I remember when Elvis Presley died. I was at the car inspection station with my grandparents when the tester told my papaw. My grandma heard and gasped, then she cried a little bit. I cried too, sensing the emotion but not really knowing who the hell Elvis was. My other grandfather passed not long after that and that’s the big event I remember, because everyone talks about how I was in the back yard crying hysterically over Elvis dying instead of my grandfather. I was just a little kid, confused and they acted like there was something wrong with me for crying over the wrong person.
John Glenn’s orbital flight, February 20, 1962. My 6th grade class heard the radio broadcast because there was no television available.
After that, the JFK assassination, 8th grade classroom. The school played the radio coverage over the PA system.
JFK’s funeral, but not his murder. I was born in 1958, so I was about six I suppose.
I have fairly vague memories of when Reagan was shot, standing in the kitchen, listening to coverage on the radio, I was just barely 6.
I was in 3rd grade (Ms. Kinzler’s class) when the Challenger went, I remember Sr. Angele coming over the intercom and telling the school about it.
JFK assassination, 2nd grade. The teacher was called to the door and told of the news, I was sitting next to a classmate, Kim, who evidently had the ears of a rabbit and told me it was something about President Kennedy. Sure enough, the teacher came back and told the class “President Kennedy was in Texas today, and someone…with no heart…shot him.” To this day, JFK is the only president I have ever seen in person. It was in 1960 and I was just shy of 4 years old, JFK had come to Grand Rapids for one of those airport speeches. My dad held me on his shoulders so I could see him and I remember the tanned man with reddish hair.
April 13, 1945. I have a clear memory of walking along Edgeworth Street to school with my friends discussing the news that President Roosevelt had died the day before. I can even remember some of the exact words we used! I was seven.
I was 8 on July 20, 1969, and the family was in the car driving around Lake Wawasee in northern Indiana when the news came over the radio, “Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.”
As far as strictly “where were you when” events are concerned, the JFK assassination. I was 9.
If the criterion is only that the event was known to a large number of people, I was aware of the Kennedy-Nixon presidential campaign in the fall of 1960, when I was 6.
For me it was Oklahoma City. I was 12, and I came home from school that day to see my mom watching the news. It was the first event I was old enough to really understand what was happening at that time. My mom was crying for all the people who had died.
It’s probably when Elvis died. I remember being really worried because my mum was so upset. I was 9.
Nothing really made a big impact on us (on a farm, in the middle of nowhere) until the Challenger explosion. I was in college, getting my education degree, and had actually seen the applications for being ‘teacher in space’ and knew several people who had applied. I was student teaching in a sixth grade room, watching the coverage on TV, when it blew up. I remember sitting in my car, supposed to be going home, but just sitting, listening to the news and crying.
It surprises me that I don’t remember where I was when we heard about Elvis, because my mom was such a huge fan.
I remember watching Nixon and Kennedy debate in the 1960 Presidential election. I would have been a month shy of my fifth birthday.
Nixon’s resignation. I was at my grandmother’s house. My uncle who was a marine, cried which is why I remember it so vividly. I was 8.
The first manned moon landing, July 1969. I was 8 years old. Our church forbade television, so we listened to the radio. The family was rural, hard-core righties, McCarthy-ites, the cold war was uppermost in everyone’s mind. The general attitude was not happiness at a technological milestone, but rather “Now that we’ve won the space race what are the Russians gonna do?” Maybe launch a ground attack? :rolleyes:
Likewise I remember well the Nixon resignation. Again, the prevailing attitude was not gladness that the system had dealt with criminality in high places, but dismay that the “liberals” had brought a good man down, and “what’s going to happen to the country now?” (the right-wing, for some reason, never liked or trusted Gerald Ford).
First national news that I remember, early July 1941. Mom and Dad were listening to the radio, and I overheard that Lou Gehrig had died.
Second one came shortly after that - we were just returning home, on December 7, 1941, from a weekend away where there were no radios. I turned on the radio and there was the news that the Japs (and that was the word the announcer used, so don’t go all PC on me) had bombed Pearl Harbor.
Probably the Challenger explosion. I was 12, watching it in the classroom on a roll-cart. I remember vividly going home and spending the rest of the evening watching it explode on the news over and over again.