Posted on 11/22/2013 10:10:12 AM PST by Kaslin
In my school the cheers were loud and it was by far the majority.
This was JR high so that might have been the difference.
I remember the day as if it had been yesterday. My husband and I had been married just a couple of weeks the year before. He was stationed in Germany and we lived on the economy. It was around 6 PM German time and my husband was listening to AFN (American Forces Network) on his radio, and I was listening to a German variety show from a Stuttgart radio station that I listened to every Friday. Both my husband and I were shocked when we heard it.
I was a junior in a high school in the suburbs of Wilmington, Delaware. We were having a last period pep rally with all students in the school in attendance (I was was on the football team) getting ready for our last game of the year vs. our arch rivals. My future wife was a cheerleader in that pep rally. There was no announcement but as the pep rally was ending, suddenly there was a commotion throughout the gymnasium as the news was spreading from kid to kid. It was a bad call by the school administrators because it was really a crazy uncontrolled reaction with rumors, bad information, etc.
I was no fan of JFK but I could see even then that our side of the aisle (Goldwater Republicans) would probably get at least part of the blame... and even today, the news media talks about the “right wing” being partially responsible for the tragedy in Dallas. Makes me sick.
Our football game was postponed to Thanksgiving and we lost making it an even more disappointing series of days.
I was in Harry Guppy High School in Windsor, Ontario, Canada also changing classes, was going down stairs to lower level when the announcement came over the loudspeaker that he was shot.
Students were shocked and crying.
Of course we only saw the Camelot part of Kennedy and never followed the politics of those damn rich yankees.
Says you.
I have no problem with the placement of those missiles in Turkey.
If you believe Khrushchev needed that pretense to place missiles in Cuba, you need to do some more research.
“Where was I? IN A FREE COUNTRY! that’s where....”
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So was I, in a place where a tall, fair skinned, hazel eyed guy like me oughta feel right at home, ICELAND.
“He was a 22 yr. old, newly minted teacher.”
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And quite probably a self-sufficient adult male, able to make his own way in the world, such creatures existed in 1963, they are very nearly extinct now, most 22 year olds now are about as mature as three year olds used to be and not much closer to being self sufficient.
Walking along East 10th Street on my way back from lunch with a friend. Some black guys working on top of a truck yelled the news at me. We must have been happily chatting away, oblivious, so they knew we hadn’t heard. It was so shocking that I couldn’t understand what they said. My friend, who was older, and German, understood and had to explain it to me. I crumpled. But understand I was not political in those days. Just the idea of a president being assassinated was crumple-causing enough. My friend later told someone that she was amazed that I and apparently every other American could care so much about their president.
When I got back to my office at a small publisher in the Village, everyone was upset or quiet. My boss said, “He was in Texas. They hate him down there.”
I had no TV. So when Oswald was shot, my sister called to tell me, and I misunderstood again. I said something like everyone knows that. No, no, OSWALD was shot. The assassin was shot. Oh. Then I knew it was a plot and that it would never be solved in my lifetime, or possibly ever.
I was also in the third grade. There was an announcement over the school PA system. At the time, we were living on an Army post in Virginia. On Sunday, the day of the funeral, I can remember an artillery salute fired in Kennedy’s honor. I think it was a 50 gun salute.
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