Walking back to work after lunch with my German artist friend, who couldn’t fathom why I collapsed when a guy yelled the news to us from the top of a truck. She said later that she had had no idea how much Americans loved Kennedy.
Fourth grade for me (11/22/1963). That was the day Kennedy was assassinated. We were having a Christmas sale going on in the school auditorium when the nuns ordered us back to our classrooms. I’ll never forget hearing one of the sisters crying in the hallway.
As people used to say (at least in my family), I was up in heaven picking flowers ...
I was in Jr High School and a teacher had just come in an told us JFK had been shot...
I was in Jr High School and a teacher had just come in an told us JFK had been shot by the CIA...
I was waddling around in diapers. So I don’t really remember a thing.
First grade. We little ones were not told in class, and the older kids were told to keep their lips zipped about it.
As we were all shuffling down the hallway toward the school buses and waiting moms in cars that afternoon, one 5th grade boy just couldn’t contain himself, looked back over his shoulder at us little kids (I can still see his face) and announced the president had been “shot right in the head and his brains had gone slooshing out all over — splat!” And he held up his hand with all his fingers sticking out to show us what a proper splat looked like.
You know how boys that age are, get a big kick out of gory stuff and grossing out the girls.
I was just a little girl, and yes, duly grossed out, but not sure I believed him. Soon enough I learned it was true. It was all that was on TV. I was not happy when there were no Saturday morning cartoons.
Thanks for posting. It was interesting reading everyone’s recollections!
I was not born for another five years, but my mother - God bless her memory - who was twenty then and a student at a German conservatory, was attending a piano recital when it happened.
The terrible news was whispered from row to row in the audience. There was great consternation - and tears, for JFK was greatly loved by many in West Germany.
I was in my senior year of engineering school and literally working my ass off