Mrs. Godfrey’s 4th grade class. Kind of ironic, she is the maternal grandmother of Jill Biden.
I was in 6th grade. Our school principal came over the loudspeaker and announced the president had been shot. My teacher was a Catholic, she got out her rosary beads and began to pray with tears streaming down her face. A teacher’s aid came in to talk to us, explain how little they knew and to get our things ready for early dismissal.
Shortly the principal announced our president had died and asked the whole school to stop and pray for the president, Mrs. Kennedy and our nation. That’s how life was then. Prayer in public school.
I walked home with friends. We were in shock and confusion. My grandmother was at home with the tv on. My mother had gone to church- all the churches were opening, people wanted to pray and gather. My mom came home and all I remember then is days of tv. Watching Oswald get shot, the voices of Cronkite, Huntley and McGee.
It wasn’t possible for us to understand the impact, but all the grownups I knew were serious, occasionally tearful and stoic. None of them freaked out - they were emotional but strong. We kids needed that. We had no grief counselors or anything like they do now. We had families, churches and synagogues, schools and friends. No one talked about Republicans or Democrats. We were just Americans.
God bless that country.
I was 11. My mom and my brother and I had recently returned to our home on the Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba after being evacuated when Kennedy and Khrushchev got in their little spat.
Dreaming of a new tricycle for Christmas.
Just got back to high school from lunch at Lionels. Heard it on the radio as we pulled in. Ran inside and nobody believed us. About 5 minutes later it was on the school PA.
Wasn’t born yet but my grandfather died this day. The story is, grandmother yelled the news to him and he fell down the stairs hitting his head real bad and died.
I was on board a USN ship. We had just delivered a water filtering system to our Mexico ally and were head to New Orleans for liberty. Then the communications started coming in very slowly, about what was happening.
It seemed like an eternity from the first flash to JFK being shot at and then taken to a hospital in Houston. Re real news from the Navy.
One of our cooks broke out the TV antenna used in ports and aimed it at New Orleans, and the news was wall to wall in each station. He set up the tv in the mess hall to receive the best pic and sound. The tv announced that Kennedy was dead before we heard from the official word from the Navy.
One of the younger officers wanted to shut down the tv, a few of us told him no. Meanwhile our CO came down and told the cook to keep the tv on and to set up the officer’s and Chief’s tv sets in their dining areas to receive the station. The cook did that, and occasionally we would hear curse words and $hit coming from those areas.
Many if not most of the Chiefs and Mustang Officers sat with the crew watching, listening and cursing. The CO basically stayed with the crew. He had his grim face on and don’t bug me look. He told some us later on a mid watch that this moment was the scariest moment he had ever had been in, including combat as a submariner in WWII in Korea because the total unknown from top to bottom. Being the CO made it tougher.
Later that night, we got orders to leave the next morning and head back to Norfolk/Little Creek, our home base. Before we rounded the tip of Florida and being close to Cuba, extra men were assigned to the watches until we were headed north to our home port.
When, we arrived in our home port and docked, the piers had armed Marines patrolling them. I hitched a ride to our apartment, and a tearful wife greeted me and didn’t want to let go.
It took a while to get phone calls to her parents and mine that I was home and safe.
third grade, the teacher started crying after receiving a note at the door
Getting ready for Thanksgiving with my two pre-schoolers in Evanston, Il. My mother, from Boston, liked to take us to the Cape Cod Room at the Drake Hotel in Chicago to have Lobster. After all, the Pilgrims landed where lobster was plentiful, turkeys not so much.
I still prefer lobster, but really hard to get in Spokane.
I had just turned 16, gotten my driver’s license and school was closed for a Sweet Potato Festival with a parade, beauty pageant and fair. Went joy-riding with my friends who did not have driver’s licenses.
Did not know that the scumbag Kennedy was dead until the next day.
I was a young newlywed of two months and living in Fort Worth Texas. I was in the laundry room. One of the maids came running in and said that the president had been shot. We both ran up to my apartment and watched the tv.
In a Bodega in Madrid drinking Sangria and singing.
When people came running in with the news I thought they were joking. I told them that sort of thing only happened in 3rd world shitholes.
WHICH WE ARE NOW CLOSE TO BECOMING!!!
I was 11 and in 6th grade, and was the school’s flag boy — raising the flag in the morning and taking it down at the end of the day. Stunned and saddened, I had to lower the flag to half-staff.
I was 6 years old. All I remember is my mom and sister crying a lot.
8th grade Civics class Green Brook New Jersey age 13. then went to Algebra where the teacher repeated every prediction from 1960 that Kennedy would be assassinated, then all of us were sent home, no buses, walking, passed by several homes where people were weeping, watched everything on an old black and white TV including Oswald being shot. I remember thinking at first that no one assassinated Presidents any more and that it did not make any sense to shoot Kennedy. My grandfather later told me I was witnessing history just like his grandfather had heard the news of the Lincoln assassination in Georgia before escorting his prisoner Jefferson Davis to the federal prison at Fort Monroe before going home to be mustered out in Ohio.
8 days away from turning 3!
Sixth-grader in Virginia Beach. Our teacher walked into the room and said that the president had been shot.
My aunt saw JFK just beyond armreach on the street as the motorcade went by. While driving home she heard on the car radio that he had been shot.
I too was in third grade, with a old school marm named Mrs Smith as my teacher. Will never forget her. A throwback to the 1800’s era style of teaching and dressing and demeanor.
4th grade. They sent us home for the day.
I was in the Tuck Shop, a student’s gathering place in the lower floor of the Cathedral of Learning, part of the University of Pittsburgh. I was a sophomore.