OK, it's Nov. 2003. Time to ask: Do you recall Nov. 22, 1963?

I do. Twelve years old; Mrs. Burgoyne's seventh grade history class, at Oakwood Junior High School, in East Detroit. The previous class saw a classmate from the south with a transistor radio (not allowed; cutting edge technology, though) asking me if I knew Kennedy had been shot. With his thick accent, I thought he said McKinley, and said, yes, of course. Then the next class, the announcement - and one student cheered when Mrs. Burgoyne announced it (she was crying). Went home in a daze and cried myself. That night, went to the Detroit Public School League high school football championship at Tiger Stadium. I may have been only 12, but knew it should have been cancelled. It was surreal. I did not want to be there. The next few days, we went up to the family cottage and were glued to the TV (Me, brother, Mom and grandmother - latter two gone now; Mom in September). We watched Lee Harvey Oswald killed by Jack Ruby on live TV. Thanksgiving the following Thursday was the quietest I remember. I remember exactly where I was through King, Bobby, and so much else, but JFK's assassination is seared in my memory as much as any other. And I was just 12 years old. Other memories?

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I was only 2...

On Edit: I do remember RFK and MLK. Our teachers were all crying and we had TV's in every classroom turned on to the news and we just sat there in class watching the news. We knew something bad had happenned as the Teachers were crying and hugging, etc. I remember being really sad...

You would have been 6 or 7. If not, what is your earliest such memory? My daughter's (she's 27) recalls the Challenger best.

I was drifting around in non-existence.

and all I remember thinking (I was 4 at the time)was how sad, there is a little girl and a little boy who have just lost their daddy...
I always enjoyed seeing pictures of John and Caroline with JFK in the Oval Office and elsewhere...
Despite JFKs human flaws, he was at least that...human...more than I can say for the Repugnicans...

Mississippi Elementary School. It was raining and we had to be inside because of the rain. The principal started playing the radio throughout the school on the speaker system and we listened as the radio announcements began coming in. I remember that the teacher was somewhat upset and I saw no cheering from any adults even though Kennedy was intensely disliked in Mississippi. I remained glued to the tv for the next few days.

Even though I was only 7, I remember it very well. One of those moments you never forget.

Hell, my Mom was only 12 at the time.

Stories make the rounds in my family about how my Grandfather used to go out drinking with Jack Ruby. He wasn't at all shocked seeing Ruby shoot Oswald.

My logic teacher cried and dismissed class.

but that wasn't unusual - i was just over 6 months old at the time.

I was but a young sperm, shocked by the tragic news that circulated the left testicle that afternoon....

No, really, I don't remember that date.

it was 1:00, and classes were just changing . . . as I took my seat in English class, the girl behind me asked "So what kind of president do you think Johnson will be?" . . . huh? . . . then she told me Kennedy had been shot . . . almost immediately, the school began piping the radio news broadcast into all the classrooms . . . we sat there in stunned silence until, at about 1:30, it was announced that JFK was dead . . . school let out early that day, and for the next week I was literally glued to the television . . . I remember seeing Jack Ruby shoot Oswald on live tv . . . sad, sad days . . .

I was two months shy of 5 years old and in kindergarten. Despite the careful way it was announced to us, the enormity of this event was not lost on us. Of course, in the naive thinking of children, we all came to the conclusion that the new (and somewhat strange) janitor must have "done it!"

That event followed by the nightly news televised horror of Vietnam, the sometimes violent war protests, Mai Lai massacre, and the assasinations of MLK and Bobby Kennedy really had an impact on my childhood and teens.

out treats to my class when a teacher from another class came in to inform my teacher. We were taken to assembly and the news was given to the whole school, then we were sent home.

No clear recollection except a very subdued party.

Remember getting the day off school right before thanksgiving.

Working as an office boy at Tension Envelope in Kansas City. Receptionist said the President's been shot. Office manager said "good". It all got strange after that and has never changed.

I can think of a good many people who would say the same thing, and mean it, if No. 43 were shot.

I was eight months old on 11/22/63, and I grew up knowing that I was born the year Patsy Kline and John F. Kennedy died. They were equal tragedies to my mother.

I remember my shock when watching the film "JFK," at the scene in the bar when Cronkite announces that Kennedy is dead, and many in the bar react loudly with great pleasure.

Having witnessed, like everyone else, the hatred of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, I understand that reaction now. I still think it's shameful, though.

Sister Mary Olive stepped out of the room for a couple of minutes to talk to the janitor. She came back in and said "The President has been killed. Class is dismissed."
I had no concept of who "The President" was. But his mortality got me out of school for the weekend about two hours early. It wasn't until seeing all the television coverage through the following few days that I realized The President must've been a pretty important person.
John
I think it was when Ruby shot Oswald that I realized the world (or, I guess, the USA) is a crazy, violent place. I've seen nothing to dissuade me from that belief yet.

I was in 3rd grade. My teacher had been called out of the room and when she came back she was sobbing like nothing I had ever seen before. When she regained her composure she told we little 8 year olds that our President had been killed. When I went home, I was greeted by my mom who was also crying her eyes out and that lasted for DAYS.

What a sad day for our country. Forever etched in my mind.

Remember, though, George Bush Sr. Can't recall where HE was on that day..... I can remember and I was only 8.

That is absolutely ridiculous, as these posts show. Even five year olds at the time remember where they were. Do you have a link? Doubt that Dubya will even pay lip service to the 40th anniversary. And, he remembers, and so does his father. Oh yes, I guarantee you that they do.

he was in DALLAS that day, in a meeting with Pepsi? or Coke? and he says he cannot recall where he was or what he was doing that day. I'll see if I can find the story. I've read it many times here on DU.

Someone else may have a better link for you. This one is a link to the "Bush" body counts.

http://www.tariksinfoworks.com/deadread.htm


President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
An internal FBI memo reported that on November 22 a reputable businessman named George H. W. Bush reported hearsay that a certain Young Republican had been talking of killing the president when he came to Houston. The Young Republican was nowhere near Dallas on that date. According to a 1988 story in The Nation, J. Edgar Hoover said in a memo that Mr. George Bush of the CIA had been briefed on November 23rd, 1963 about the reaction of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami to the assassination of President Kennedy. George H. W. Bush has denied this, although he was in Texas at the time and cannot account for his whereabouts at the time. Bush was a loyal servant to Nixon who had lost 60 election to JFK. Nixon was steaming mad. Kennedies were like gnats in Republican toupees. Rent Executive Action with Burt Lancaster, which shows the assasination as a Texas oil hit. Remember, the biggest oil field on the planet was in Vietnam and JFK had backed out of that war. AN OIL RESOURCE WAR

at a Catholic High School outside of Philly.

I was in the tenth grade.

Without any announcement of what had happened the
school administrators simply turned the radio broadcast on
over the PA system.

5 and a half. I have a clear memory of JFK press conferences and seeing him on the tube (I used to call him "kenny"), but I do not remember the assasination coverage per se.

I quite clearly remember the funeral, though. The sound of drums and horse's hoofs, and the image of the carriage and the flag-draped casket. VERY clearly.

I was sitting in 8th grade English class in Fairfax County, VA, when an announcement ccame over on the loudspeaker that the President had been shot. I had a dental appointment that afternoon and my Dad picked me up soon after. He had a little Triumph Spitfire with no radio, and I wasd the first to tell him that Kennedy had been shot. We flew to the Dentist's office and went in to find his receptionist crying. Dr. Rock came out and told us that the President had died and he was cancelling all appointments. On Sunday Mom and Dad took me, my younger brother, and my two little sisters into D.C. to watch the funeral procession. Just as Dad was parking the car we heard Jack Ruby shoot Oswald live on the radio. God, what a weekend. I remember it like it was yesterday.

"Stories make the rounds in my family about how my Grandfather used to go out drinking with Jack Ruby. He wasn't at all shocked seeing Ruby shoot Oswald."

Interesting ... WHY wasn't he shocked? What did he know of Ruby that made him ... not shocked?

I was six. Sitting with a friend in a '56 Chevy. Mom had popped into the library for a few minutes ... came out crying, and I learned the president was dead.

Extra-intense news for Catholic families (like ours WAS at the time). We were so proud of having a Catholic, Democratic president back then ... before we knew what a DINO skeeve JFK could be.

But the most intense thing for a six-year-old was seeing one's parents cry for the first time. You KNOW something's really wrong when your seemingly-invincible parents are CRYING. I remember watching TV a lot, and being very confused, and feeling very sorry for Caroline, who was my age.

being picked up from pre-school by my mother and the mother of a schoolmate. They were crying, and said President Kennedy had been shot.

... and I was with my sister and brother-in-law,in a rental car (with no radio) Ñ coming back from Montreal.

(just an aside Ñ the rental car had Ontario plates, and we had been harassed, shouted at, and had the car rocked back and forth by a mob of angry Quebecois separatists)

At the US/Canadian border, we stopped at the store to stretch our legs and were kind of loudly joking and horsing around (we were young!).

As we took a purchase to the counter, the woman looked at us and said "It's a sad day for your country".

When we blankly stared back at her, she then explained what had happened.

To this day, I still remember the shock.

I had just moved to Alexandria, VA the beginning of the school year. I had just gone to the Auditorium for music class when a history teacher came in to tell us and turned on the school's only TV set. I sat there glued to the TV, with tears streaming down my face, until way after school let out.

I had to stay in the classroom during the lunch break because I was getting over an earache. They had the radio playing over the PA system. Later we were all sent home from school early.

We were driving back to our hometown for Thanksgiving leave when the radio told us the news. Dad stopped at a pay phone, called the base, and we turned the station wagon around. I was six years old and remember thinking "Things will never be the same." And things never were.

but I remember the funeral being on TV and my mother being upset. Yes, that would be my ultra-right-wing Mormon mother who believes George Bush is a good person and Laurie Dhue is beautiful and likes Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and now Laura Ingraham and belongs to the Parents' Television Council and calls it "my Fox news." How she's changed.

But in my humble opinion, that day has inexorably led us to where we are today. And I don't blame the Chicago mob or the Cubans, and I'm not quite blind enough to buy the Warren Commission report or Gerald Posner's fantasy.

Off school that day (I think it was when I had german measles) and I remember my mother crying, and my father sitting around with his head in his hands. We watched tv endlessly for days in kind of a numb fog. The tv was in the basement to discourage excessive watching, yet we all stayed around it eating tv dinners (usually a forbidden item in our house). Horribly, I remember being dissappointed that there were no saturday morning cartoons that weekend.

I don't remember- I was all of 2.75 yrs. old.
I'm not a boomer, but I'm also not Gen-X...Caught in the middle, we're Generation Jones- the largest adult generation going.

http://www.jonathanpontell.com/aboutgenjones.htm

http://www.generationjones.com/files/contents.htm

and a kid came riding up on her bicycle and told us. We were in Indonesia so we didn't get TV and we didn't listen to radio but the community was tiny and word spread fast.

the experience of being in a playpen at my grandmother's trailer park and feeling a kind of collective holding of breath, a state of shock spreading through an entire room of grownups, the mood having changed as if the entire party had suddenly fallen off a cliff.

Bobby's death, I remember well. I guess I was 8, and I tuned in early as usual to the CBS Morning News. (I was a precocious cross-border news junkie.) The live coverage was a jolt, and I mark his death as my political awakening. I remember later that day, my teacher writing his name on the board, making us copy it, and crying in the hallway with other staff members. First time I ever thought, as I looked around the classroom, these punks just don't get it.

"Kennedy just got it..bang! bang!" My wife worked in DC and saw Kennedy's helicopter leave for the Dallas trip. It sticks in our mind.

10 years old, 5th grade. Mrs. Robinson was the principal then, an older woman feared by all. She came into our class (which she never did) crying. We went home early, and as I walked in the door I saw my mom, and she was crying, too. I remember a kid from tjust down the street wondering why everyone was crying on his birthday.

as if it were yesterday.

We were sitting in school, on a crisp, clear Nov. day. Out principal and 7/8 grade teacher came in and told us that the President had just been shot, and school would be dismissed early. Those of us that rode the NYC bus system were let out immediately. Those that had to wait for parents were released a little later.

I was initially numb from the shock of hearing this. Shortly beforehand, we were discussing the Lincoln assassination, and this seemed to be just too coincidental. So much went through my mind; the head shot from the rear; in public; the bright future after such gloom, suddenly threatened. It was very strange.

As I waited for the bus with some of my classmates, I noticed that in NY, this was the ONLY day where it was completely silent. I did not hear the bus pull up, and no one was talking on it. I thought I had been transported into an episode of the "Twilight Zone". Everyone just stared out of the windows, blank faced and with what I would later learn to be the "the 1000 meter" stare. Very surreal.

I got home with my younger brother, and my mom was crying. The TV was on, and there were reports that the assassin had already been caught. I was amazed that our government could be so efficient. I was happy that the assassin was off the street. But even then, I began to question waht was happening. How did they find this guy so quickly in an obsure theater?

I recall the aftermath; Oswald being questioned by the press, and the sudden realization that Oswald had, when he was asked about assassinating the president, that he had been set up. The murder of Oswald by Ruby; the ensuing melee in the Dallas PD garage; and finally, the funeral cortege in DC. The first time I EVER saw my father cry was during the funeral.

The whole thing is seared into my memory. It was the most traumatic event of the century. From that day forward, the country has been overcast with a cloud of insecurity and doubt. Collectively, whether we liked Kennedy or not, we have been at odds with our government. I would suppose this is the way they felt after Lincoln's assassination.

To this day......I question what happened that day, and I hope I live long enough to find the answers.

:grouphug: for all of us that recall that day in Dallas.

being 9, from a mostly Irish town in Massachusett, attending my catholic school christmas bazaar (bizarre) that day. Most of our community was in one location when the bottom fell out of our world. It was a huge event in the basement of the church.

The priests (also Irish and really good guys) directed us up into the church so we could pray for his family and our country. The church was packed, no one wanted to leave we were in such shock. Jack Kennedy was everything, he was ours, an Irish Catholic who made it big time, and we were part of his legacy. Family members had invitations to his Inauguration because they worked on his campaign.

The rest was just being glued to the B&W TV, crying for days, and into a trance through the start of VietNam. That old B&W TV brought us a lot of pain as we watched night after night, at dinner time, boys mortally wounded, helicoper's shot at, coffins lined up, as friends and neighbors got drafted, then sent home wounded or in a coffin from that hellhole.

I knew my Dad spent 4 years in the jungle in WWII. What I didn't know until just recently, he was a sharp shooter. He never talked about it. Until I saw Saving Private Ryan, I had no idea what it was like for him to look down the barrel of a gun to take someone's life, because of his skills... let's just say, my brother wasn't going. The only thing he ever told me about was Callahan (tunnel in Boston) He used to jump horses with him.

It's funny that until you asked that, I had only remembered walking home with my friends crying. I had forgot the church, surrounded by a whole community, that equally felt the shock.

I have a legacy I needed to share. I hope, as you remember the sadness, you find something that warms your heart and gives you comfort. Thanks.