"From a student of North Texas State University: The radio sat in ... the second floor dorm window blaring out the sad news that our president had been shot! People walking around in twos and threes stopped their happy chattering and stood silently on the street, waiting -- listening -- wondering -- praying," wrote English major Eileen Mitchell ('66) in the letter she began to Jacqueline Kennedy at 1:10 p.m. Nov. 22, 1963. She closed with, "Mrs. Kennedy, I love you and I will pray for you."

Featured in the November Texas Monthly, it was one of the more than 1.5 million condolence letters sent to the first lady and is preserved in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Mitchell, who is now a contract specialist and also teaches paralegal studies at Tulane University, says she remembers returning from her canceled English class to her Marquis Hall dorm room, putting the radio in the window for others to hear, and in her grief wanting to comfort the first lady.

Letter-writers later received printed cards expressing Mrs. Kennedy's appreciation. Mitchell says she was shocked when her letter, which also was published in the 2010 book Letters to Jackie: Condolences of a Grieving Nation by Ellen Fitzpatrick, re-surfaced. "I had forgotten about it and was very surprised it had survived and been chosen for publication. I'm still impressed that it is in a presidential library."

Also making news this November was a collection of Dallas Police Department materials and Dallas Times Herald photos related to the assassination that are being made accessible on UNT's Portal to Texas History; the Alfred and Johanna Hurley Military History Seminar Nov. 2 focusing on the national security implications of the assassination; a Nov. 3 College of Music program in which members of the faculty re-created music performed at the White House during the Kennedy administration; and a Nov. 20 screening of the documentary JFK50: Eyewitness to History, co-sponsored by the Mayborn School of Journalism and The Dallas Morning News.