Sister Mary Reginald’s eighth grade classroom. Mother superior came on the PA with an announcement that the President’s motorcade had been fired upon in Texas. We waited anxiously for further word. Later, she announced that the President was dead. We were stunned. Classes were dismissed, and we were sent home. What a time.
It was Nydia R’s birthday even in Sister Reginald’s classroom. I wished her happy B-day on facebook this morning, and reminded her. The Harvard-Yale game, scheduled for the following day in 1963 was postponed. As one Boston matron observed, “There are other people in the world besides the Kennedys.”
I was in 7th grade. We heard about it when the head nun came on the PA and said: “Your prayers are requested for the repose of the soul of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated today in Texas.” Our first thoughts, of course, were: “It’s the Russians!” (Recall that just a year earlier we were head-to-head against the USSR re: missiles in Cuba, the closest we have ever come to WWIII.)