, the U.S. Navy had dropped depth charges on a Soviet nuclear submarine, the island nation was under a U.S. blockade, and the world was on the brink of nuclear war.
President John F. Kennedy gave the order — get a message to the Kremlin immediately. Kennedy wanted to communicate with Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev, hoping to stave off war.
But there was no “red phone” yet for a direct telephone call to Moscow.
They relied instead on a multitude of translators, operators and teletype machines, which were like old electric typewriters connected to telephone and telegraph wires, and communications back and forth were printed out.
It fell to Army Lt. Norman Katz, just about a year after his graduation from Northeastern University and its ROTC program, to make the teletype message happen. He was the communications officer as well as an Army liaison to the Secret Service, which gave him top secret clearance.
Instead, Katz first called his mother.
It was a young man’s mistake, he told Northeastern Global News, about the time he rushed from the Situation Room to the communications room filled with military and civilian translators, operators using old-style switchboards and rattling teletype machines.
“I was a kid,” he said. He thought it could be the “end of the world” and wanted his mother to fill the bathtub with water, in case a conflict shut down municipal utilities in Malden, Massachusetts, where his parents lived. They’d at least have clean water for a while. And that it could have been the last time that he would hear his mother’s voice, he said of the call that lasted less than a minute.
“I figured we were going to have a nuclear holocaust,” he said.
On the day of the call, an American U2 spy jet was shot down at 10:19 a.m. over Banes, Cuba, and the nation was at DEFCON 2, the second highest level of military readiness, meaning U.S. forces were prepared to be in combat within six hours. And such a conflict could spin into an atomic annihilation.
What Katz saw when he got to the Situation Room was that most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were arguing and pushing Kennedy to launch a first strike against Fidel Castro’s Cuba, as is documented on the website of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Historian. The U.S. learned days earlier that the Soviets put between 28 and 37 nuclear capable missiles and 42 bombers there in San Cristóbal, about 90 miles off the U.S. Coast. A U.S. Navy fleet of about 200 vessels was blockading the island nation because of it.
He knows that as an Army liaison to the Secret Service and the CIA, he’s one of a dwindling number who were there, not only for the 13-days of the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis, but also the aftermath of the assassination of Kennedy about a year later.
It’s why, 64 years later, Katz, soon to be 89, wants people to know what he heard and saw. Now a retired colonel with the U.S. Army Reserves living in West Harwich, Massachusetts, he reminisces about those days when Northeastern’s ROTC program propelled him to a front seat of history.
Katz was in history class near the end of his final semester at Northeastern when someone from the university president’s office summoned him.
“I was late with my tuition,” he said, explaining that he was worried he was in trouble. “It was like $500 bucks, but that was big money.”
Instead, two FBI agents wanted him to go to the White House for a job requiring top secret and beyond top secret clearance, which meant he could be privy to conversations at the White House and in the Situation Room, the recently renamed “War Room.”
He was a standout at the university’s military training program, reaching the rank of 2nd lieutenant when he graduated. Katz originally had orders to go to South Korea after graduation, but White House position meant he would stay in the U.S., in Washington, D.C., with his fiancée Myrna. So he took the job.
Now, as he feels the ranks of witnesses from that time diminishing, the 1961 Northeastern University graduate who earned a business degree, has been telling his stories at local libraries and community centers around New England. He has also been on TV, including when news crews marked the 50-year anniversary of Kennedy’s death in 2013. And he even set up his own history website.
“I want people to know,” Katz said.
Peter Fraunholtz, an assistant teaching professor at Northeastern who teaches history and international affairs, including the Cold War era, said that it is great to get a fuller picture of those days from eyewitnesses before they die.
Fraunholtz noted that there were a lot of people in those rooms at the White House at the time.
“But it’s great to have witnesses who are left, those who can add to the public narrative, give a lens through his eyes,” Fraunholtz said. “You just have to put one person’s experience into context.”
Fraunholtz said that the early 1960s were a very dangerous time for the world.
“There were factions (in the White House) who wanted Kennedy to blow Cuba out of the water,” he said. “Remember, we were less than a decade-and-a-half out of WWII. Those were important moments. It will be interesting to hear from him.”
Katz said he knew history, “before the history books were written.”
Katz coordinated the White House communications with the translators and operators talking to the Russians as they both sent and received a series of messages.
Beyond what he saw on “Black Saturday,” Katz also recalls seeing the small things that encapsulated the Kennedys’ lives, such as watching the president’s toddler “John-John” (a family nickname for John F. Kennedy, Jr.) get underfoot, playing in the Oval Office and Kennedy’s then five-year-old daughter Caroline riding her pony named “Macaroni.”
And even though Katz and the other low ranking military and Secret Service personnel were on orders never to speak to the president, Katz tells people about the president calling him, “That kid from Boston,” as he winked, walking by – much to the annoyance of Katz’s fellow soldiers who were irked over the attention he was getting.
Kennedy would often say, “Good morning, Norm,” said Katz, who believes they bonded over both being from Boston.
He remembers everything about what many people still call “Camelot” of the Kennedy White House, with its promise of the future. He remembers Kennedy’s speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas, where the president announced to the world the plan to put an astronaut on the moon, and the thrill he had hearing it.
“It was euphoria, America could do anything,” Katz said, although he was still in Washington that day, not traveling with the president as he often did.
Katz also remembers that terrible moment on Nov. 22, 1963 – the day of Kennedy’s assassination.
He was supposed to be in Dallas with the president but his boss, CIA Director John McCone told him their ranks were thin, and Katz needed to remain behind in Washington.
Katz, who was coordinating communications that day, recalls being on a phone call with seven or more generals and leaders all at once. He remembers that “everyone was screaming.”
Among the people he spoke to was Kennedy’s brother, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy. Katz said he was the one who told Bobby Kennedy that the last rites were being performed on his brother at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas (a detail NGN couldn’t independently confirm.)
On the same day, an Air Force VIP Boeing 707 was about 900 miles out from Honolulu headed west to Tokyo for an economic summit. On it were Kennedy’s Secretary of State Dean Rusk, White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger and five other cabinet members. They needed to head back right away, for security reasons and the chain of command for the Continuity of Government – a standing action plan if the president is killed or disabled.
“Norman, get that plane back,” Katz recalls Bobby Kennedy demanding.
So, Katz said he made the radio call to the 707, shouting out a string of letters and numbers from a code book that is changed every day. But the captain on board couldn’t find his copy of the code book. The plane wouldn’t turn around without verification that the call wasn’t a fake from foreign powers.
Katz told him his name and asked if there was anyone on board who knew him. Salinger knew Katz, recognized his voice and asked the pilot to turn around. The plane turned around after Secretary Rusk also spoke to a general in Washington, affirming the order.
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Myrna Katz, who has been married to Norman for 65 years, gushed as she recalled the incredible times she and her husband have lived through. She also had a job with the government designing signs and pamphlet illustrations for the Army, in addition to being an international operator during emergencies.
“We understand that he has this special knowledge,” Myrna Katz said. “This is what really happened. We’re living proof of what happened. I don’t think the younger generations understand what we went through.”
Richard Casey, 85 of West Harwich, Massachusetts, and a fellow graduate from Northeastern, met Katz at one of his talks and went up to speak with him afterwards.
“I could tell right away that this guy was a true-blue American, a patriot,” Casey said, and they bonded chatting about the old days at Northeastern.
But Katz’s knowledge of historical events fascinated him.
“He exudes confidence,” Casey said. “He doesn’t hype up what he knows. He tells it straight.”
Katz sometimes shows visitors the binders of documents and photos he saved from those days. He rattles off the names of the generals and defense leaders, and CIA and Secret Service officials he worked for like recalling the names of old friends.
“I’m old,” he said. “I feel very frightened sometimes, and with me, goes history.”
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