I was at work, in an office that was largely black. One of my co-workers, a black man, came in happily exclaiming “Hey! They shot your white president!”
I explained that I didn’t feel much ownership of him.
The whole modern view of Reagan as hero is pretty baffling to me. Throughout his presidency I saw a man entrenched in antiprogressive ignorance, who illegally smuggled weapons to Iran and gave the proceeds to Nicaraguan guerillas, who called ketchup a vegetable, who filled his cabinet with Apocalyptic Christians eager to celebrate humanity’s divine domination of the environment, who denied AIDS and in effect helped the epidemic spread. I saw someone apparently senile who consulted astrologers.
I don’t think it would be helpful if we made it a habit to try to assassinate Presidents who did this kind of thing, and don’t advocate shooting anybody. But, I did think it would be better for our country to end his administration, and that that good would outweigh the evil of his death. Bad Presidents are a pretty awful thing for the world to abide.
I was a High School Junior in chemistry class. The principal announced it over the rarely used PA system. He was all emotional and over the top and said that it looked like Reagan survived but that we still didn’t know yet.
The teacher looked bemused during the announcement, probably over the principal’s reaction and then continued class without a word on the subject. The teacher was a college student in the 60’s and his indifference was obvious. We students didn’t care either except to try, unsuccessfully, to use the event to try to weasel out of more work that day.
And don’t forget his stance on pollution: it was caused by trees. He was not a good President and not a good father. Hell, he wasn’t even a good actor. I do find pleasure in the fact that he is the sole President who belonged to a union (SAG). That must have smarted.
I had stayed home from middleschool sick with flu. I remember my Mom waking me up by yelling up the stairs that Reagan had been shot. I think I said, “Good. Now let me get back to sleep!” :eek:
In hind-sight, that probably wasn’t a very nice thing to say, but I was a kid and sick with a fever.
In the school nurse’s office. I had woken up that morning with a nasty heat rash due to the previous niight being uncommonly warm and humid for March and it wasn’t until almost the last period before a teacher noticed how covered with hives I was. The news of the shooting came over the radio while I was waiting in the office and all I could think of was the zero curse.
I had to stay home from school for two weeks, take cold baths every day and smear Benadryl cream (I think that’s what it was) all over myself.
He didn’t just belong to it, he was the boss of it.
Of course, his most notable action as President of SAG was in cooperating with MCarthy’s HUAC inquisition and ratting out industry people he thought might be pinkos.
Reagan was such a piece of shit in so many ways. I don’t get the revisionist reverence either. He wasn’t revered when he was President.
I was 16. I remember being stunned when John Lennon was killed because I somehow felt he just couldn’t die – he was a Beatle!
So then when Reagan was shot, at first I assumed he had died, and I was very nervous bcause I couldn’t remember the name of the Vice President.
I remember later being ticked off because they were making such a fuss over Reagan, when poor Mr. Brady was being more or less overlooked. I also remember being disgusted with Al Haig’s panicky behavior. Somebody slap that twit upside the head! You’re embarrassing your own guys. Get off the stage!
I didn’t follow politics in those days, but it was obvious to me that here was a doddering old man without much education who had no idea what he was doing and what was going on, who had to be led by the hand and fed his lines every day. And yet the grownups seemed fine with that. I just didn’t get it – disgusting!
They told us when we were leaving school. I was in sixth grade at McDade Elem in Chicago…
I hate to admit i was pissed he won the election and was ambivalent about him pulling through… Got home… watched that three-pronged ABC news… WOW… who’s idea was it to have three anchors at once… had Cronkite kicked their ass that bad?? I remember that shit was confusing as they announced Brady dead i think… Then it became all about Chicago cause Tim McCarthy cemented his hero status by taking a bullet for the President… that worked out good for his career eh?
Let’s see. Fall of 1981. That would have put me at the start of my Junior year in HS.
I seem to remember coming home from school, turning on the TeeVee and watching the coverage all afternoon by myself as my parents both worked at the time. It was one of those moments that stick with me not so much for how it happened, but how it was reported. It was our Oswald moment.
Denis Leary made a joke along the lines of, ever since we saw Oswald killed on live television, we’ve been afraid to turn the damn thing off in case we miss something.
That’s how I felt. I believe it was the genesis of my new-junkiedom.
I remember that someone opened the door to our classroom and said “President Reagan’s been shot!”, and that all the kids (well, in my memory it was all of them) burst out in cheers. I think they brought TVs into the classrooms and we watched coverage for the rest of the day.
I’m surprised I don’t remember Mrs. Roy’s reaction - she was an unabashed Republican.
As I recall, I was at a friend’s house playing football out in the street after school, and his mom came out to tell us. I don’t recall if we all went inside to watch TV at that point, or if we continued playing ball, but I know it was pretty much the only topic of conversation the next day at school. I was 13 at the time.
