What do you think of the movie _Parkland_?
I just saw the last hour or so (beginning when JFK is leaving the hospital in a casket) and was very moved, but not crying as often happens to me when I think of (or dramatically witness) that day.
I was a junior in high school in November 1963 (class of '65, Midwestern town in Ohio) and was not strongly affected by it then. Not because of politics, but because of youth. Ask most people who were under 18 at that time and they will say they were sadden during that week, especially during the procession and funeral &c. Many of us were also a bit upset (maybe too strong of a word) to see the shock of adults. (Remember, this was before the historical disruptions of Vietnam, riots, and other assassinations and long after the Second World War and the Korean War.)
It wasn't until I was in my twenties that the emotional significant of what had happened began to occur to me. Since then I have become increasingly saddened by the thought, memory, documentary, or movie about the assassination, not just because of my increasing admiration of the man, but also something that day was lost, never to be found. A type of innocence, a certain sense of bearing, a center. If such a man could die, be alive and active in the morning but dead by evening, what sense did anything make? And then there was the blood and public violence. Jackie's pain. Etc.
With Parkland, I was still saddened, but the experience seemed more cathartic. Perhaps it was the watching of the destructive waves around the event affect so many others. Maybe it was age.
I thought it a fine film and can't wait to see it entire.
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The characters melted into their roles so well that it had the feeling of a documentary. And I learned a lot, knew that Oswald's mother was crazy, but I never knew about his brother, poor guy. I thought the actors who played the medical staff were completely believable and that Paul Giamatti ("John Adams"
as Abraham Zapruder was amazing.
I was in elementary school when the president was assassinated. My "reading group" was allowed to go to the library and that's where we heard. "Coach," the gym teacher, had a free period and heard the news on the radio. He ran and told the sixth grade teacher who was in the closest classroom. That teacher came running into the library and told the librarian.
That's when we heard and ran like hell back to our classroom which was at the very end of the hall. We totally forgot about our promise not to run and to be quiet. We ran in and told our teacher, who ran out of the classroom to find out more. What I remember was that school was chaos that day. We were sent home early and spent what seemed like ages in the gym waiting for our buses. Everybody was scared.
When I got home, my mother already knew. Her neighbor had come over, sobbing, for "her president." They were very staunch Catholics. I knew that my parents voted for Nixon, but that didn't matter, he was our president. My mother was particularly shook up, remember going into the kitchen to tell her that I'd just seen Oswald shot, live on television, and that's when she really fell apart. It's still tough for me to accept that something like this happened in this country. 
