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.
