Me, third grade, ditto
I vividly remember walking to school along Edgeworth Street the day after FDR died and discussing with the other children how great a president he had been. Since we were all first or second graders, our comments didn’t have much depth, merely being a repeat of what we had heard our parents say that morning at breakfast.
The first actual political activity was a mock election held in our grammar school in 1948. Everyone in the school voted for either Truman or Dewey except for one kid name Eddie Wallace who voted for Henry Wallace. The principal called him out on it and told the assembled student body that Eddie should be ashamed of himself because Henry Wallace was a communist.
I was toddling over to my friend’s house, who lived one door away. I saw our neighbor, who was sitting in front of her house and I saw she was crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said she was sad because the president had been shot. President Kennedy was dead.
I was aghast. “What will we do now?” I asked. “We have a new president,” she told me. “Mr. Johnson is president.”
So I wondered why she was so upset, then. I mean, if you could just get* another *one.
I was four.
Obviously the Andrew Johnson thing was just a little joke. :rolleyes: Blame the History Channel; they were running The Presidents again Saturday night.
Thanks so much for correcting my spelling though. I should have realized, what with the Italian word for face being faccia, which is, of course, a root of the word facade - the “face” of a structure. The root word of fascism (see?) is fasces, which is not so intuitive to me. My bad.
I evidently wore Stevenson buttons in 1956, but don’t remember. I do remember JFK in 1960, and the lovely little tune:
Whistle while you work
Nixon is a jerk
Eisenhower has the power
To put him out of work.
I’ve been working at the university polling place for the last few years and their questions made me feel a bit better about my cluelessness. I spent most of my time reminding them that if they had to lounge around on the floor to figure out who to vote for as a group then they had to do it at least 100’ from the polling place. On the other hand they didn’t need their hands held to figure out how to use the voting machines. Sometimes I think that people should have to take a class about how it all works before they can register to vote.
I have an even worse dumb story but I was 4 so it was excusable. In 1963 an uncle that I had never met died only a few days after Kennedy was shot and my mom took me to the funeral. There was a flag on the coffin, I knew that the president was dead but the only president’s name I knew came from a jump rope rhyme. I was convinced that I had been to George Washington’s funeral.
1976 - working for the Republican Party in Kentucky. We were REAL underdogs then - the county hadn’t even had Republicans run for office since, I think, roughly the Reconstruction Era. So I worked for the Ford/Dole Campaign, and also did stuff for the locals running for office as well. I was in Junior High at the time. We still lost big time, but it was pretty much the end for the local Democrats after that (1980 - Reagan Revolution, all that stuff). Was also introduced to D&D by one of the college kids working the campaign. Switched my allegiance to the left side of the fence in college.
Kennedy being shot, and the funeral procession. I was five.
My mom (now deceased) told me that I said, “It makes my heart hurt.”
The first election I remember is Nixon in '72. I think I did some kind of campaign work at my junior high. I can’t imagine what I did!
I was ten in 1996. I traced a picture of Bob Dole out of a book, coughed on it when I was sick, and locked it in a box in an attempt at voodoo. I still have it around here somewhere.
My dad took me to see Dole speak at the park near my house on August 22. We sat on a hill at a safe distance from the crowd. I remember there were balloons. The reason I remember the date is that when we got home, my mom had gone into labor. I felt awful about having been watching a Republican speak while she was at home having contractions, but she rightly told me I was being ridiculous. My sister was born later that night; she’s now twelve and definitely a future Democrat (unless something goes wrong).
I also went with my fifth grade class to see Clinton speak. I went to a liberal private school and all of us had Clinton-supporting parents. The only thing I remember from it is being reprimanded by a police officer for not being enthusiastic enough in dancing the Macarena. For a minute, I was convinced I was going to be arrested.
- Watching the coverage of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon on my family’s TV, feeling thrilled by the whole thing, then having that feeling thoroughly deflated by Richard Nixon speaking to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
I had a brief career as a reporter in 1976.
We only had one TV and it was in the basement. My brother Joe and I were downstairs watching the election returns and my dad was upstairs in the kitchen. Every couple of minutes, Joe would poke me and go tell me what to tell Dad about the election, so I’d run up the stairs and report in. I was five. Dad kept getting more and more upset as the night wore on, but I had no idea why.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, is it really you???
I was 7 when Mondale was running for President and I got into a big argument with my best friend who was a Regan supporter. I thought Mondale was awesome because my parents said so and also having a female VP impressed me.
I walked door to door with canisters to help fund Adlai Stevensons campaign against Eisenhower. Campaigns were actually funded by door to door coin collections. I also collected for Gov. Williams the same way.
I would give a donor a little green metal bow tie to clip on. That was Williams trade mark.
I also remember when Eisenhower tried to sabotage Nixon. He said as the party wanted him to ,that Nixon was the most actively involved VP of all time. The reporter asked for an example of what Nixon did. Ike said I can not think of anything now but ask me next time and I will come up with something.
I remember going into the voting booth with my mom in 1984. She voted for Reagan. I thought all the levers were neat.
One of the posts in this thread reminded me that in first grade I excitedly told everyone that my parents were taking me to George Washington’s house. This really wasn’t a big deal, as we lived in the D.C. metro area, but apparently I was quite excited while being totally unable to appreciate that building’s contemporary importance.
:eek:
I knew that dead people in Chicago and Texas came back around election day to vote (is that why Election Day is so close to Halloween?). I didn’t know that that happened in Michigan, too…
Is this McCain’s secret plan to win the election- Republican zombie hordes? Note that Sarah Palin has only had a pastor protect her from witches- nothing about zombies. That must mean they’re planning to use zombies!
My school did the same thing, with the same results as Mahaloth.
I was in the first grade.
Forty-five years ago today, 11/22/63, I was sitting in my third grade class when the principal, Mr. Fernkopf, came around to each class to let us know JFK was dead. He looked like he wanted to cry, although he didn’t, and Mrs. Huffman, our teacher, who was pregnant, looked very distressed too. The boy at the next desk giggled nervously, and I remember looking at him in disgust, that he was laughing. I didn’t realize at the time he surely didn’t think it was funny.
I watched the funeral procession with my mom, and she explained the tradition of the riderless horse, the first time I was aware of that ritual.
I was on the playground after lunch. Second grade.
I didn’t believe it when Jeff told me that the President had been shot.
I remember doing duck-and-cover drills during the October Missile Crisis the year before, if that counts.