Cal’s Craig Morton reflects on last Big Game postponed due to JFK’s death
Craig Morton distinctly remembers walking out of an English class and being perplexed as to why Sproul Plaza was filled with crying Berkeley students on a Friday at 11 a.m.
Soon, the star Cal quarterback would join his classmates with tear-filled eyes.
“I went up to some people, and they said: ‘Kennedy’s been shot,’” Morton said. “Since we hadn’t been soldiers in World War II, none of us had faced anything like that. This was our first helping of absolute grief and trauma.”
The emotions from that 1963 day came flooding back to Morton this month when the Big Game rivalry between Cal and Stanford was postponed for the first time since JFK’s assassination.