What Were You Doing On November 22, 1963?

I'm starting my annual thread early. Please keep it kicked so as many people can participate as possible. - Wayne

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Those of us old enough to remember (with the notable exception of George Herbert Walker Bush) can recall exactly what they were doing when they heard that President Kennedy had been shot. So let's share our experiences.

I'll go first.

I was in 5th Grade at Alfred Vail School in Morris Township, NJ. It was Friday afternoon, and my class and two others were all crowded into one room watching a movie. Suddenly the projector stopped, the lights came on, and all three teachers were standing at the front of the room with solemn faces. They told us all to return to our home rooms.

Once we were all there, my home room teacher (Mrs. Doswell) told us that the president had been shot. A few minutes later, the principal (Dr. Robertson) came over the PA to announce that the president had died and that school was cancelled for the rest of the day; we would be dismissed as soon as they could get the buses there. Then they started playing the radio (WABC New York) over the PA system so we could hear it for ourselves.

When I got home, my older sister was sitting on the couch crying. My whole family spent the next few days like everyone else, glued to the TV.

That Sunday, we were just about to leave to go to church when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot.

Forty years later, I remember it all like it was yesterday.......

my dad was at the firehouse and both remember every moment of that day, just like you. As Irish Catholics from Massachusetts, they felt it very hard.

For 24 years in their plant in Somerville, NJ.

can't remember which town...

After GE bought RCA, they sold the Someerville plant to Harris Semiconductor.

I was just a big dream waiting to occur. :D

Coloring in some coloring book while my mom & grandma were watching As the World Turns... I don't remember watching Conkrite but I do remember being scared because my mom & grandma were crying and saying "oh no, oh no..."

My siblings came home early from school and I remember watching the funeral over the weekend...I can still hum the funeral march...

I wasn't even a dream.

I should ask them about it at somepoint.

but if I were a kid and in the UK, I'd be waiting for "Doctor Who" to premiere, on November 23, 1963...

with my Mom. I was 3 years old. She had me the same year Jackie O had John Jr.
After an announcment on the loudspeakers, she left and tried to go home, with lots of people crying and unable to move. This was in Philadelphia, on Germantown Avenue, in the black community there. She has saved EVERYTHING from those days. The newspapers, the records, (Abraham, Martin, and John was one I think), and other stuff.

Dion recorded it in 1969.

I also have Vaughan Meader's "The First Family" album, plus his follow-up, "The First Family, Volume II".

In Mansfield Twp. Elementary School, which was having classes in the Methodist Church School building in Washington(Warren County) NJ, while our school was being built.

As for the rest, it was pretty much the same thing, except they rolled a TV into the classroom, for us to watch until the buses arrived.

Still pretty rural; it must have been real country back in 1963...

I remember that the principal came on the PA and announced that the President had been shot and that class was dismissed for the day. We were all scared half to death. We thought it must have ben the Russians or someone who had done it, and we were terrified that there would be a war. I remember running all the way home.

experience as you right up to Sunday.

I remember it like yesterday too.

Someone called and told me after school.

mostly, and running around after my big brother. ;-)

while young, I vividly remember the teacher telling us what had happened and the childhood discussions afterwards (all the kids were convinced the new janitor was the one that shot the President)...!


My father was a rural MO republican and no Kennedy fan, but I do remember him being extremely shaken by the whole thing. My mom (a closet liberal) later on became a bit of a conspiracy theorist. She followed New Orleans investigator, Jim Garrisons theories closely.

Honestly, I was three years old and my little sister was a month old. I thought I would just cut to the self-dramatising chase

when the announcement came over the PA system saying President Kennedy had been shot. Shortly after that they announced he had died. I have a vivid memory of the look on my teacher's face..a stunned, shocked look.

I too was watching television on Sunday when Jack Ruby shot Oswald. None of us could believe what we just saw.

The following years were very difficult times for our country..Viet Nam, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Kent State and Watergate. There were times when I honestly wondered if our country was going to make it.

MY MOM WAS WALKING OUT OF THE STORE WITH MY CAKE WHEN SHE HEARD THAT HE HAD BEEN SHOT, BY THE TIME SHE GOT HOME HE WAS DEAD

no one knew what to do....
One elderly woman who had lost a child in WWII told my mother that she cried more for Jack Kennedy than for her own son... it was the loss of hope for the nation that she was mourning...

I had walked to my grandmother's house (3 blocks) for lunch when I saw the TV. the school called my grandmother and said the afternoon's classes had been cancelled.

We were taking our daughter to Grandma's and then going shopping. We heard on the car radio he had been shot and then saw on tv when we got to my in-laws that he had died.

I remember crying myself to sleep that night, wondering what kind of a world we had brought our child into. But we did have three more.

and on the playground at the church where the 3rd and 4th graders were attending for class while the school was having an addition built. We were called into the church from the playground. My friend Joe Smith (real name) put his hand through the glass pane in the door running in by pushing instead of pulling as the kids were piling through the door. Blood and broken glass, and a minor emergency as we were herded back to class. We were told to go home as school was letting out early. I suppose they were letting our parents tell us about the news.
On the way walking home, i met up with my 2 brothers who were at the school proper (2nd & 5th) who were walking along with all of the other kids. If anyone knew anything, nobody was talking, not even the older kids.
Next i remember walking in the door at home, and seeing my mother. Her hair was in curlers, she was madly vacumning the floor and crying. The TV was on, and my bros and i sat on the couch watching her furiously vacumning and crying, knowing our father was coming home, and one of us was probably in big trouble.
After he came home, we just watched TV, very somber, unhappy, my older sister came home by bus, and i suppose we had dinner, but for the next week we had that TV on 24/7. I don't think we even attended school the day following, but i can't remember for sure. It just seems time stood still for several days, maybe even a week.

The next year, the addition was completed, and i was back at the school building in the new additon. The Beatles were the rage for most of my age group and beyond.


And i was camping out with the regular rowdy crowd, which we did in the last bit of trees and uninhabited wooded wild in the neighborhood on summer nites, when Bobby was killed. John Johnson (another real name) had a transistor radio, and the news came out, and he sat there and cried. It was the first time i remember seeing an older guy, 16 yrs, cry without being punched or jumped, just from words that had come out of a radio. And he sat there, and cried.

i've never forgotten any of those times.

peace CO Lib, and all
dp

I remember being scared when I got home.

I was in basketball practice in the gym when I found out President Kennedy had been shot. We just continued to practice, because we had a big game coming up on Monday. (It was cancelled.) And it was too much to take in, anyway. Then someone came back in the gym and said he had died. Our gym was separate from the school building, so after we dressed and walked out to go to the next class, someone was lowering the flag to half staff, and that made it so real. It was like being hit with a ton of bricks. Forty years later, I can still see the faces of my friends as we walked up that sidewalk. It was devastating. And the principal, a most unemotional man, came on the intercom and officially told us, and his voice broke. Sad, sad, sad.

The whole week-end was sad, and I have a montage of pictures in my head to this day. And I am one of those people who feel that nothing has ever been the same in America since that awful day.

;-)

early that Friday. Here we were riding around in some beater of a car, and then we heard the news. We were aghast. We immediately went to St. Mary's Church in Newport RI (where JFK got married) and said some prayers. Then we trekked off to the convent where our teachers were and they opened the doors to the convent and we all went in and were so surprised that the nuns were teary (they never showed emotion). I will NEVER forgot that day.

ironing my dress uniform shirt.

Pulled extra guard duty that night. For some reason the base when on alert. Maybe they were worried that somehow the country was more vulnerable at that moment.

that would eventually shoot out 20 years later

:hi:

I mean, there could be other realities out there, no?

I remember being home early from school and having a very subdued party, but not much else about the day. However, I vividly remember seeing Oswald get shot live on TV.

About 1:00 PM she was called out to the hall during class. A few minutes later she came back in crying and broke the news. We were sent home shortly afterward.

:kick:

Please share your memories.

or so I'm told.

And a nun came in in tears and announced that the president had been shot.

Seventh grade. My mother and I were going to stop at the store before going home. I got out of school about 1PM. We heard on the radio that he had been shot and Mum drove to my aunt's house and we stay glued to the tv for hours. Her house was next to the elementary school my younger sisters were attending and they got out of school and joined us.

I have so many memories of those days. The "Navy Hymn" still makes me cry. The muffled drums. Charles DeGaulle walking behind the casket. I think Jackie and RFK did, too. Watching Oswald being shot on Sunday. Forty years later and I remember it like it was this morning.

JFK was hope for us. He was young and enthusiastic. We were less than 20 years from the end of WWII and his potential was inspirational to this 12 year old (in '63).

So sad... And we still don't know the facts.

and I still have memories of that day. Mr. Hendricks, the principal of our small school personally came in and told us that JFK had been shot and that we were excused from school for the rest of the day. Me, being a small child, didn't grasp the full importance of it until I got home. Heck, it was a day away from school as far as I was concerned. But then I got home and my mom was just stunned. My little sister was in her playpen crying, and shortly thereafter my dad came home from work. They then explained to a mixed up kid(me) what was going on. A deep and profound sadness then overcame me. I remember everybody in the small town where I grew up talking about it, and I remember Ruby killing Oswald and my parents saying that was wrong. I'm sure there were a great number of parents out there who had to try and explain the madness to their children, and I salute each and every one of them. It was indeed a time of great sadness for our great nation.

.

at M. J. Fletcher Elementary School, Jamestown, NY. We only had half days of kindergarten, so I walked home at lunchtime, as usual. When I walked in the front door, my mother told me what happened. Spent the rest of the day watching the coverage.

One of the saddest and most vivid days in my memory.

av8rdave

so I find it impossible to fathom that GHW Bush can't remember where he was on that day....!

I wasn't doing much of anything :)

as Caroline Kennedy and even though I was only 4 when Kennedy was shot, I remember thinking how cool it was to see little kids like me in the White House, and their daddy obviously adored them, and I thought "Their daddy died, that makes me sad" and my mom was weeping...

Also a lazy egg hoping never having to be called to action.

A friend, who was allowed to have a radio at her place of work, called me to tell me. I was the first to hear about it in my place of employment. Our manager dug out a radio that was kept there to listen to the World Series and we listened in disbelief all day as the events unfolded. The good news was that the owner of a nearby pet store that I used to hang around on my lunch hour gave me a Siamese kitten he couldn't sell to make me feel better. (I couldn't stop crying.) That kitty was with me until he died at the age of fifteen.

I'm not American. I was not born at the time. It happened 40 years ago. THEN WHY THE HELL DO I WANT TO CRY?

Thinking about how the world would be different today if JFK had lived.

6 months after JFK died Brazil was taken over by RW military thugs. There may or may not be a relation. :cry:

:kick:

... when the school secretary, Mrs. Joliffe, came to the door to announce the President had been shot ... it took time for it to register to mean President Kennedy ... by time we got to 6th bell, he was announced dead ...

... we first convened an assembly where the principal, Mr. Weiss, spoke to us; then, school was out for Thanksgiving weekend ...

... my Dad annually coached a Pop Warner team which traveled to other states to play football during T-day weekend ... that year, the game was in Houston to play the Baby Oilers ... the trip went on ... in those years, I got to go on the trip ... we left on Wednesday, with my mom and sisters crying as they watched events on TV ...

I don't recall anything being mentioned on the trip to and from Houston nor watching anything on TV ... I know I felt strange passing through Montgomery, Alabama, riding past Governor Wallace's residence ...

I wasn't conceived until February of 1964. My mom was at the mall with my older brother and said that they announced the assassination on the p.a. system.
I do remember watching Reagan get shot by Hinckley. Me and my siblings were more concerned about Brady and the cop that got shot than we were about Reagan, because he looked okay when the secret service got him out of there and they were so obviously not okay. Then, of course, Frank Reynolds (now deceased, ABC newscaster) announced "The President is dead", a gaffe frequently forgotten these days.

Didn't come into the world until March 20, 1966. Sorry....

Nine months to the day I was born...8/22/64. I doubt I was right on time though, and never had the nerve to ask.

All the teachers got called to the office and then the announcement was made over the loudspeaker...

That evening, my friends and I played street football and I caught an elbow on my adam's apple....I had great difficulty breathing so Saturday was kind of a blur...I was at the doctor's office when Oswald got shot.

The adults I knew all began to say there was a cover-up that afternoon...

What is not widely publicized any more is that right wing loony and billionaire H. L. Hunt had taken out full page ads in Dallas papers that very morning calling JFK a traitor. As far as I can remember, the Warren Commission never even bothered to call him.

5 years and a couple of weeks before I was born...

:-)

Let's keep this going. Share your memories.

:kick:

;-)

I was just turned 4, and was at a neighbor's house waiting for mom to come home. She came home early, crying. It was really weird for her to come home early from work. I didn't quite understand what was wrong, but it was really upsetting to see JohnJohn put the flower on the grave.

Some of my family took it very hard. (Irish Catholics all.) One of my aunts tried to commit suicide.

was behind me in her rocking chair. She started crying her eyes out as the news came on about Kennedy's death. I asked her what was wrong, because I didn't understand. She hugged me, rubbed my hair, and told me I was a good girl. It was one of those moments in life you never forget. I could FEEL the importance of it even though I could not logically comprehend as yet, on this moment just a month + shy of my eighth birthday. But this was one of the first of those moments you don't forget: like the RFK and MLK assasinations, the Challenger shuttle tragedy.....and the Supreme Court handing the Presidency to the Emperor. My mother was Irish Catholic, and so JFK's win meant a bit more to her then to some others...there was still a lot of bigotry based on even more divisions of people into boxes back then, more so than today. My Mom grew up in DC, and I remember the tales she would tell me of the Irish neighborhood, the Greek neighborhood, the Polish neighborhood....everyone was still categorized during WWII and thereabouts like that. I love those stories because it gives me hope that someday the rest of our prejudices will fall away the same as did the ones of WWII. We can then all unite and see that the REAL enemy, the REAL difference working against us, is the color GREEN working to divide and conquer.

JFK, RFK, MLK...

Who benefitted?

A male teacher came in and called out pretty young female teacher out into the hall to tell her and some kids made cracks when she came back in crying. She told us to stop it, that something very bad had happened that would change history. At the end of school, our principal came over the loud speaker and said "Our president is dead. He was shot in Dallas, Texas. Let us all pray for his family and our country."

Wasn't born for 15 years afterward

in both my mom and my dad. At least until they got together and made me in '71 :shrug:

Except I came into being in 1980 .

For 3+ decades I had a vague memory of something strange happening there. Not until a few years ago, when I looked at a class picture that read "1963-1964" did I figure out what it must have been.

I remember being in the back right of the classroom when the teacher stopped the class very suddenly. It was a Friday but not yet time to go home, and within minutes we were walked out the back door and along the wooden walkway to the little road at the back of the school. Several classes merged together as we walked, and everyone was very silent.

Parents were picking up all my classmates one by one, but the teacher held my hand when no one had come for me and there were just a few other students left. I remember asking her questions but she said very little and seemed to be upset. My parents were both teachers, and certainly going thru the same type of situation at their schools, so my nana finally came and took me home.

My dad insists I was watching the TV coverage all weekend along with the rest of the family, and I understood what had happened, but I have absolutely no memory other than the abrupt end of the school day at Little Bird Baptist Nursery School and Kindergarten.

Sister Mary Somebody came into the auditorium & said to pray for a special man who had been shot. We were immediately sent home. I remember walking home & how shocked we were. By the time I got home my mother was watching Walter Cronkite & he was making the announcement that the President was dead.
We went to church that night & watched TV the whole weekend. I was out of the room when Jack Ruby shot Lee Oswald.
It was such a sad, heavy time.

:kick:

Keep it going - share your memories.

If you haven't had a chance to share your memories, please do as quickly as possible - I'd like to compile these stories as an article for DU.

Thanks

Wayne
(CO Liberal)

I wasn't even a twinkle yet

Pretty somber thanksgiving that year.
Gee, I can remember what I was doing, WHY can't Poppy Bush?