The Assassination Attempt That Time Forgot

Everybody thinks 1963 when you mention the Kennedy assassination.

Dallas. Motorcade. Zapruder film.

But here’s the part hardly anyone remembers: somebody almost killed John F. Kennedy before he even unpacked his socks in the White House.

December 1960. Kennedy has just beaten Richard Nixon in one of the tightest elections in American history. He’s 43, tan, glamorous, and hanging out in Palm Beach, Florida, soaking up some sun before Inauguration Day. Jackie’s there. The kids are there. The future looks polished and presidential.

Enter Richard Paul Pavlick. Seventy-three years old. Retired postal worker. Not exactly a criminal mastermind—more like your grumpy neighbor who thinks the country’s going downhill and has way too much time to think about it. He decided Kennedy was too rich, too Catholic, too something. So he did what unstable men with access to dynamite sometimes do.

He bought a lot. Ten sticks.

Pavlick packed his Buick full of explosives and parked near the church Kennedy attended on December 11, 1960. The plan? Blow himself up and take the president-elect with him. No sniper’s nest. No grassy knoll. Just a car bomb and a button.

And then history blinked.

Jackie and Caroline came out of the house to say goodbye before Kennedy left for church. Pavlick watched. He later said he didn’t want to hurt the family.

So he didn’t push the button.

That’s it. That’s the hinge of history. A 73-year-old man sitting in a parked Buick decided, at the last second, not to blow up the next President of the United States.

A few days later, the Secret Service picked him up after a tip from a suspicious postal worker back home. They found the dynamite. Kennedy took the oath in January 1961.

And we all remember 1963.

Almost nobody remembers how close we came in 1960.