44 years ago today Kennedy was killed. Where were you?

I was not alive, wouldn't be for a long time. My mother was at Saint Ann's Catholic School here in Salt Lake City when the news broke. She tells me that the Star Spangled Banner blared over the intercom and her first thought was that we were going to war. Then they came over and said that President Kennedy had been shot. The nuns began weeping and classes were canceled.

One of my cousins was born that day...any coincidence in his being named John? I think not.

it was 5 mos later for you, right? :hi:

Happy T-day to you and yours, friend! :hug: :loveya:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x7163750

I was too young to remember

but

the world would have been different

coverage on TV over the phone for 2 hours.

Redstone

To be blunt.

And no, those weren't guns, they were... um... apples and, um, a grill. Or a truckstop.

:hide:

flocked together and started crying and we had no idea what the matter was. When we went in, we stood at our desks and prayed until the news came that he was dead. Then, we all went to Mass. I remember crying because I was afraid. When I got home, my poor mom was prostrate. She had a two week old baby.

I joined DU three years ago on this date. The theft of our elections in 2000 and 2004 are somehow connected for me with that prior theft of our president.

Normally, after we finished lunch we went outside to play for the rest of the hour, but I had been sick recently and so I was sent back to wait in the classroom. I remember them putting the news on the radio on the school intercom. They sent us home from school early that day.

I was in pilot training.
22 years old.
An airman stuck his head in the door and said "The president's just been shot."
We thought it was a joke and waited for the punch line.
There was no punch line.

All military installations, including ours, went into full red-alert lockdown. Nobody knew if this was the Cubans or the Russians or who or what was responsible. It was a crazy and hairy time.

A few days later, on live TV, I saw Oswald gunned down by Jack Ruby.
So now we'll never know for sure.
I still don't believe the 'lone gunman' story.

The personnel shop for the 544RTGp at Offutt Plane Patch. Returned from lunch, first words out of boss's mouth, SSgt M, "The president's been shot." I answered (I thought it was a joke, too), "Hey, everybody shoots at him." "No goddamn it! He's been shot. He's at a hospital right now."

We all gathered around someone's clunky portable radio. I'll remember to my dying day looking up and seeing my expression mirrored in another airman's eyes when the commentator said, "A priest has left Parkland Hospital saying President Kennedy is dead."

First and only time I'd ever seen this happen in 20 plus years service. We all milled around a bit, then just left and went home. No one ever said anything or even mentioned it afterward.

I walked past the Hq SAC building that night. It was lit up like the proverbial Xmas tree. I'm sure the folks in the basement were sweating razor blades.

I was a little kid at the time but still remember that happening. But remember Poppy cannot remember where he was on that day. On the grassy knoll most likely.

There were two lunch periods at my school, and I had first lunch followed by math.

The geography/earth science teacher, who had second lunch and who had been listening to the radio in the teachers' lounge, barged into our classroom to tell us that Kennedy had been shot (He actually said "Kennedy and Johnson," which of course, was incorrect). We sat there stunned, and then the radio came on the intercom.

We sat there listening silently to the CBS radio coverage until the announcement came that JFK was dead.

Several kids burst into tears.

A few minutes later, the principal came on the intercom and announced that we would all be going home as soon as the school buses could be assembled and that we should stay in our current classrooms till then.

I lived close enough to school to walk home, so I did. One of my brothers, age 10 at the time, was home sick, and as he had been watching TV, he was the one who announced the news to our mom.

...so I don't have any direct memories of it.

I remember RFK's death clearly, though. And MLK's.

And yet the Republicans keep dying in their beds at ripe old ages. Go figure.

Latin II to be exact. We listened to the radio. The teacher cried.

Walking home from school was surreal.

Mrs. Lundquist walked in from the teachers lounge and said, "President Kennedy's dead." I still remember her saying it as if utterly without emotion. Took me a few years to realize she was probably in shock.

I've heard so many people say they were sent home from school that day, but we stayed. I don't remember the lessons being out of the ordinary after lunch, either. I guess they figured second-graders were too young to process any of it.

"It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma, with a colorful candy shell."

A teacher came in to tell us the President had been shot.


We were dismissed back to our classrooms. About 15 minutes later, we were all called to chapel (it was an Episcopalian school.)

Once we all were there, the headmaster announced that President Kennedy had died. We were asked to pray, and then the choir master played a song for us to sing. I was stunned, completely overwhelmed, and totally choked up.

It was also my parent's anniversary. They had plans to go out to dinner with some friends. They went. They were Republicans, and my dad hated Kennedy.

My oldest was 3 months old, playing on the living room floor. We didn't have the tv or radio on. My mother was still alive at the time. She called and said that Kennedy was dead. I remember telling her 'Mom, that's not funny'. It was just too over the top to comprehend.

We got the news, then resumed classes as usual, but all we did in class was watch the TV. Odd day.

the president had been shot. They announced he was dead a little later when I was in 7th period Plain Geometry class.

It was more than ten years before I was born.

The news came in around 6pm GMT on TV.
I was upstairs shaving to go on a date. Grade XIII.

My dad yelled upstairs "They shot Kennedy"
I always remembered that. Who did he think "they" were. Did he suspect a conspiracy from the get-go?
I must ask him. He's 88 now and still in Ireland (I'm in Canada)

I was in 3rd grade at Meadows School in Millbrae, California, and the principal came over the intercom to tell us what happened. My teacher threw her book down and just started bawling. Left to our own devices, a few of us just started talking or reading, the gravity of it not sinking in. But a few minutes later, we realised we needed to be solemn, so we just sat silently for what seemed a lifetime before school let out.

Do you remember the pictures? It especially affected me watching John Jr at the funeral, because to me he was just a little baby who would never know his father. I mean, I was a child myself, but I just felt so sorry for him.


I had a diary, and on that date I wrote "November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was killed." I was a few weeks shy of my ninth birthday. My sister, who had just turned 10, told me I shouldn't write it because when my future children read it "they'll just cry their eyes out".

Well, I never had children, and the young people around me see Kennedy's assasination as something that happened to a whole 'nother generation. However, everyone understands, young and old, that such a tragedy set this country on the destructive path that's brought us where we are today. For that alone, I still mourn my president's murder. What a tragedy.

big sad sobs

scared us all silly, we thought a nukes were coming

then she told us and we got out of school early.

got home and everyone was glued to the TV for the next few days, intermittently weeping

A woman came into the room. She had a pale and blank expression. She said "We are going to be sending you home. When you get home, your parents will explain why."

I swear on my LIFE that I knew, in that moment, "Kennedy has been killed"...

I was a second grader. What the hell did I even KNOW about John F. Kennedy? How the HELL did I know why I was being sent home?

But I knew...and when I got home, that's what my parents told me. The president was shot and killed.

True story.

Kennedy was human, Kennedy was flawed, and I believe with every fiber of my being that he did have sex with Marilyn, many, many times...

...but I also believe that he was one of the greatest presidents our country has ever seen.

Kennedy was flawed and he did the job....he did it well.

George W. Bush is flawed. Period.

See the difference?

:patriot:

Mrs. Roy's class. Far right row, 4 seats back.

I don't remember any other teachers from grade school, nor where I sat.

I remember the nuns and other teachers crying. I don't remember if we left early, or if we went to mass, or much of anything else except the funeral.

I knew that my whole world changed that day.

School was dismissed early IIRC I remember some discussion of a possible coup or enemy attack.

Lots of Birchers in my Jr. Hi Admin.

I can tell you where I was when the Challenger exploded in 1986, though. :)

Fuckin' youth. :P

It was typical November weather for West Virginia; gray and chilly. I was walking back to my dorm when I hear that the President had been shot. When I got into the lobby our Housemother had the television on.
I went into her living room and watch as the President arrived at the hospital. Not long after that he was pronounced dead. The next thing I remember was standing on the third floor balcony in disbelief. Life changed on that day. It was my 9-11 moment. I understood then just how insecure life in America can be.

Classes were called off. Everyone left campus for their homes. It was a very subdued vacation. We were glued to the television as we watched the story unfold. Nothing has ever been the same.

It was raining when school let out, so we always lined up in the hallway to wait for our buses. A rumor went up and down the line, but we dismissed it. Cold, rainy dark day.

Walking home from the bus stop, dodging the puddles to keep our saddle oxfords and bobby sox from getting muddy, other kids kept repeating the rumor, but no one thought it was true. Got home and mom was working at her sewing machine and crying. She hugged us and told us what happened. Our step dad was conservative GOP, but even he was shaken. I recall we had mom's great home made chili for dinner, but we could hardly eat. For the first time ever, our parents brought the portable tv into the dining room and we watched as Jackie arrived w/ JFK's body on Air Force One. I'll never forget that image

There was a commotion out in the hall, the principal pulled the teacher aside, then she came into class and announced it. Then they brought out TV sets and everybody watched the coverage.

teacher from the room next door came in and told our teacher who turned to us and said "If this is another one of Crafton's sick jokes I am going to kill him but this is what he just told me"

Then Crafton came back in and told us he was dead. The other class was physics and it was lab day so they had a radio on in the room. They knew first. Then the principal came on and announced it on the intercom and we just sat there, stunned.

It was an eerie, dismal time. TVs were few and far between and those of us who didn't leave town tended to watch with whoever gathered near those available. Life changing.

I think there were three in my whole dorm; and only one worked consistently. I agree that it was a life changing event.

Hell, my mom was only 8, and my dad, 4. :D

walked back into the school to Walter Cronkite's voice booming on the classroom P.A. systems.

They closed the schools in the D.C. area and we got to go to the funeral procession.

I was 2, living in Oak Cliff. I graduated high school with June (Oswald) Porter in 1980 (Marina remarried, and the two girls took the Porter name). June was a bright and sweet girl and very well read. June and I were in the same speech class our senior year, and she once spoke about the need to spend more money in our commnutity for a better public library. I also made a speech that year supporting socialism. June mentioned afterwards that I didn't know what I was talking about, and that I should talk to her mom about the so called merits of socialism. I remember saying I didn't mean a Soviet style of socialism.

I have also heard the gentleman from Rose Hill cemetery who prepared Oswald's body talk to a class in the school I worked at, and the gentleman who was handcuffed to Oswald when he was shot. Both in the same school - they had grandkids going to the school I was working in. It really is something to live in the area of such an infamous act. You bump into people who were a part of history.

I have a very vague memory of my parents crying, and I knew that something horrible had happened.

I was five. I actually remember doing that quite clearly, but not the day specifically. It went to air live, but that day it was pre-empted; I learned later that they went ahead and pretended to do the show to keep us kids busy.

wondering why the wind had picked up and the photons were spinning.

:cry:

6th grade,


6th grade social studies. They put Chet Huntley on the loudspeaker. When I got home my mother was crying

:cry:

I had been in an honor uard for him the year before (Cub Scouts) and saw him at the Airport in Houston Tx

But I saw Reagan get shot. I guess it's not the same.

The Principal came in to the classroom door and motioned my teacher out into the hall. They spoke for a couple seconds and when Mr. Manganella came back into the classroom, he was teary-eyed and told us what had happened. You could have heard a pin drop, the class was utterly silent. Then he broke the yardstick he was hold in half, and then he held those two halves together and broke them again and again. Then the busses came and we all went home. When my sister and I got home, my Mother was sitting in front of the TV, silent. That's what I remember the most, I think. The quiet. Everyone was in shock, and no one knew what to say or how to say it. It was just so awful.

I also remember being terrified when we were watching TV on Sunday, and Ruby shot Oswald on camera.

I'd stopped in the Principal's office to get some paperwork, and heard it on the secretary's radio. When I went back to the cafeteria, I told my friends "The President's been shot". My best friend gave me a bewildered look and asked "Who on earth would want to shoot the Senior Class President?" They thought I was playing some sick practical joke, and didn't believe me (I really shouldn't have filled the Social Studies teacher's VW van full of helium balloons...and the drinking straw incident was a joint effort).

Of course, they announced the news over the intercom during the next classes. I wish it had been a bad practical joke.

I lived in a private Catholic dorm, and I was heading back there...

We had a little chapel where our local priest said Mass every day...That day he had a Funeral Mass, and it was SRO...

I was in complete shock...

Then the grief and heartbreak set in...It was a nightmare...:cry:

I doubt that the terrible news altered my schedule.

i was still a couple decades away from being born

was 6 and don't remember

I was not even thought of yet.

remember it very well. Mama had just given my little brother and me vanilla ice cream cones, and I turned on the teevee to watch cartoons.

I remember going to find Mama elsewhere in the house to ask her why the news was on instead of my cartoon. She came into the teevee room right away, and I can remember the look on her face. It was a look of shock and disbelief, and it scared me. She explained what had happened as best she could; I didn't get the full impact, but could tell something way big had happened.

Then, Miss Ginny from down the road came over bawling something fierce. Memorable and sad, even for a little kid.

being diagnosed with measles, three years old. My mom, nurses, doctor, I don't remember if my dad was there or not, all looked shocked and I didn't understand why everyone was so upset. I understood the President had been shot, but had no idea of why it was so devastating to everyone around me.

i was at home, and i mostly remember my mother crying but not really understanding why.