I heard on April 12, my friend’s birthday, that Kurt Vonnegut died. He was my favorite living person who I had never met. He and my father shaped my feelings about war more than anyone, they fought in the same war, and, in a final bit of trivia, I believe his youngest daughter has almost exactly the same age difference as my father and I. I’m too lazy to wiki, but I think Vonnegut would have been a year younger than my dad, and his daughter is one year younger than I. When Vonnegut died, I felt like someone I knew and cared for, but didn’t speak to very often, left me. I’m not sure why I felt so close to him, though I do have my guesses, which I’ll spare you all of.
Also, the day I graduated college stands out. June 12.
The Columbia shuttle crash. What sticks out to me about that memory is just how surreal it was when I found it - freshman year of college, and I’m sharing a single dorm room with three other dudes. I woke up before they did, and wandered over to my computer while I waited to warm up enough to get breakfast - Rhode Island is cold in February. So I’m in this quiet room, rubbing my hands together, and I see Slashdot’s story on the crash.
Then I turned on the television, and saw the video of the debris crashing, with commentators narrating the mess. It was just very strange, how quickly it went from a normal morning to a very bad one.
It isn’t just one day in 1956 that I remember. Somehow it is as if I became conscious around the first of July in that year and the next and was able to treasure little memories that would have meant nothing another year. I turned thirteen that July. That was less than two weeks before the Andria Doria went down.
I remember the songs that were popular (“Moonglow and Theme from Picnic” and “Canadian Sunset,”) the fragrance that I wore (Daisies Won’t Tell), and when a certain cute rascal gave me a piece of Juicy Fruit gum, bought me a coke or smiled at me in the lunch line. (Yes, I can give you dates.)
I can remember that October 10 of that year was the most beautiful autumn day that I have ever seen im my life in Gibson County Tennessee and that it was two days after the only perfect World Series baseball game.
I remember getting my polio shot on December 11 and writing about it later. As I wrote the date, I stopped as I was making the top of the “c” in December and I thought, “I’m going to remember this moment forever.” That was almost 54 years ago.
I remember being Mary in at least two nativity pageants that year. And as 1957 came around, I remember a full moon on Valentine’s Day.
That thirteen year old rascal and I are still in touch. I got two hugs the last time I saw him. I still have that piece of Juicy Fruit gum.
January 28, 1986 - Challenger
February 1, 2003 - Columbia
For the first, I was still in college, watching the launch on the big screen in the cafeteria. When the shuttle exploded was the only time I heard the college cafeteria fall silent.
I did not actually see the second until just after it happened, but I was at work on a Saturday when I got a phone call from a customer, who told me Columbia disintegrated. I had a personal TV with me, but was not allowed to use it on the call center floor. We had only a team lead there (no supervisors: it was Saturday) and she gave me the okay to watch it at my desk. She watched over my shoulder, and we just sat there in shock.
I had just entered second year at electronics school and was renting a room from a guy who I did not yet know was a proselytizer. My other roommate was a crazed Filipino who used to answer the phone, “House of God, may I help you?”
I came downstairs that fine morning to get breakfast only to catch the radio news: the Soviet Union had just shot down an unarmed civilian jetliner traveling from Alaska to Korea. I was terrified. I thought we were on the road to nuclear war.
John Glenn. Watched it on a really crappy TV in grade school. Do you remember static?
11/22/63. My 9th birthday, nun’s crying, mom crying, yeah I remember that.
January 27, 1967 - Apollo fire. We were all outside shoveling snow after a huge snowstorm when the neighbor kid’s dad came out and told us about the fire.
January 28, 1986 - Challenger. Working in the basement in an RPI lab. Thought my fellow grad students were kidding when they told me.
June 17, 1994 - OJ/expressway. I remember this only because I was at a conference watching this on TV and my teenage son called me sobbing because his friend had died in a car crash and there was nothing I could do, I couldn’t even hold him. One of the worst moments of my life.
I don’t remember the specific date, but I remember every detail of the morning Challenger blew up. I had got up early to watch it (shuttle launches still being something of an event in those days), saw it play out live on TV, and spent the rest of the day in a daze.
1986- I was working above an office troubleshooting a phone that was not working. They had the radio on in the office. There was an interruption followed by an announcement that The space shuttle Challenger had just blown up after take off. Christa McAlliffe was on that flight and I felt horrible for her kids and her class that were watching. I can’t imagine watching my mother blow up.
There was a single day, among many pleasant and some frightening days, which stands above all memories as the most perfect day of my life.
The kids were about ten and twelve and we went motorcycle camping to pick my son up at the Scout campground. We stayed overnight by a small crystal-clear lake in Northern MN and spent the day canoeing with the kids. The weather and surroundings were quiet and pine-scented, everyone was in a good mood and none of us seemed to want anything other than to spend the day together.
The kids caught some fish which we ate for supper.
It was a Fourth of July weekend and we offered to take them to a nearby amusement park for the evening but no one wanted to leave the lake.
A whip-poor-will screeched for half the night and had all four of us helpless with hysterical laughter. We’d just get to sleep and he’d start again. And we’d just lose it.
Funny. That doesn’t sound all that fun to me anymore.
Smiling just thinking about that one absolutely perfect day in my life.
Edit: That whip-poor-will? That must have been what they were singing about in “My Blue Heaven.”
Which building were you in? I walked into the Rathskeller in the Student Union to endless reruns of the explosion. (I was an undergrad at the time.)
I also remember coming home from school in 1981 and watching the coverage of the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. (The funny thing, if you can call it that, was watching the Secret Service guys in suits pulling these big guns out of nowhere and tackling the guy instantly.)
And aside from 9/11, I remember the day of the first attempt on the World Trade Center. I was working at a small company in Westchester County and for some reason heard nothing about it until my drive home, at which point the radio was talking about how of course traffic was a huge mess in lower Manhattan. I had no idea what they were talking about.
Also, and actually this is one date that i’ve been able to remember better than many others I think I should hold on much more dearly (certainly including the ones listed above in my first post in this thread):
24 November 1991
Freddy Mercury dies after a battling AIDS for several years…
April 14th, 2001: My first period. I was in seventh grade, and we’d gone on a field trip. I have no idea why I remember the date. (It’s also the day before the Titanic sank, but I wasn’t around for that one.)
February 1st, 2003: Columbia shuttle disaster, and my 16th birthday. That there’s a combination where unforgettable-ness is damn near guaranteed.
April 17, 1982 - patriation of the Constitution of Canada; watched on tv as Her Majesty, PM Trudeau, and Justice Minister Chrétien signed the documents that made it official; then I went over to the campus Anglican chapel and rang the church bell to celebrate it.
August 16th, 1977. I was 7 and at the lake with my family. It was a very busy day there, lots of people. Some of us kids were making sand castles at the waters edge and suddenly realized that all the grownups were crying. I didn’t know who Elvis was until then.
I don’t know the exact dates for most of these, but I can remember what I was doing when I heard the news of …:
[ul]
[li]Elvis’ death (watching tv in my parent’s bedroom (which was where the best tv in the house was kept))[/li][li]Ronald Reagan’s assassination attempt (announcement at my high school)[/li][li]World Premiere of “Beat It” video (my whole family gathered to watch it in my parent’s bedroom)[/li][li]Space Shuttle Challenger explosion (announcement at University by my philosophy teacher)[/li][li]Baby Jessica’s rescue (watching tv at home - they interrupted programming)[/li][li]Princess Di’s death (listening to the local radio station on a boat in Lake Cumberland)[/li][li]9/11 (my husband called me and I turned on the news)[/li][li]Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin’s death (I was on the tennis court when someone told us about it.)[/li][/ul]
I could swear that was December 25th, 2005. So I guess the date doesn’t stand out in my mind that much. But I do remember Jerry Orbach dying a few days later.
July 20th, 1969. I remember it well, though I didn’t learn the date until decades later.
December 31st, 1999. At 11:30 pm I felt great. By midnight I wanted to die. I rang in the new millenium by going to the ER. (Turned out to be just a really bad case of the flu.)
The only dates I remember specifically other than 9/11 are dates that are specific to my own life. I remember the death of Princess Diana and the death of Steve Irwin though I don’t rememer the specific dates. I also remember finding out about the death of John Inman and that tore me up worse than any other celebrity death simply because I had grown up watching Are You Being Served? in reruns on PBS my entire life so in my mind he didn’t age, he was simply forever 35-40 and amazingly hilarious. I still miss him.
I remember Columbine vividly and all the half empty classrooms in my school as parents pulled their kids out of classes out of fear but I couldn’t tell you the date it happened.
June 1st, 2007 was the day I moved to New York City. That was absolutely the best thing I could have done for myself and I continue to be incredibly happy here.
November 6th, 2009 was the day my fiance proposed. I’ll never forget that date!
