Walked my girlfriend(future wife) to class at Richmond(VA) College, was walking back to my chem lab–guy with a car picked me up and gave me a ride–said “did you hear about JFK getting shot?” I was dumbfounded. Things like that didn’t happen in my world. We all sat around for half an hour before classes were cancelled. Long weekend.
Don’t remember the shooting, but the morning of the funeral my parents were glued to the TV. I was in the kitchen, waiting for lunch, and wondering why they weren’t feeding me! It was only much later that I realised it was JFK’s funeral.
I was in a seminary given by one of the leading mathematicians of the era and no one dared interrupt him. When the seminar ended around 1:30 EST, they told us that Kennedy had been shot and was essentially moribund. My current GF and I spent the ensuing weekend hugging each other. Within four months we were married (no, there was no baby in August) and will celebrate our 51st anniversary in March.
How lovely. Congratulations and all the best to both of you. 
Me too, and I was in Scotland at the time.
My mum told me she cried; mainly because he had wee children.
You were a couple of months ahead of me. But even as a small child, my mom would still get choked up if anyone mentioned it.
I was in utero.
I was in 8th grade. The loud speakers came on and the office had piped in a radio broadcast, without any prelude as to why they were doing this unprecedented thing. We were all sitting there (and the teacher, too), coming in in the middle of a broadcast, and I heard one of the reporters mentioning something about the President having been shot, and I gasped. Everybody looked at me and asked, “What?” And I said, “They just said the President has been shot.”
They kept us in school all day but there was no teaching. When I got home, my mother was watching the news on TV.
That Sunday, we went to church without having the TV on, so we missed the Oswald shooting. When somebody in church mentioned it, I didn’t believe him. After all, there had already been one killing, it was too much to think that there were two.
School was closed for the funeral.
I was 2 yrs 8 months old.
I have vague recollections of that day. Its my earliest memory.
My father was in the FBI and his office found out via my mother who was watching “As The World Turns” and when her Soap was interrupted with the bulletin, she called my Dad.
Here’s the 50th anniversary thread:
I was seven. We could tell something was going on at school, but they weren’t telling us anything specific. Some kids knew and started talking about it on the way home. I didn’t really grasp the significance of the event at that age. When I got home my mom was crying. She said I could go outside and play. Soon I would realize there would be no cartoons on TV for a week. A few days later my dad would take me and my brother into the city to see the casket go by. It was a bitterly cold day.
I couldn’t understand it then, but the world did change that day. Not solely because of JFK’s death, but it marks the clear start of a sequence of events that distinguished the future from all that came before it.
I was a little over two years old and have no recollection of the day. My mother has told me we were at the pediatrician’s office when she heard about Kennedy’s assassination.
It was Saturday morning here when the news came through. I was playing cricket just up the road from my house. I ran home to tell my parents. I remember that I was horrified that such a thing could happen.
In 1993 a local newspaper did a “Where were you?” segment and John Hewson, opposition leader of the Liberal party, told some story about being in the crowded courtyard at school. No-one, other than me apparently, noticed that his memory, and accompanying self-aggrandising statements, were complete BS.
I was in high school. We were in the gym watching the movie, “Sergeant York.” One of the girls in our class was listening to her transistor radio and started crying. None of knew what to make of it. The rest of the day was in a kind of fog as the whole school, teachers included, just milled around talking about it.
In an entirely unrelated note she was my first bare tit (I think we were in the 7th grade). She grew up to be our class lesbian. I’ve always hoped the two weren’t related.
Another high school freshman here. If I remember correctly, we came back from lunch to 5th period English, which was taught by my homeroom teacher, and she told us. It was clear walking back into the halls and classrooms that the teachers were upset and had apparently conferred on the best way to break it to us.
I’m afraid I didn’t shine as a budding adult. We had an away game for the state high school football playoffs that night, complete with 4 hour bus ride each way. Our biggest concern was the fear that the game would be canceled, but in the end they settled for a moment of silence at the stadium. On the bus ride down, I recall we joked about how “they” should have taken out Johnson too. I have no idea why we thought that, or what we thought would have happened in that case.
I also remember very clearly seeing the coverage when Jack Ruby shot Oswald, and my father saying something like “Pay attention, this is important.”
I was a small child in Fort Smith, Arkansas. We moved to Texas the following year.
I was in the first grade. The whole school was marched out in lines, class by class, to the asphalt playground, and we stood for what seemed like forever, in complete silence. Then we were marched back in again. I only had a vague idea of what a president was, and only knew something momentous and unforeseen and bad had happened. RFK was a far bigger deal for me – for one thing, my father was one of his delegates to the convention. That I remember with great vividness.
This is kind of what I was getting at. Two murders in a row was unthinkable…then. Today, alas, multiple murders are all too common and expected. 
We moved to Texas the following year, too, and I was convinced I was moving to the land of the barbarians.
I was home sick from kindergarten. The announcement interrupted the kiddie program I was watching, and I went into the kitchen to ask my mother what “assassinated” meant.
I could tell by her body language it was bad, but I thought that it was because of the word having “ass” in it.
Something about a book depository and for some reason I have a gun and then there were some cops and then I saw a light and had to move towards it and I heard someone yell “Push!” and next thing I knew it was cold and I was glaring at my mother.