I was at lunch with my boss and a couple of work buddies in a little cafe across from our shop. This joint was about 50 yards from the street corner where I had seen Kennedy a few weeks earlier. The news came over the TV in the corner. It was as if sound went away. Nobody said anything. I think we must have left early for the day.
I watched TV almost around the clock until the funeral. I was watching when Oswald got shot. I was watching when John-John saluted. The cortege. The riderless horse. The long walk to the cemetery. It was a nightmare that everybody was sharing.
The end of innocence.
I had been married not quite two months. Our first child was on the way. My wife had just turned 22 and I would, too, in another couple of weeks.
This was still “the 50’s” as far as I was concerned. The “60’s” wouldn’t start for another five years or so. The Beatles helped start them but it took a while for the times to catch up in the South.
If I could undo one event in my life it would be that day. 9/11 was nowhere close. Watergate was another nail in the coffin of optimism.
I was alive when Roosevelt died but it meant nothing to me. I was too young. Kennedy didn’t really mean all that much to me either. Just another politician. But the damage done to the country’s outlook and trust in its government began its downward spiral that day and hasn’t turned back yet. I fear it never will.
I was 6 at the time. My mother, who was pregnant with my little brother at the time, had just dropped me and my siblings off at my grandmother’s house so she could go to a doctor’s appointment. We had to sit on the couch while my grandmother watched the events on TV. Us kids got upset because we could not watch J.P. Patches on TV.
12 years old, in 7th grade. I heard it in the hallway after I got out of shop class. We all went to home rooms, it was Friday afternoon, and they let us out early. On the block before mine the asshole kid who was son of a Republican official was happy (Ross Zito you asshole.) My mother was watching CBS, and it was on for the next three days.
It’s funny, our nation has experienced other presidential assassinations and has trudged though it’s fair share of tragedy and hardships, but I cannot shake the feeling that a certain, precious American innocence was irrevocably lost in Dallas on 11/22/63. Though not normally prone to such flights of fancy, I bought into the whole Camelot/Kennedy mythology (on reflection, as I got older, due to my age at the time). Certainly, most of the tumultuous 60’s, and beyond, *would *have (and for the most part, should have) unfolded the same way, regardless of JFK’s assassination - but perhaps they would have unfolded with a softer edge - less raw. To this day, that is one historical event that took place in my lifetime that I long to see played out differently (and I’m not even a democrat ). Anyone else feel the same way?
I was four. I don’t remember anything about the day he was shot, but I remember very clearly watching the funeral on TV.
Zeldar mentioned watching TV around the clock. I’m guessing that’s a figure of speech; I don’t think there were many stations then that didn’t shut down during at least part of the night.
US Navy boot camp, Great Lakes Naval Training Center.
Graduation Day.
We had drilled all week, over a thousand recruits, in preparation to march in front of parents and friends.
Just as we were leaving quarters for the parade grounds, the announcement was made over the base loudspeaker. Pomp and circumstance went right out the window. The entire ceremony was cancelled. Flags throughout the base went to half staff, and a happy day turned to crap. Our Commander in Chief was dead.
I was a flight attendant, vacationing alone in Athens, Greece. Early in the morning another American I’d met a few days before phoned me at my hotel to break the news. I was going to meet him at the Plaza in front of the American Express Office. I verified the info with the hotel desk clerk and, with tears in her eyes, she confirmed it.
By mid-morning the Plaza was filled with American tourists and friendly Greeks who translated radio reports. We were stunned and there was lots of disbelief - like it couldn’t have happened without us. I remember thinking I should go home, as if that would help things.
The next evening there was a poetry reading in a local taverna. The poet was Ted Joans, a black-American ex-pat. Several other Americans and I sat with him in the Plaza that afternoon as he composed his poems, running lines by us occasionally for critique. When I got to the taverna I heard that when he arrived there was a large sign in the window, “No Texans Allowed.” Ted refused to recite until the sign was taken down, saying that LBJ was a Texan and deserved our respect. The sign was removed.
Ted went on to lead a colorful, full life, living throughout Europe for many years, but eventually settling in Seattle. On another JFK anniversay I googled him to find that he had passed away only a few months earlier. I added a message to the tribute page for him.
A few days after the poetry reading, a bunch of us went to Mykonos. There we heard that Oswald had been shot. We weren’t getting any information and I volunteered to take the boat back to Athens to buy the international versions of Time and Newsweek and all the newspapers I could find.
It all seemed surreal at the time and it does even now.
I was in first grade. The school made a P.A. announcement, then we said a prayer. (It was a Catholic school.) They didn’t let school out early, though.
I remember rushing home with this big news to tell my mom, and being sorely disappointed that she already knew.
I was only 10 and about to play a cricket match. Kennedy was shot at about 5.30am Australian time and in those days no-one watched TV on Saturday morning, there were no news broadcasts. Someone was listening to a transistor radio and called out when they heard the news. I was both scared and upset and wanted to go home.
I was in 6th grade, and we were coming back from lunch when the principal put the radio on over the P.A. No warning, just suddenly hearing a first report over the P.A. system.
We had an early dismissal that day – about 2:15 as I recall. But I sure don’t remember anything about what happened between that first announcement and the time I left school.
I was 14, a freshman in high school. My high school was in the state football playoffs, and we were due to go down on a bus early in the afternoon from Portland to Roseburg for the quarterflnals. I came back from lunch to see some of the teachers talking in whispers in the hallway. I don’t remember the exact announcement, but school was not closed early.
Now remember, adolescent boys: our biggest fear was that the playoff game would be cancelled. It wasn’t, and we got to take our bus trip. The only concession to what happened was a moment of silence at the beginning of the game. That’s all I remember, except for some of us jerky kids making jokes about how they should have gotten LBJ too (we had no idea!).
It was announced to the classes, but I don’t remember if was over a PA system or just by staff going around to the rooms.
I’m pretty sure we were sent home early. I remember all of the adults being very upset, but being the contrarian I was (even at that age) I was determined that it didn’t bother me. (In truth, at only seven, I really didn’t really know enough about anything to be really upset. Any upset would have been because of the reaction of my parents, family, and others anyway.)
For all the posts about the kids who said they were happy when they heard the news, here’s my dad’s story as he tells it: he was very young at the time of the shooting, and he knew that his parents didn’t like JFK. Kennedy was a democrat, a liberal, a Yankee, a Catholic – all the things your average white, Southern family back then wouldn’t like. So when he heard the news at school, he was thrilled, and he ran home from school, eager to tell his mom the good news. When my grandmother saw his excitement, she smacked him and told him to show some respect for a man who’d just been shot – he was the president, after all, even if they had disagreed with his policies. Always thought that was kind of interesting. (I wonder how people would respond today if Bush were shot.) Even though Kennedy’s massively popular nowadays, the 1960 election was extremely close, and there was apparently a large segment of the population that didn’t like him.
Interesting; many years ago I read an interesting article in, of all things, a Dear Abby column. People were writing in sharing their experiences of how people outside the US responded to the assassination. I don’t remember many details about the column, but it was quite interesting. I’m kind of surprised that it would have such an effect in places as far flung as Scotland and Australia. Any other non-American dopers care to share their memories?
On a final note, say what you will about the rest of the movie’s accuracy, but the opening montage leading up to the assasination in Oliver Stone’s “JFK” is one of the best things I’ve ever seen. With just some archival clips, a voice-over, music, and some amazing editing, the montage seems to capture the feel of the moment, at least as it exists in the popular imagination (by people such as myself who weren’t even there).
I was 10 and in 4th class but it was Saturday morning here when I heard the news. I was standing beside the gramophone in the dining room and my mother was in the laundry, with steam pouring out of the old copper. Our kitchen was always like a sauna on wash days.
Even though he wasn’t my President, the news really affected me.
I was 9 and in third grade. They announced it at school, but didn’t send us home (although we stayed home through the funeral; I still remember the incredible emotion of the riderless horse).
I remember being very said, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I also was a bit proud of myself as, walking down to the cafeteria for lunch, I asked a classmate, “Who’s the president of the United States?” And when they replied, “President Kennedy,” I said, “No, it’s President Johnson now!” Even all these years later, I’m still bothered by that, although I guess it mostly meant that I at least understood the concept of vice presidential succession.
It is funny that we both mentioned it was Saturday. I remember years ago (probably 1993, the 30th anniversary) a newspaper asked lots of prominent Aussies what they were doing when they heard the announcement. Then Liberal leader John Hewson, told some story about being with his mates out in the playground at lunchtime. I thought, “you lying bastard, unless you went to school in the States you’re making this up.”
My arrival on this earth was still almost 4 years away, but I’ve always found my dad’s story interesting. He’s German, and was engaged to my mom (who’s American) but had not yet married and immigrated. He walked into a pub in Mainz, Germany, and a radio was on and someone said “the American president has been shot!”
He says his first thought was, “Why couldn’t it have been DeGaulle?”
Maybe because it played out, and replayed repeatedly, on television? Suddenly, a national tragedy was in our living room. Instead of reading about it in the paper the next day, we watched it as it happened. Dunno - just a thought.
). Anyone else feel the same way?