State of the Union address, 1986. I believe it was the night, or very soon after the Challenger explosion. I was almost six years old.
Other than that, not too much before George Bush the Elder.
I remember Kennedy speaking on TV about something or other (Cuban Missile Crisis?), but my real first political memory was his assassination.
I remember a woman coming into my first grade class and asking our teacher if she had heard the news. Mrs. Gaskell replied, “Yes, it’s terrible, isn’t it”.
After school I asked the woman (probably someone from the office staff) what the news was, and she said that, “President Kennedy has been shot”. I remember that up until then I had thought that Kennedy was back in Washington’s time. (Hey, I was only six…)
Watching Nixon resign on TV. I must have been about 12 or so.
I was 5 and had just learned there was something called a president.
So I asked my mother, “Momma, who is the president?”
She laughed and said, “Nixon, but not for long!”
I didn’t understand what she meant but I’ve always remembered it. It was 1974.
I saw some politicians on TV (chancellor Kohl, or “Birne”, as we called him ;), was very easy to recognise, even for the politic-ignorant kid I was), but the first time I really understood and cared what was going on was the fall of the Berlin wall, we saw it live on TV. The pictures still give me goosebumps.
My earliest recollection of anything is JFK’s funeral. I was a month short of 4. I remember the horses, the flag-draped casket, and the procession. that’s it. I barely remember anything else in my first 5 or 6 years, but I remember that.
This picture is my wallpaper.