I really hate all this crap about JFK, trying to make him some sort of pagan Saint or something
I was in my mother’s womb.
My 3rd grade class was missing out on recess because they had to practice for a choral performance. I, on the other hand, was out enjoying my recess because I was excused from choral due to not being able to sing on key. (What’s a key?) A classmate suffering the same affliction came up to me with the news. I responded that she was lying and after a bit of a scuffle we were all called into class and given the official word.
I was in school changing class when it came over the loudspeaker. The cheers were deafening.
To say he was unpopular in Florida would be an understatement.
It was during the lunch break at high school. I was a sophomore. A kid came up to me and said he had just returned from home and had heard that Kennedy had been shot.
Within seconds it was all over school but we didn’t know he was dead at that time. I do remember the mood kept getting more and more somber as the day went on. The Principal came on the av system during our first class after lunch. He simply told us that the president was dead.
In elementary school class, when it was announced over the classroom speakers and the teacher started crying. When she stopped crying, she said what had happened, and asked, “children, what will happen now?” We all replied, “the Soviets will take over.”
Honestly... my dad being a very conservative person... wasn't cheering, but he wasn't all that sad either.
I was in Dallas, but in school at the time. When it happened, the school piped in a radio station over the PA system and that’s all we did for the rest of the school day.
After school I went home and my mother hadn’t heard about it. She was shocked when I told her. I then went on my paper route for the Dallas Times Herald (no longer there) and they already had it for the a afternoon papers - in a big headline. People were stopping their cars on the street, when I was out on the route, offering to buy a paper from me, but I couldn’t sell them, as I was given the precise number for delivery.
That was quite a day. AND ... from then on, for the next three days there was just about nothing else on the news. The entire country just stopped dead - at that point in time and for the next three days.
I just heard some commentator on fox news say we should be greatful to JFK for getting us out of the Cuban Missile crisis. No mention of who CAUSED the Cuban missile crisis. Turned the TV off......
Where was I? IN A FREE COUNTRY! that’s where....
I was in school, a Catholic grammar school, so you can imagine how it was. Only the Pope being shot would have been a bigger deal. They herded us all into the church next door to the school so we could all pray for the President. Nuns were crying. Finally one of the priests stood in front of us and said, “I’m sorry to tell you, our beloved President has died.”
I was standing on a grassy knoll in Dallas “cleaning my rifle”.
Actually, I was 5 so I was in kindergarten.
I was in US Navy boot camp - San Diego.
The radio he turned on was not playing a lot of Beatles music. They didn’t hit until Feb of 1964. Maybe the author also watched the Zapruder film that afternoon, too. /s
I never really liked JFK but I find this interesting. I was in the sorority house with the radio on, and the DJ interrupted and said we have a message from ABC. after the message , station went back to music I was puzzled.. like I couldn’t believe it. Turned on TV and regular programs were still running. The radio bulletin said the Pres. had been shot in the head. then the DJ realized that he should take off the music. That was the only time I heard he was shot in the head till he was announced dead.
Mr. Noble’s 5th grade class, at Fruitland elementary.
Didn’t know the word “assassination” at that moment.
That would change when they wheeled the TV cart into the room, after lunch.
Mr. Noble was emotional and upset, which was my first clue as to the severity of the situation. He was a 22 yr. old, newly minted teacher.
Just getting home from HS it was on the tube, as mom was normally watching her soaps at that hr.
High school music class when the announcement and then the network radio feed came over the intercom. Pretty much the whole school was in the chapel within an hour of the event.
People complain about all the attention unjustly lavished on JFK, and they’re right that he was grossly over-glamorized. But he was a damn-sight better than the clowns the Dems have stuck us with lately, and I think they miss the larger point: that day in November was the end of the innocence of the fifties, which for most folks was a wonderful decade. The decadence of the sixties would begin in early February of 1964 when the Beatles landed in the US.
I’m not real sure what decade the two intervening months belonged to - we were all pretty much in a daze then.
I was just over 4 yrs old, living in North Richland Hills, just NW of Dallas. I don’t remember the day of the assassination but do clearly remember the day of the funeral and the very contrasted, silvery live images on the TV.