8th grade chemistry class. First a girl went crying down the hall, then the teacher announced to the class that the president had been shot. We didn’t have a PA system.
I was three months old. My mother held a fascination for the Kennedy clan, the “curse” and all the scuttlebutt, true and false, about them for the rest of her life.
Kennedy to me is, sadly, reduced to the Simpson’s ich bin ein Springfielder!
My childhood memories are confined to early/mid 1970s incidents nobody outside Australia would five a toss about (the dismissal, Westgate Bridge disaster, Cyclone Tracy, Granville, etc). After that, there was a long boring interlude (another joint, duuuuuuude?) until Diana’s death and then 9/11.
As ever, we Gen Xers are either too young to know or boringly too old.
I remember walking home from my fifth-grade class, after getting dismissed early, and taliking to a classmate, almost exclusively on what we felt was the key angle of the assassination: what foul tortures (mostly involving testicles) should be visited on the assassin when we caught him.
I shit myself when I heard about JFK. Of course, being 18 months old I’d shit myself every chance I got.
I was in the fourth grade. First there was an announcement on the PA that the president had been shot. Then when the class was walking downstairs to go home (the teachers always escorted the class to the exit door. Guess they wanted to make sure they got rid of all the little bastards on time.) the principal announced over the PA that President Kennedy was dead. I walked with my younger brother and sister to my grandmother’s house.
I also remember being kinda pissed because that was all there was on television for the next few days. Schools were closed and I wanted my cartoons dammit! I stayed most of those days at my grandmother’s house and she wouldn’t let us go outside and play because she said the country was in mourning.
Another fetus here. I was born the following spring.
My mom says she was ironing at the time, and heard the news on the radio.
another ‘in utero’ here. I’m amazed at how many who’ve posted to this thread were doing the exact same thing I was. Must be some kind of conspiracy.
13 years old, helping Mum do the weekly supermarket shop in Tesco’s, so it must have happened on a Friday!
Clearly remember my elder brother greeting us on the doorstep with the news!
Actually one of my very few childhood memories!
I was in nursery school in Tallahassee. Our teacher taught us a new song to commemorate the occasion:
To the tune of Nanny Nanny Boo Boo:
We’ve got a new President,
His name is Lyndon Johnson
I remember the long moments of dead silence on the TV broadcast of the funeral procession. Every 45 seconds or so a very somber announcer would identify someone in the caravan, but mostly they just let the images roll without comment.
On my lunch hour - shopping. I heard about it in one of the stores that had a radio on. It’s the only thing anyone could talk about. I was shocked at the thought, but it didn’t really sink in and hit me emotionally until I got home from work and saw the TV reports.
I was in first grade. A woman came in and asked our teacher if she had heard the news. Mrs. Gaskall replied, “Yes, isn’t it terrible!”
After school I asked the woman (a clerical person in the main office, as I recall) what the news was, and she said, “President Kennedy has been shot.”
I was disturbed by this, but not as much as I might have been, because in my mind Kennedy was someone from long ago, like Washington.
I remember the funeral on TV very clearly to this day.
I was in 7th grade, and we were just coming back from recess. The next class out to the playground told us, but we didn’t believe it. When we got back to the classroom and saw that a television had been wheeled into the room we knew something important was up. The only time they brought a TV into the classroom was for space launches.
Interestingly, every seems to recall Cronkite wiping the tear from his eye after announcing JFK had died. In Atlanta at the time, the NBC affiliate was the dominant station, and had the stongest signal, so that’s what the school TV was tuned to. It was Frank McGee (who?) who told me about JFK’s death.
I’m guessing I was wandering around the house, wondering what i was going to get for my fifth birthday, which was in 4 days.
I was a freshman at Ohio State, in Architecture class. There was this kid who was always playing practical jokes, and he came running in, yelling that someone had shot the president. We all said, “yeah, right” and went back to our work. But it wasn’t long before more people came in with the same news.
Walking back to my rooming house, I remember people’s reaction to the news was almost palpable. You could tell who knew and who didn’t, as if some weird gas had been released, and one by one, people were being transformed - even the people who didn’t like Kennedy.
Only one guy in my rooming house had a TV, and we were glued to it for the next few days. What I remember most was seeing Ruby shoot Oswald, live.
And then…several months later…we pop out, all innocence and smiles and gurgles and bright-eyed cuteness…heh.
the golden crow caws at midnight, friend
Actually, this is a fascinating thread. Thanks to the OP!
In diapers. I was 2…
I was in the Army in Germany and a group of us had just come down from our mountain top to catch a shower and a movie at the Army base at Bad Tolz. It was about 7pm, and the movie was late starting, the manager came out and said there was a problem with the film.
The movie started, but the projector messed up, and again the manager came out and apologized. About half-way through the film, it stopped AGAIN and AGAIN the manager came out…but this time, he said the president had died…about a third of the audience walked out in a daze. We, being young, stayed and watched the rest of the movie. (Mutiny on the Bounty) On our mountain top, we had no tv, no english newspapers, and only one English radio station to listen to, AFN, and all they played was dirge music for the next two weeks. We didn’t really talk much about it; we were so isolated, we had other concerns and not much information. I gather it was rather a big thing back in the states. Never saw a lick of all the tv coverage until I came back, and then only in bits and pieces. Now, it brings a tear to my eye.
I think the shock of this event drove my parents to each others arms, perhaps deciding in this crazy uncertain world all they had was each other. A little over nine months later I was born.
Thanks to everyone who has posted their recollections, especially the non-American Dopers. It is a kick getting a foreign perspective.
I’m 32, so I wasn’t around when it happened, but I remember my mom telling us about how school let out early that day and not much else. My dad never spoke of it. They would have been freshmen or sophomores in HS, I believe.
You always hear people say “You’ll never forget where you were or what you were doing when (insert major news event here) happened.” The closet I came was I remember Reagan being shot, Challenger, Diana dying (only because of the absurdity of what I was doing when I found out), Dale Earnhardt dying, and 9/11. I expect the last will leave the strongest impression, for so many reasons. I still remember ESPN’s Mike & Mike making flip comments such as “If you plan on flying anywhere, good luck, because your flight ain’t going nowhere.” The attacks had just begun, details were unconfirmed and not really past innuendo, and no one outside of NYC really knew the gravity of the situation at that moment. Anyway, I’ve hijacked my own thread long enough. I digress…
Sometimes you learn so much more from other peoples experiences and memories, especially those who were there when it happened, than you ever will from a textbook. Thanks again!