JFK Assassination: Oklahoma Native, Former Dallas News Anchor Recalls Interview With Lee Harvey Oswald

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, 60 years ago today.

It was a story that shocked the nation and Dallas new anchor Bill Mercer was one of the people who covered the aftermath.

He is now 97 and featured in a new documentary. He's also a native of Muskogee, Oklahoma.

"Well, I was doing a new newscast on TV that's a 50-minute newscast," Mercer said to News On 6's LeAnne Taylor on Six in the Morning. "Then I came over to the newsroom and everybody was crying and yelling. They told me he'd (JFK) been shot. The rest of the afternoon I spent answering phones in the newsroom. That time when all the outside reporters came in, my news director Mr. Parker sent me over to the police station on the third floor, that's the first time we ever broadcast live news."

Mercer said he spent the rest of the night interviewing people at the station before a chaotic 1 a.m. press conference.

"He (Oswald) was asked by a reporter next to me (Mercer) 'Have you been charged with anything?', and he said no," Mercer explained. "And I said, because I had already been told upstairs that he had. I said, 'Yes. You've been charged with a murder of the president,' and his face just dropped," Mercer said.

Mercer said to LeAnne Taylor that he understood the significance of the situation, but not that he was the only one who knew Oswald had been charged.

Mercer grew up in Muskogee and went to NSU, where he got married. He said it was a great town back in his day and he really loved it.

In 1943, he graduated and went to the Navy at 17 years old.

He returned in 1950 and began a career in sports broadcasting, where he called the legendary Ice Bowl between the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers in 1967 as well as the Cowboys' second Super Bowl appearance in Jan. 1972.