I was in eighth grade, out at recess. They rang the bell early and we lined up and went in, wondering what was wrong. The principal came on the PA system and told us and we all said a prayer for him.
Then we watched TV nonstop, well as nonstop as you could in 1963.
We were all horribly shocked and wondered what IIB the world was happening in the US.
My family was in the UK. My parents were out for dinner, a rare rare thing. The announcement came on the BBC. All I can remember was the sitter got upset.
I was in the sixth grade. We were out a recess when an announcement came over the speaker that the president had been shot.
Later, in class, the PA told us he was dead.
School continued the rest of the day. Afterwards I went to my cub scout meeting. People would come in giving us news – they caught the guy who did it.
I went home and we watched it on TV; it was the only thing on that weekend. It was the first time I remember there being nothing but news for an extended period. We watched all day, listening to news.
I was watching when Oswald was shot. Everyone was there, for a chance to see who the killer was. Then this guy came out of nowhere and shot him in front of the camera. I realized later it was the first (and so far, the only) time I saw someone being killed live as I watched.
I was in second grade and remember it well. It was early in the afternoon and I was sitting on the left side of the classroom next to the window. Kimberly sat next to me to my right, and someone knocked on the door. The teacher opened it and stepped just outside the door. Kimberly must have ears like a rabbit because she started saying “President Kennedy”. Moments later the teacher walked back in and stepped to the front of the classroom and said “President Kennedy was in Texas today… and somone… with no heart… shot him”. We were sent home when they could arrange for the buses and I didn’t hear he was dead until I got home.
Later that weekend, I was lying on the floor watching the television coverage and happened to be looking up and saw Ruby shoot Oswald. I hollered for my mom and the announcer kept saying “Has he been shot? Oswald has been shot!”
We had Monday off school as well. All I remember from the funeral was the caisson carrying the coffin and the drumbeats.
Without google-fu: Who’s buried in JFK’s grave?
Besides JFK? Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, who had died at the age of two days a few months earlier, and Jackie.
I was in grade school and had stayed home that day due to illness. I was sitting on the living room floor as I often did and Mom was on the couch watching her soaps when Walter Cronkite came on and made the announcements that JFK had been shot, gave updates and speculation, and later announced the death. That Sunday, I was surprised when my Dad met me to walk me home from Sunday School and he told me “They shot the guy that killed Kennedy”. And when I got home they were repeatedly showing Oswald getting shot.
Sixteen. In civics class, I think. We sat in stunned silence. Our whole world view changed that day.
The premature birth and death of Patrick from respiratory issues had been another public tragedy for the Kennedys just a short time earlier. With modern medical care the baby would almost certainly have survived.
Checking my memory, it seems a still born daughter called Arabella is also buried at the JFK grave site.
Apropos of nothing: I had my tonsils out about five years prior in the same hospital at Otis AFB where Patrick was born and died. It was a series of wooden buildings connected by walkways, not a modern hospital building, as you sometimes see in movies about the Kennedys.
Oh, I doubt it. I can’t believe that would be within living memory still.
I was in my seventh grade French lesson. Our teacher, Mlle Pendergast, was telling us about her visit to Paris the previous summer, when suddenly one of my classmates, Paul Harrison, our class president, who had been listening via earpiece to a transistor radio that was hidden behind a book, blurted out loud, “They’ve shot Kennedy! They’ve shot Kennedy!”
Miss Pendergast, who either didn’t believe Paul or else hadn’t taken in what he’d said, was in the midst of scolding him for listening to a radio in class when abruptly the loudspeaker came on and the school principal announced the same dire news to the entire school. Shrieks and gasps ensued and Paul’s transgression was forgotten.
I realize that November 22, 1963 was a tragic day for the US, but I’ve always kind of of remembered it as The Day Paul Harrison Got Away With Flouting the Rules. Miss P is probably dead by now but Paul Harrison, who would be in his early sixties, I hope you’re well and I salute you.
Correct, wrong and correct. JFK was buried with Patrick and the stillborn (whose name, if any ever given, has not been discussed outside the family). Jackie is buried to his right in a separate crypt.
When he was moved to this grave in 1968, it’s believed that the large pieces of his brain and skull that had been kept by pathology were also interred.
For those of you who were there, out of curiosity: who/what did you initially suspect was behind the shooting? Random madman? Violent segregationist? Communist agent? Something else?
Communist agent I think would have been the first to leap to mind. The Cold War was at its height. While black leaders like Medgar Evers were being assassinated, the civil rights struggle hadn’t yet reached a level of intensity where one might immediately suspect a white president might be assassinated over it.
My mother was absolutely convinced that Ruby shot Oswald as a part of the conspiracy. No evidence ever swayed her. The idea that a guy could simply dance into a police station after such a high-profile crime and whack the suspect was inconceivable.
But it was a simpler era. It was a time when you could buy a rifle by mail. We learned. Police stations are less easy to breeze into these days.
I was a college freshman at Ohio State. I had just arrived in architecture class, and this other guy rushed in and said that Kennedy had been shot. But this guy was always joking about things, so nobody believed him. Then another couple of guys came in and said the same thing. Of course everyone was in shock. I remember calling my parents at home, and the next thing I remember was seeing Oswald getting shot on TV, live. I lived in a rooming house, and the only TV was a small black-and-white one in one guy’s room. Then, we all watched the funeral.
A couple months later, the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, which we watched on the same TV. The whole world changed by those two events.
I was in third grade in Boston Mass. The principal came into the classroom and announced Kennedy and Texas governor had both been shot dead and Vice-President Johnson had been shot in the arm.
I don’t know where he got that information, but Boston went nuts for a month afterwards.