The Santa Fe office closed on June 28, 1963, and McKibbin retired. There was a brief ceremony conducted by Bradbury, who presented a memorial plaque. When Oppenheimer was awarded the Atomic Energy Commission's Enrico Fermi Award in 1963, he invited McKibbin to join him at the White House reception. She intended to do so, but the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, whom she had met when he toured Los Alamos on December 7, 1962, cast a pall over the event, and she decided not to attend. Oppenheimer received the award from the new President, Lyndon B. Johnson.
