The day JFK was shot

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I was in second grade and was coming back from the bathroom. I saw two teachers crying in the hallway. I knew something was Very Bad because you simply didn’t witness emotional displays from teachers back then.

I resumed my seat in class. Someone called my teacher away for a few minutes and when she returned, she told us.

One girl burst into a fit of hysterical laughter. Then the teacher sent us all home. When I walked in the door my mom was standing in front of the tv crying. It was a long, scary, sad weekend. I remember all of this like it was yesterday.

42

I’ll accept the “figure of speech” aspect of what I recall. I must have gotten at least some sleep somewhere along the way. But even though it was common for stations to sign off not long after midnight, usually with either the National Anthem or that old “High Flight” bit that ended with “…put out my hand and touched the face of God,” my memory of those days is that all the networks (only the three in those days) stayed on with overhead shots of the throngs filing through the rotunda at the capitol. Thousands. An endless line slowly and surreally passing the coffin. I knew at least three people from Nashville who drove to DC to be part of that line.

That first night, Friday, late enough that it was full dark, the Nashville station we were watching, (and I’m thinking we watched NBC the whole time because Tom Pettit was the guy on mike when Ruby shot Oswald), announced that Air Force One was flying over our area. I went outside and saw it! That was an eerie feeling. The next time I got that much of a jolt looking into the sky was in July 1969.

So, I will stand by my memory that we watched TV, or at least had it on, the entire weekend.

43

I was in my third year at the University. It was a grey and chilly day, drizzling rain. I had a noon appointment with a young woman at one of the sorority houses. When I came in everybody in the place was gathered in the TV room and being very quiet. From the time I walked in until Walter Cronkite told us that the President was dead I don’t think anybody spoke above a whisper. Then we sort of quietly broke up. The football game that weekend was canceled.

44

I was 10. 4th grade, Western Hills Elementary in Salt Lake City, Ut. The administration gathered us all in the cafeteria a few minutes before our regular lunch time. Not knowing, we all brought our lunches …

A few minutes after we got settled in and started eating, they wheeled in a TV and the first thing we saw was a newsman sitting at a desk (Walter Cronkite?). The first words we heard were burned into my brain. “It’s official, President Kennedy is dead …”

I played trumpet in the school band at that time, and I was also on the “Honor Guard” that played during flag raising and lowering ceremonies each day. While other kids were gathering their stuff to go home, six of us played “Taps” while two other students were taught how to properly place our Nation’s Flag at half staff.

Zeldar, I also remember watching the TV throughout the following days. Our family ate, and napped and cried in front of that TV. I don’t know about elsewhere, but at least in SLC the stations stayed on the air throughout the ordeal. (I have a very clear memory of my mom and dad debating the wisdom of leaving a TV on for that many hours without giving it some ‘cool-down’ time. Mom thought it would blowup, or would, at the very least, start a fire.)

And I fully agree on this point:

Something happened to this Nation on that day, and I think Zeldar hit it right on the head back in post #21.

“The end of innocence.”

For the first time, the outside world was able to reach into our Camelot lives and jerk us right into the middle of current events. We could never go back and pretend that stuff like that only happened somewhere else. All of a sudden, there it is: Live television bringing a national tragedy right into our living rooms.

Curious. I could understand one related to Challenger, or this subject in November, but why this thread on Kennedy now? :confused:

45

Because of the Challenger anniversary, actually.

It’s a “where were you when…” type question that is asked so often as to nearly be considered a cliché – one that transcends time and space. However, in this instance, I arrived at the question somewhat circuitously, after stumbling upon this current MPSIMS thread: Twenty Years Ago Today (Challenger Space Shuttle) . Whenever I reflect on 20th century historical tragedies, the JFK assassination always pops to mind. I would most likely forget to post the question had I waited until next November.

Since I’m here, I’ll auto-hijack to yet another question: I typically scoff at conspiracy theories, but I do believe that there is more to this story than LHO acting as a lone assassin, how about you?

46

Zeldar, Lucy, I believe you, of course; I’m too young to remember it myself. The fact that TV stations went round the clock only shows what a shocking event this was. I’m just surprised to hear it. I don’t think I found an all night television broadcast until the late 70s, but Peoria isn’t a very big TV market.

47

I have suspected almost everybody alive at the time! Conspiracy theories seem to be the only way to cope with something so horrible, so devastating. How could a pipsqueak Commie Wannabe be what brought down a national hero?

In my own way of seeing things, we almost need for there to be more to it than the lone assassin. The mob, LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, the Klan, Castro, everybody Oliver Stone suggests, the list is endless. The fodder for speculation is rekindled every November. It makes for great TV. But each year somebody who “knows what really happened” dies off and the mystery deepens.

When do they eventually open all those files? 2035? 2050?

Will anybody who lived through it still be around to care?

48

I was trying to agree with your general comment about stations signing off while still recalling vividly that on that occasion, out of deference or maybe even inertia, they broke the pattern. It’s hard to recall when stations quit signing off. You say Late 70’s. I can’t argue with that.

For all the shit that some of them carry in the late night and early morning hours, they ought to go back to the “good old days” when they did sign off! :smiley:

49

I was in 8th grade and was in study hall. I was asking the teacher about something when one of the other teachers came in and whispered something to him. They left the room and I, not knowing any better, tagged along behind them. They went out into the parking lot and turned on a car radio and listened to reports. After about 5 minutes, they realized I was there and sent me back into the study hall.

Everyone asked what was going on and when I said the President had been shot, they called me a liar. Later when the announcement was made, I got several apologies.

50

Similar to Clothahump’s story: a girl in our 7th grade science class at Roosevelt Junior High in Cleveland Heights came back from the office in tears. “The president’s been shot!”

The teacher’s response was, “Oh don’t be ridiculous.” But then he disappeared into the hallway for 45 minutes. After about 2 p.m., the shooting was confirmed at at about 2:45 p.m. it was announced that the president was dead.

To put the era in perspective, we’d just been through the Cuban Missile crisis, a terrribly frightening experience for pre-teens since it was considered likely that the U.S. and the Soviet Union would start a nuclear war. It was a time when ministers could deliver a sermon on whether or not it was a sin to shoot someone to keep them out of your fallout shelter. And even as pre-teens we realized that the “duck and cover” exercises and fallout shelter preparations were inadequate preparations for a war of that scale.

There was a broad assumption that the Russians or the Cubans were involved in the assassination because of the recency of the missile crisis.

The shooting occurred on a Friday near the end of a school day. The television was on almost non-stop that weekend, as all regular programming was pre-empted. On Sunday, the NFL games went on as-scheduled, but of course that was the day that Lee Harvey Oswald was shot, live on national television.

The Kennedy administration was quite a youthful interlude. Jackie Kennedy’s sense of style was a strong departure for American presidents and their wives. And Kennedy was athletic, actively playing football on the White House lawn, swimming and sailing.

The events of the assassination, delivered in black-and-white detail on TV, were a kind of shock and emotion that’s rare. First the assassination, then the swearing in of a new president, then the shock of Oswald’s assassination live on TV while in the hands of police, then the emotion of the funeral (with John Jr. saluting his father’s casket) produces what memory experts call “flashbulb” moments that are hard to forget.

Best regards,

Mooney252

51

Very interesting. For those who are old enough to remember, aside from the immediate sorrow at the event, what were the expectations of what was going to happen? Did people automatically assume the Russians were behind it? Was it assumed that this was the prelude to a war – even a nuclear war?

52

For me and my family there was a sort of nameless and faceless dread, not focussed on anyone or any group. I think there was still a trust that the government would get to the bottom of it soon. Until the Warren Report was released I believe most people expected it to be definitive. Once it was out and the plausibility of what it suggested was so controversial, the conspiracy theories kicked into high gear.

I don’t remember thinking we were close to war. Maybe I was just too stunned – a lot like the feelings immediately after 9/11.

53

I was in 8th grade, Catholic school. They began piping the radio news into the classrooms through the PA system. About half an hour later, we heard the official announcement that the President had died about the time we started listening to the radio news. I remember being a bit angry and bewildered because they didn’t tell us of his death as soon as it happened. School was let out shortly after that.

Other than that, my own reaction was just numbness from the shock.

54

My mother was very upset by the news (or so she has told me several times) and since I was in utero, I suppose I could have been affected on some level too.

55

I was in the third grade. I don’t remember if they announced it in school, though doubtless they did. It was, of course, on the television when I got home. But what really stuck in my mind that day was that the afternoon paper was four hours late. (Yes, Virginia, some towns used to have two newspapers. God, I feel old).

Forgive this semi-hijack, but one of my earliest memories involves JFK. One day in kindergarten class Mrs. Earp said something about a new president being inaugurated that day. When I got home, there was Kennedy on television being sworn in. It really impressed me that school had some relevance to TV or reality or whatever!

56

I was only a few weeks past my second birthday when JFK was killed and I have no direct memory of his death. But my mother later told me we were at the doctor’s office when she heard the news.

57

I was about three and a half months old. The news even of such a shocking tragedy would have taken at least a day or so to reach New Zealand by then, and not many had televisions in 1963. First inkling of what hasppened may have been the radio overnight, or the newspapers in the morning.

We get bad news so much swifter these days.

58

I was hanging out at home with a woman I was living with at the time. We were inseperable. I loved her breasts, and she was no stranger to my naked body. The news devestated her, she cried unabashedly. I was more ambivalent, being much less concerned about Kennedy and much more concerned about how long it would be before I saw her naked breasts again. For you see, I was 3 months old.

59

I was seven years old in first grade when the announcement came over the loud speaker in the class room. The teacher looked stunned, and I remember a girl in our class crying, but I had no real inkling of the magnitude of what happened. I remember watching the funeral, but only because I had been flipping the channel looking for my cartoons. My parents weren’t in the picture, so it was just my brothers and me trying to figure out just what the hell was going on.

I was living in Texas at the time. I have always assumed that Texans took his assasination just a tiny bit harder, perhaps because of a weird sense of responsibility since it happened in their state.

I, too, think that, for whatever reason, his death might have heralded the dawning of the Age of Cynicism insofar as it applies to our government.

60

November 22, 1963: I had almost lost my tail. My face was mammalian but somewhat pig-like. Pain sensors had appeared. Many conservative Christians believed that I could feel pain. However, the higher functions of the brain had yet to develop, and the pathways to transfer pain signals from the pain sensors to the brain had not developed at that time. (7 weeks past conception):