November 22, 1963. Where were you?
I was in school and they a student came in the classroom with a note for the teacher. We were told that John Kennedy was dead. There were gasps, but the teacher continued on after that.
My Bubba, who had just turned 16 at the time, recalls, “Fifty years ago, I was on Main Street in Dallas, just 4 blocks from Dealey Plaza watching President Kennedy’s motorcade. I was right on the curb and both the President and Jackie waived at me, my mother and my auntie. In 1960, I made handmade JFK pushcards and passed them out on my paper route in Dallas. That was the beginning on my political activism. I will never forget the excitement of waving to my President and First Lady and the horror, shock and grief of learning of his death.”
I found this in his closet when we were moving in together. I had it framed and it has held a place of honor in our home since that day. It’s an original.
Where were you?
This needs a huge “LIKE” button.
I was only 20 years old, married, my oldest son was only 11 months old and we lived in a wide spot in the road place named Live Oak, CA … I only remember hearing … seeing the bulletin on TV!
1Seventh grade. I had just finished lunch and was waiting on the patio for the next class–English–when the news spread through the knot of students outside.
The English teacher had tickets to go to Dallas to hear Kennedy speak that night, so she had set up an in-class writing assignment–something like “I am an American; I speak for democracy” (a popular topic in those days; I think there was an associated contest…).
When she handed the papers back, she said she could tell which ones were morning and which ones were afternoon by the content of the essays: the morning papers were all pretty standard seventh-grade drivel about our Leave It To Beaver worlds (we didn’t call them that back then), but the ones after lunch were pretty engaged with the concept of our country without its leader.
I know I was one of those who trashed my original outline.
2I was in biology lab, dissecting a starfish. The school put the radio news on the intercom after they heard that the president had been shot. We sat there, ignoring our starfish, listening to the news, hoping things were going to be all right. And then the announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States is dead.” My lab partner threw out our starfish. He was a Republican back then (he got over that after he grew up), but he was as upset as I was.
3I was home. Saw the bulletin on black and white tv.
When he came to Houston, I took my kids and we stood in the middle of the esplanade on Broadway just down the street from Hobby airport. I wanted them to see the motorcade go by, on the way to the Gulf Freeway, and downtown, and I think to the Rice Hotel. We all waved. They were too young to even know who Kennedy was. And that would be as close as they would ever get to a United States President. But I knew, and remind them every once in a while.
Then, it all became a nightmare.
4I was a year out of high school, waiting for a bus in CA, practically no traffic at all. A police car rolled up with two officers who stopped and asked me in very serious and it seemed to me mean attitudes, where I was going. The rest is kinda blurry. I think they may have said something about going back home, that no one would be working that day . . . As with many of you, the next three days were in front of the TV.
5I’d just walked into the hallway from one of my college classes and people were all talking about it.
6I was in second grade. I don’t remember much, just sadness and teachers talking together in the hall.
We had named out water fountains, “Goldwater” and “Kennedy” and I remember standing in the long line at the Kennedy water fountain and no one drinking from the Goldwater side.
7I was in 4th grade. We were doing an art project. The principal came over the loud speaker and she was crying. She requested prayers(catholic school).
8A few minutes later she told us President Kennedy had been shot.
And then she told us he had died.
All I remember is her crying.
She was a formidable nun tall and wide. It was back when they were covered from head to toe in black and white.
She could barely talk she was crying so hard.
We were sent home from school early and my dad came home before we ate dinner. That was a VERY rare occurrence, he usually came home about 7.
I was a freshman in college and was standing at my dresser in my dorm room that morning. Next thing I knew, I was lying backwards over my desk chair, having fainted. I took a taxi to the doctor and that afternoon was returning via taxi when the dispatcher came over the radio to say that our President had been shot. To this day, I still can’t believe that could happen in 20th century America.
9God forbid it should ever happen again.
I will never forget that day. I was in downtown San Diego,CA and just getting on a bus to do some more job hunting. Heard the other passengers talking about someone being shot and asked who?? They said that the President had been shot and I caught another bus to go home. Spent the next several days glued to the TV.
10I was living in Guam since my Daddy was a officer in the Air Force. News was slow to come in since we had no live TV there. I remember my Mother and I huddled around a radio hoping for news. She was crying and in shock.
11I do remember that the Base went on alert since it was a SAC base plus Daddy was in Weather Recon.
I really was too young to know what really happened…3rd grade but do remember all these big tough military officers in tears.
I was in fourth grade in a catholic school. My sister and I got back to school after lunch break and were told to go back home by the crying nuns. I was sad but too young to understand the political implications.
12I was standing in line at the Commissary at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis. There was an announcement over the loud speaker that I missed and the next thing I know is everyone was crying. I was in 7th grade. Some things you just never forget.
13I was in Canada, working for a dentist. Every day the CBC had a book being read on the radio. We were listening to CBC while he worked on someone’s teeth. The show was interrupted to announce that Kennedy had been shot.
14Just as an aside – I lived in Germany for a long time and have many German friends. Almost every one of them has a picture of JFK in their home, somewhere where it can be seen.
15I was in college at the time and heard about it on the street.
I was in the third grade and heard the news on the school bus that afternoon. The upper grades were told, but not the elementary grades. I remember my mother being glued to the TV and how Walter Cronkite choked up. I think the thing that made the biggest impression on me was the funeral cortege with the riderless horse and the backwards boots. Little John saluting his daddy and how composed our First lady seemed to be (to this 8 year old). I very much remember Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald on national TV. My sister wrote a condolence note to Jackie Kennedy and I remember the note she sent to my sister. Where a stamp would have gone was her signature.
16I was in the hallway of my grammar school with my classmates when the principal, Mr. Johnson, stopped us and announced it. I’ll never forget the look on his face and the sound of his voice.
17I was at work and six months pregnant. I had to leave. It broke my heart to hear the news and then that he had died.
18I was in the Library writing a paper for my Latin class.
Some months earlier Kennedy had landed at Bergstom AFB near Austin and we were privileged to see him and shake his hand. He was a remarkably handsome man, vibrant and full of life.
19I was 14 months old and in my playpen at the moment (per my mother) so I have an alibi. I do remember where I was when I heard about Bobby: at a HoJo in Dallas, ironically.
20Hee hee Da Chip, I was in the womb w my mama in Burbank CA, so I guess I am off the hook too. But my brother and I broke a television some years later trying to find ANYTHING but that long line of cars and hushed solemn newscasters that was a 4- or 5-yr-old’s view of Bobby’s funeral l-(
21I was 4 years old.
22My family was on the last leg of our drive (somewhere just south of Kingsville) to the Rio Grande Valley to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving. Mom and Dad heard the news on the radio. Dad pulled over and they cried for some time before getting back on the road. That’s all I remember.
On my way to work which just didn’t happen that day. Everything went into stasis, including the stock market. My Canadian brother in law was visiting and even he went into shock. When JFK ran for the office I was still in college and not yet old enough to vote (it was 21 then) but I worked on every JFK committee I could find and yet still maintain my GPA. I was even put in charge of creating a kind of newspaper (done on mimeograph then) featuring Jackie. i even had naming rights so I called it The Cameo and it featured a picture of Jackie inside a small oval in the masthead. I even had the chance to go by train to D.C. and attend the inaugural. The only ball I went to was the one for Young Dems at the Mayflower. Danced with a handsome young Coast Guard cadet. Saw Jack and Jackie go in and out of a side door of the hotel. Despite the pain of November 22, 1963, I have never regretted my efforts in that campaign and continue to campaign to this day for righteous Dems, including the current President. I have had over the years two excellent copies of portraits of both Jack and the double of himself and Jackie. Should have had them laminated as they self-destructed no matter how well I took care of them. God bless both Jack and Jackie.
23I was in fifth grade at Castle Hills Elementary in San Antonio. I will never forget my teacher’s name. Alma French. She was young and beautiful and she loved JFK. It was public school, but she had his picture on the wall behind her desk. She was called to the door and went into the hall. When she came back in she was sobbing. At 10, I am certain it was my first view of absolute grief. The principal came on the intercom a little later to tell everyone that he had died.
Ever since I have wondered what our world would be like now if he had lived. Would Bobby and Martin Luther been killed? What would our country be like now? Do you think the GOP would have become as insane as they have?
248 Yrs old. My father was in the Air Force assigned to Brooks Air Base where the day before the assassination of JFK he had come to speak at the dedication of something regarding the base and the space program. I vaguely recall going to the speech with my mom. My dad was one of the people standing on the stage behind the president. It was shockingly surreal even at the age of 8 that our president had been shot and killed. I don’t think the American psyche has ever gotten over it.
25Seventh grade — in the hallway on the 2nd floor of A-wing getting stuff from my locker at the end of the day and heading to wrestling practice. I think there must have been a P.A. announcement. No one seemed to understand what it meant. That night we got a phone call saying that school was canceled.
The wall-to-wall television coverage extended to the local non-network stations. A side effect was that the one which aired re-runs of the original Mickey Mouse show was thrown out of sync so when they sang the opening number about “Today is Tuesday, you know what that means….Tuesday is Guest Star Day” didn’t match the actual day of the week.
26I was in my English Lit class and the nun (yes there were still nuns teaching at college level then) announced that the President had been assassinated. There were audible gasps all around the room and the nun was crying – something I had never seen before. She dismissed us and I ran to the pay phone to call my father and said “what will we ever do now?” He said “no matter what happens the country will go on.” He was a WW2 vet and had seen the entire world in flames so this was not the worst thing for him. It calmed me down but the next few days in that college were beyond grim for all of us.
It still feels as real to me as if it were only yesterday. It was the end of my own naivete about life and the way the world works.
27I was in 4th grade, and our teacher came in crying. She told us all in a quiet, quavering voice that “our president has been shot.” We had been reading at our desks until then…I don’t think anyone did anything academic the rest of the day.
She came back later, more in control of herself, and told us “President Kennedy has died.” Most of the girls cried, most of the boys sat in shocked silence. Even then, we were reflecting the adult world.
28That was my first campaign too, and I was addicted to politics after that.
My most vivid memory was not Kennedy, but the next day. The family gathered around the TV and watched the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald broadcast live, nationwide. In had never seen a murder before.
29on the flight deck of the USS Independence anchored off Naples, Italy. they announced the assassination of President Kennedy, we waited for a couple of ships boats carrying sailors back, cleared the flight deck, went to G Q. had weapons coming up the elevators, them we steamed out leaving a bunch of sailors behind. the brass thought it might be the start of WWIII. scary times indeed.
30Miss Kaufmann’s 7th grade science class was cut short for an assembly to give us the news. The rumor had been floating for a bit through the afternoon, but most of us thought it was a joke because Barry Goldwater (just coming to prominence) was being blamed.
31I was watching “As the World Turns.” I had been watching events on Channel 8 all day. My four little children were napping.. On the following Sunday at church, I heard a friend ( a judge) say,”That poor ass Ruby has killed an innocent man. We will never see the end of this.”
32Alacrity, you and I are the same age. I was also four. I remember three things: (1) I was annoyed because the news kept breaking into the cartoons on TV. (2) All the adults were terribly upset, which is very frightening for a small child. (3) There was a little kid, even littler than I was, at the funeral, and he seemed to be getting a lot of attention. (John-John, of course.) Oh, and the horse. I wondered why nobody was riding him.
33I was a junior in high school in California and was in the halls in the change between classes. I’d just come from P.E. class where we missed the principal’s announcement that the President had been shot. When I realized what everyone was talking about, I was shocked and worried. A guy whom I was friends with tried to reassure me by saying, “Oh, you know. They make a big deal out him having a hangnail, so I’m sure it’s not that bad.”
I went to my next class, English with Mr. Bell. We were all in our seats when the principal came on the intercom again and said in a choked voice that the President had died. One of the girls across the aisle from me immediately burst into hysterical sobbing. She’d worked for Kennedy’s campaign as a teen volunteer. Just about everyone in the class began crying at that point. Mr. Bell tried to get us to continue with our studies that day, but he had no luck so he told us all to just put our heads down on our desks until class was over. From his demeanor I couldn’t tell, even now, if he was grief stricken too or just irritated. I know there were some kids in the school who were gloating over what happened, so I imagine there were some adults who felt that way too but were not as overt about it.
That evening my best friend and I, feeling so utterly helpless, tried to go to our local Catholic church (although neither of us was religious) to offer prayers for the President, but we found the doors locked so we just gave up and went home.
The next several days were spent in front of our black and white TV. We didn’t realize it at the time, but this was a real turning point in television coverage—seeing events take place in real time where you felt connected to everyone else who was watching it and not just reading about it in the paper later or watching a filmed news report.
After those days were finally over, I remember gathering up the front sections from the L.A. Times from that weekend and taking them out to the room off our garage that we used as a catch-all. I closed the papers up in a box, thinking they would someday be valuable reminders of that terrible time. Years later I came across them again. They were all yellowed and brittle. I put them in the trash. I didn’t need them in order to relive those days.
Recently I read a piece by a woman whose father had been high up in the John Birch Society in Dallas at that time. The article reprinted a typical flyer of theirs that railed against Kennedy as a Communist, a hater of the U.S., etc., etc. The similarity to what we’ve seen aimed at Obama was uncanny. The John Birch Society at that time was a fringe group and eventually marginalized within the larger GOP, but now it seems that its evil spawn, the Tea Party, has taken over.
God help us.
34Sorry! Didn’t mean to write a book.
35I was born Feb 19, 1961. I don’t remember. I was 21 months old. I have often asked my peers about what they remember. No one younger than me remembers. Some people that were 24 months old may actually remember. Anyway, born in 1960, most people remember. Born 1961 and after, no memories. It makes us different.
36Finding out about President Kennedy’s death is my second earliest memory. I was a few days shy of my third birthday. When, as usual, I ran for the TV on the morning of the 23rd, my path was blocked by my dad in his blue bathrobe. I stopped short, and he solemnly told me that “Captain Kangaroo” wouldn’t be on because the President had died.
37Our first son was three months old & fussy (tells you how my days were filled) & we had a bon voyage party scheduled for that evening. My husband had accepted a position in Wisconsin & we would drive from Chicago on the day of the president’s funeral. I was grateful for the busy-ness of the day & the presence of so many friends that evening. None of us could believe that a communist (or, @ least, a Russian sympathizer) had killed the president. Surely it was someone from the far right, we all agreed.
38I was in 4th grade, Dallas.
Changed my life forever.
Going to pay tribute next week at Grassy Knoll. I always go to the Grassy Knoll when I am in Dallas.
39Tex….books are good. No one here has to move their lips to read so it’s all good.
I was 27 years old, three children, two at school. I was living in Oak Cliff. That day I had gone to a friends house to pick out costumes for a costume party. She had the TV on and the awful news came on. It’s odd how something like that can freeze your memory like a bug in amber. No party that night, in fact it never did happen. Everyone was too much in shock.
The whole family picked up a flu bug or something. I can remember us all lying around with barf bags and Mama having to clean up the kids between my barfs watching the funeral on TV. Even the kids were glued to the set. As sick as we were no one wanted to go to bed.
We were at my inlaw’s house when Jack Ruby shot Oswald. What a terrible time…and it set my opinions in stone. Even after 50 years I have never seen anything yet that has made me change my mind even a little bit. I never believed the official story and hoped we would eventually know the truth. But the same kind of people I thought were behind it then..are still controlling things now.
40In 5th grade. At lunch time, I ran home (less than 6 blocks) oblivious to events transpiring less than 50 miles away. At home, my Mom was crying. (My Dad was away from Texas doing his Marine thing in South Carolina.) She thought the world was coming to an end. I guess for her and my Dad, it had.
41At work in the Kirby Building on the corner of Main and Akard downtown Dallas. A group of 20 or so had just watched the President and Mrs. Kennedy go by. Two thoughts were in my mind: 1) Jackie is prettier in person than on the b&w TV and 2) President Kennedy has hair so auburn it looked red in the Texas sun.
A few minutes after they passed a woman in another office came running in to say the president had been shot. We laughed because we thought she was kidding. Then the boss came in and told us all to get home as quickly as possible because he thought there was going to be trouble. To get from downtown Dallas to the Oak Cliff section by bus we usually went via the triple underpass. To this day, I don’t know the route the bus driver took but it wasn’t the triple underpass. Buses were rerouted for weeks after.
One beautiful event, my first grandchild was born November 22, 1998 and he is perfect and brilliant as all grandchildren are.
42Fifth grade Geography class at Carl Ben Eielson Elementary on Grand Forks AFB. The announcement stunned everyone. Kennedy had landed at the base just two months before that to attend a speaking engagement at the University of North Dakota. When he disembarked at Grand Forks AFB, both my brother and sister were able to shake his hand but I couldn’t fight my way to the barricade because of the crowd.
I remember my sister said she wouldn’t ever wash that hand again. Today she’s pretty much apolitical, but leans right. The brother turned out to be just a few bricks heavier than a teabagger, boy does he resent that term, and leans heavily right. I guess I lean so far left to provide balance to the family. Dad was a 30+ year USAAC/USAF vet and a die hard Democrat from the Pennsylvania coal mines. Mom was the poorest Republican Dad ever knew, as he repeatedly told me.
43I was 12 and living on an Army base in Stuttgart, Germany. It was just after 7 pm and I was baby-sitting two young girls while their parents had gone to a club to hear a performance of friends of theirs who had come over from the States.
I was heating up dinner for the girls and listening to the Armed Forces Radio (there was only German TV where we were, so nobody watched it), when the music was interrupted to say that the President had been shot. I told the girls it was probably just a minor wound. A little while later, the announcer interrupted the program again to say that he was dead and I just lost it. Of course, that upset the girls, so I had to calm down and wait for their parents to come home. I called my friends, who called other friends, and we all walked to the little chapel that served all denominations (at different times, of course) and we just prayed. Then we went home.
There was no live TV, so we only saw fragments of the funeral long after it was held.
I have never felt so alone or so far from home before or since that time.
4410 year old,fifth grader at Webster Elementary School,Cherokee,Iowa. Cried my eyes out because I thought this was gonna be nuclear war with the Soviet Union and I wouldn’t see my eleventh birthday or play Little League Baseball ever again. Shortly there after is when I realized our government had been using fear of the Soviets as propaganda,much the same way wingnuts try to scare us about big government. I have been skeptical of government ever since.
45Quick rant-since Dan Rather was a large part of CBS coverage of this senseless,tragedy,I find it real classy that they would not invite him back for the re-union. I’m done.
46I had just finished student teaching and as I went into the dorm at Texas Tech, the dorm crazy came running down the hall–They shot the president, they shot…. My first reaction was yarite–why would you say something like that. Followed by cold shock. I had never been to a Catholic church, but went wiith my roommate that afternoon and just sat.
Anyone who hadn’t liked the President didn’t dare say anything about it for a long time.
4713 years old, history class in Friona, Tx. Jr High School…. teacher left room, kids all immediately turned into chatterboxes about Jr Hi drivel… then teacher came into room, had tears in his eyes, told us that the President had been shot in Dallas Texas and had died. That school was being dismissed within the next few minutes. I remember, as the oldest child, making sure my 2 younger sisters and I were together… and we got home. Spent next few days glued to black/white television coverage.
Recall going home with a friend on that Sunday, (to say it was a 5 minute commute, would be stretching it) between Sunday School and Church, to make a little snack… like cheese toast, or cinnamon toast, or something. Her Dad was sitting about half dressed in his barcolounger….glued to the tv… because he had just witnessed the live coverage of Ruby shooting Oswald while getting dressed for church. We plopped down on the couch, ate our toast, and never made it back to Church that day. None of us left their living room to return to church that morning. Fondly remember the Brookfields’ little house, and that morning we watched history unfold….eating white bread toast and sugary condiments…. and how very upset my Mother was when she realized I had ditched church…
Ah small TEXAS towns…. back then we were all mostly Democrats.. and now, I am a serious minority when I go back there. And Dallas is still full of nutjob John Birchers and Glenn Beck’ers.
Interesting few days.
48I was a young wife and mother living in rural Oregon. I kept going to the phone to make a call re Thanksgiving and my line was always busy (anyone remember party lines?). After picking up the phone a couple of times, I realized the voices I was hearing were upset and something important had happened. I turned on the television, sat on the sofa nursing my baby and watched the saddest events I have ever seen. I remember it as if it were yesterday.
49I was in my 1 pm freshman English class at Rice, having walked over from Jones College a bit early as usual. The jokester of our class walked in and said “Did you hear? The President’s been shot.” And we thought it was a joke and told him that wasn’t funny, and he said “No, it’s real–I just heard it.” We still didn’t believe it. In our lifetimes, no President had been shot at, let alone shot. We knew it had happened, in the bad distant past, but not NOW.
Then our prof walked in, very pale, and said “The President was shot in Dallas; class dismissed.” And he walked out. And we sat there stunned, glancing at one another, and then scrambled up and went for wherever people went–some to the television rooms in the colleges, some to radios, to their rooms to cry, or outdoors to stomp around.
We were so innocent…and this was entirely out of our ken. We had no rule for how to act when the President’s been shot. We didn’t know he was dead for awhile longer; many of us were hoping he could recover (clearly, those of us who knew nothing about the effect of a bullet in the head.) I don’t remember when we heard for certain that he was dead (from someone watching television; I wasn’t–there was a crowd around the TV and I didn’t feel like being in a crowd right then.
A lot of fear–what’s going to happen now?–from both Kennedy supporters and detractors. At the time I was leaning toward the detractor side, very much in favor of the space program, but thought he’d done a lousy job with the Cuban crisis.
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