I was in grammar school in England. I remember hearing later that Friday night that the President had been shot. I don’t recall being either surprised or shocked at the time. 14-year-olds are so self-centered.
- PW
I don’t remember a lot. I was in first grade and the teacher told us that the president had been shot and that school was being dismissed early. I don’t recall if she said he was dead or just that he had been shot (maybe she didn’t even know yet at that point). I walked home (we lived right across the street from the school) and my mother had the TV on. I remember that she was crying but she denies it so I’m not really sure. It’s my earliest memory of anything having to do with government or politics (and it was the first of 3 assassinations that occurred during my childhood) so it’s possible that it had a profound effect on me but it’s hard to say what that effect was.
I made a post over on the SDMB livejournal, but here is the essence of it:
I was in sixth grade when our teacher got called out of class; she returned a few minutes later, looking rather pale and announced to the class that the President had been shot and killed. Many of the students thought it was a joke and even laughed about it. 
That is, until we all saw that our teacher had tears in her eyes and we realized it was true.
Once I got home, I think that was the very first time that I was interested in watching the news on tv, and it certainly was wall-to-wall coverage on every network (there were only three at the time, you know). I was watching live when Ruby shot Oswald that Sunday, compounding the shock we as a nation were in.
The saddest coverage, though, had to be the funeral–the caisson, with the riderless horse behind; the awful drumbeat of the funeral march. It was etched in my memory for a very long time afterwards. I still can’t hear the Navy hymn without getting a lump in my throat.
I remember too thinking that President Johnson had something to do with the assassination! And when the Warren Commission report came out, I actually read it. One other thing I recall of that year is that, later in the school year, I painted a picture of the President’s gravesite at Arlington.
I was 20 years old and in college. I had just stepped from the showers into the hallway when a girl came up the hall laughing that "a sniper had just shot the President.* My life was so different then that I didn’t even know what sniper meant and I had to get her to explain. I never did know why she was laughing.
There was only one TV and it was in the lobby. It was the same TV where I had watched the President address the nation about the crisis in Cuba. So I dressed and hurried downstairs.
Everyone who came up kept saying, “Is he alive?” Nobody knew. And finally Walter Cronkite told us.
I was so stunned that *I went to my one o’clock class! There were four or five of us who showed up with our radios. Just on automatic, I guess. The professor stopped by and told us to go home.
And that was when this big spreading ache started. For me it was the end of feeling right side up for a long time.
Some of you mentioned things about the funeral that I had forgotten. I think the funeral march was by Chopin’s Marche Funeral.
I do remember the naval hymn, Eternal Father, Strong to Save. The tune had been my class song in 1961. Two years ago when it was played at the funeral of my oldest friend, all the feelings came back again.
The riderless horse was named Blackjack. That was a coincidence since that was Jackie’s father’s nickname. Weren’t there boots backwards in the stirrups? Didn’t the horse keep acting up?
And, of course, Jackie and the children and the brothers.
I don’t remember a church service and I don’t know why. I do remember at Arlington that when they played Taps, there was a false note. It seemed strangely fitting.
I have been told that the President can see the eternal flame from the White House.
Because of something that happened to my brain when I was 19 and again about three or four months after the assassination, I don’t remember much about that period of my life. But I won’t forget those days or what it meant.
I became more politically active because of it. And I got to meet some interesting people including Rose Kennedy and Eunice Kennedy Shriver. And I had a quick handshake with RFK and a 'Give 'em hel, Bobby!" when he was seated in a car next to where I was standing. That was in May of 1968. I have a thank you note from Caroline and John, Jr. when Jackie died. But all of it was trying to recapture just a little of something that wasn’t there anymore and never would be.
If I could change one moment in my life, it would be the turn of the car onto Dealy Plaza.
Thanks, everyone.
I was just 21, but still attending junior college (I was a lousy student). I had gone home after band practice to have a late lunch. The TV was on, and as I was cleaning up in the bathroom I heard the announcement that the president had been shot. No one knew what his condition was at first. I went back to campus, but by the time I got there all the classes had been cancelled.
Little knots of students formed all over campus around anyone with a radio. People were crying. The word came that the president was dead. The sense of helplessness and loss was overwhelming. I had never seen such a general mourning before, nor since untill 9/11. The feeling on those two awful days was comparable.
There was a generalized depression pver the next few days. Everyone was still stunned, almost disbelieving of what had happened. In my mind’s eye I can still see the images of the funeral procession, John-John’s salute, the riderless horse, although those images have been reinforced in the intervening years in television documentaries about the assassination.
It’s hard to say now how I would have felt about President Kennedy if he had survived that day. I wasn’t old enough to vote yet in 1960 (the voting age was still 21), but I would have voted for Nixon. I’m wiser now, but I was pretty dumb then. I thought I was a Republican. His assasination certainly changed the country. I think everyone felt less secure. The war in Viet Nam might have gone differently if Kennedy and not Johnson were in the White House in 1964. Maybe the bombings wouldn’t have happened, maybe they would. But it seems clear that the chaos of “the sixties” pretty much began with Kennedy’s death.
Born in 1970, so no memories to share. But MIL recalled that moment yesterday. “Oh, that poor guy. [she said at the time] They’re gonna drum him right out of the Corps.”
My dad’s memory: Working in a lab in New Haven. I forget how he said they heard about it, but co-worker left to call his son (living in Texas), and came back looking even more shaken than before. Son’s response had been: “Well, it’s about time somebody shot the sonuvabitch!”
“Can Caroline come out and play?”
“No, I’m sorry, she’s in Italy with her mother this week.”
“Oh. In that case, what is Lyndon doing”?
I was in pre-school, I was just four. I barely vaguely remember the announcement over the scratchy old school PA (even though we were in pre-school and not yet kindergarten, it was the same school as the rest of the elementary students).
But I do remember the reactions of the teachers and the older students. I didn’t quite understand it at the time though.
What does everyone mean by false note? Did the bugler misplay the song? (I don’t remember any of this; I was only 8 months old.)
I was in the seventh grade at lunch. We we having ice cream sandwiches when the they announced it.
The teachers were like, “What do we do now?” Some parents came and picked their kids up but the rest of us just went back to class. We thought for sure they would cancel school.
We had NO news at all and it drove us nuts.
Some kids were just waiting for the sky to start glowing from the nukes they expected to hit. The odd thing was nobody was nearly as scared as when the Cuban missile crisis happened. People were totally freaked out about that. We thought for sure we were going to die in junior high school.
I remember when the diagram of the building and street were in the papers, most of us kids thought it was a really bad route to take for a visiting President.
EVERY kid thought it was insane for the NFL to play that Sunday.
I remember that I thought they could have gotten a riderless horse that behaved better.
It was one day short of my 25th birthday. I had been married that June and was attending Basic School in Quantico, VA. We were sitting on some bleachers out in the middle of nowhere, watching a jet bomb a target. A high ranking officer got on the mike and told us.
On the bus back, our conversation was mostly on Johnson becoming the new president. We knew there was no love lost between Kennedy and Johnson. In February, we visited an aunt of my wife who lived in Texas. She said her first reaction was “Oh my God! Lyndon is president.” (She did not like the idea).
With the funeral and Thanksgiving coming up, we were given a few days off. I was watching TV when Ruby shot Oswald. That was stranger than any “reality” show.
Since D.C. was only 50 miles away my wife and I went there on the day of the funeral. It was fairly crowded (but not like you would think) and we didn’t know where to go. We were able to stand and watch the caisson pass by with the riderless horse.
That was a very touching moment, but for some reason not my most touching. Later, we went to the park across from the White House. The sun was just setting and outlined against the sky was the flag on top of the White House at half-mast. To me that was the strongest statement about what had happened.
IMHO what really changed things was not just the assassination of JFK. It was the combination of his being assassinated and then Martin Luther King and then Bobby Kennedy. When I turned on the TV and saw that Bobby had been shot, I thought “Will this ever stop?”
Incidently, I voted for Nixon in 1968 and McGovern in 1972. Go figure. 
By kniz: “Incidently, I voted for Nixon in 1968 and McGovern in 1972. Go figure.”
You voted for McGovern? Man, that’s Messed Up!
Ducks and runs to escape the wrath of Zoe, who I’m sure voted for McGovern, as did my mis-guided mom and sister.
Copied from the other thread:
In the U.S. Air Force. In a hanger working on fighter planes. At break time we went into the coffee room and a pilot was in there, listening to a radio. He said: “Kennedy’s been shot.”
We all thought it was a joke and kept waiting for the punch line.
He had to repeat and explain about three times before the news sunk in as the truth. It was tense in the military for the next couple of weeks.
I was very little, about John-John’s age. I only remember my mother ironing and sitting down suddenly in the stair-step chair in the kitchen.
And me, standing there, watching her cover her eyes as she cried.
I remember being terrified because my mama never cried, and then I ran over to her to hug her. Simply scared, because my mother was crying.
The sixth note (“sun”) cracked and went up half an octave. I’ve heard this attributed to the fact that the bugler [Sgt. Keith Clark] couldn’t hear himself, the 21-gun salute having gone off very close to him a minute earlier. Plus which, he’d been standing there for several hours in November chill, and his mouth was numb. But he went on as if it hadn’t happened, and finished beautifully.