What were you doing when.....

[BettyO]

I know that this thread may seem somewhat silly....but for those of us who remember the Kennedy Assassination -

What were you doing when you heard the news? Where were you? What do you remember?

I was 10 years old at the time on that cold, overcast day, and I was in the 5th grade....getting ready to take a dreaded math test. Horrid to recount, but I remember feeling a sense of relief that I got out of the test. School closed immediately and we walked home. When my sister and I arrived at my house, my mom was crying as she watched the news reports of Walter Cronkite. We watched for a bit (I was 10; my sister was 7) and then we went out to play with the little boy next door. I can remember that he had a box turtle and we played with the turtle. That night, all three TV channels was full of nothing but news and the radio was the same; alternating between religious music and news reports.

[Anita]

I was driving back to the dorm at SUNY Stony Brook when a news bulletin on the radio announced that Kennedy had been shot. By the time I arrived at school he had died. Students were just wandering around in a daze, stunned, crying followed by denial and despair. It was a Friday afternoon. I left campus and drove the two hours back home. All we did was watch the TV coverage for the next three days. It was a very somber Thanksgiving that year. And the world as I knew it was gone forever.

[L Verge]

I was a junior in college in the hills of western Maryland and had just returned to my dorm room for a few hours in-between classes. I was listening to music on the radio when the news announcement first came that he had been shot. As the news spread, everyone gathered in the common room - where the only TV in the entire dorm was allowed. When they announced his death, everyone began to cry, including "the jocks." The next move that we made was to hike across campus to the chapel where we prayed and sat in silence.

Since many of the students at my college came from the D.C. and Baltimore regions, we had lived under the threat of atomic warfare for years, especially just a year before with the Cuban missile crisis. Andrews AFB was only about five miles from my home, and we had been taught throughout my childhood that it would be a major target when the Russians hit.

Believing this, over half the college population packed their bags (me included) and headed home. Few of us had our own cars in those days, so we had to depend on buses and trains mainly to get home. Both means of transportation, however, would land us in downtown D.C. I came into the marvelously grand Union Station late at night and was greeted immediately by my parents and thousands of others whose children were coming home from colleges and schools up and down the East Coast for safety.

I don't think I left the TV for more than a few hours to sleep over the next period of days. I repeatedly watched the same news reels over and over and thought my chest would cave in when John-John saluted his father's casket. And, those mournful drum beats. I have attended several military funerals at Arlington over the years, and every one of them reminds me of those muffled drums and the solemn processions.

Maybe because I was much older on 9/11 and had experienced personal losses over the years, but that event did not affect me in quite the same way as the Kennedy assassination. I was at work and on the phone when that occurred, and another museum director said simply, "Some plane has evidently flown into the World Trade Center." I turned on the TV in my office in time to see the second plane hit. All of a sudden maintenance trucks came flying into our parking lot. My guys knew I had a TV. Many of them were Vietnam and Gulf War vets. There was no crying this time - just fury - in my office. I sometimes feel ashamed because the loss of 3000 or more lives that day in September did not have the same effect on me as the loss of one life on that day in November.

[Jim Garrett]

I'm feeling kinda young here. I was in 2nd grade. we were living on the other side of the globe. My father was the commander of the 1st Special Forces Group stationed on Okinawa. It was Saturday morning there. We were all up early to go on a deep sea fishing trip. The phone rang and all we heard was the President had been shot and we were on high alert. The fishing trip was off and my father was off to his office. No one knew what to think.

[Rob Wick]

I don't mean to sound flippant, but I imagine I was in my crib, as I was only a month and 22 days old when he was shot. I don't know if it was because she never really handled my father's death completely or what, but my mother never wanted to talk about what she was doing. As she was a lifelong fan of "As The World Turns" I imagine she was watching it when the CBS bulletin came across.

Best
Rob

[Hess1865]

I was 10 years old and in the 5th grade at St.Lawrence school in West Haven CT.
We had just gotten back from lunch and were in Mrs. McDermott's class.
The school janitor came to the door and said something to our teacher.
She immediately told us the President had ben shot and we should get on our knees and say a prayer (this was a Catholic school) for him, which we all did.
Soon after word came that JFK was dead.
All the nuns were crying, and we were sent home from school.
We then proceeded to stay glued to our TV for the next 4 days.
My aunt in Texas called that night (this was back in the days when long-distance calls were a big deal) and I think they were more upset over the fact LBJ was now the President.
In hindsight, I would say Aunt Marion was thinking correctly.
I also remember vividly watching Ruby shoot Oswald on live TV.
Still a mindblower when I think of it.

And as I have stated elsewhere, I firmly believed Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and there was NO conspiracy.

[SSlater]

I was working for the FAA in Washington. On that same day , the FAA was moving from temporary quarters in "Old Navy Building", to their own new office building. Since I was a Structural Engineer, I was overseeing the handling of huge boxes of files - would the floors support this concentration of weight? Would the elevators carry more than one box? etc.
In my office there was a "Teletype Machine". That was a typewriter - connected to a phone line, that received important messages (sometimes Coded.) When a message came in , the machine would "clang". One bell for a routine message. 2, 3, 4 or more, as the importance increased. The assassination news was 10 clangs. That miserable machine clanged all day. The message may have been a one-liner, but it got 10 clangs. I believe it clanged more than it typed.
When the typing stopped. someone would run over and read the message out loud. That constant irritating noise, would not allow me to accept the true meanings of the messages.

My children were just tots, and were really my whole world. By the next day I thought about the Kennedy children - their father would never come home again for some joyful tumbling play time. To me that was the Tragedy. Eventually, his death came to the front.

[Rogerm]

On the day of President Kennedy's assassination, I was a seventh-grader living in a small south-eastern Colorado town and home for lunch. My father was pastor of a local church there. During our meal, an elderly lady from our congregation called. My mother answered the phone; and a couple of minutes later exclaimed, "Kennedy's been shot!" I immediately got up from my chair at the table and turned on the TV set. All three of the major networks were reporting about the attempt on Kennedy's life. And, shortly before I was ready to walk back to school, his death was announced. Once back at the junior high, our principal gathered all the students together and announced that what had happened was terrible; but that life had to go on. Then, he dismissed us. I spent most of that weekend glued to the TV set, watching the events that unfolded, culminating in the President's funeral the following Monday. That was probably the saddest weekend of my life.

[historybuff22]

I was 15-years-old and living in Logan, Utah at the time JFK was assassinated. The bell rang to end 4th period and we ran to the lunch room to get lunch. Ten minutes or so later, the principal's loud voice came over the public address announcing that president Kennedy had been shot. Despite a loud voice announcement, most of us did not hear it due to the chatter going on in the lunch room. A few minutes later, the principal made an announcement that "President Kennedy is dead" and that school was dismissed. With that, the chattering stopped and left many students asking what had been said. I finished my lunch and went up to the school library. The radio was on there and a group of us listened to the constant news broadcasts. I left about an hour after I arrived at the library. Mom was home but my step-father was still at work. Later in the evening my older brother,his wife and my one-year-old niece watched the Kennedy news. My one-year-old niece, who was alternating between taking a few steps and crawling around the room, did not make a sound for the rest of the night. The look on her face told us that she knew something bad had happened but didn't know what.

Rick Brown
HistoryBuff.com
A Nonprofit Oganization

[RJNorton]

I picked up my car at the gas station where a mechanic had repaired it. I started to drive. I turned the radio to my favorite "Top 40 hits" station. And they were playing religious music. I knew immediately there had been a major disaster.

[J. Beckert]

I was one year and two days old and my Mom was feeding me. Here's an interesting piece that makes sense. I've never heard this before.

http://news.yahoo.com/doctor--back-brace...56391.html

[RJNorton]

Fascinating, Joe. The quirks of history. I have read that Lincoln had his head turned down away from the play looking at someone in the audience as Booth approached. I have wondered if Lincoln were looking straight at Harry Hawk, and Booth entered from the box 8 door (not the box 7 door) would Lincoln have seen the approaching Booth? Possibly Lincoln would have turned and maybe even started standing up. Maybe Booth's shot then hits Lincoln in a more benign spot. The what ifs...if Kennedy were not wearing the brace and Lincoln's head were turned more to the right. Perhaps history would still be as it is, but it's interesting to speculate.

[Gene C]

I first heard it on the school bus going home. (Second grade) None of us believed it could be true, we were all to young and naive to believe things like that could happen. Then we got home and saw it on TV.

[Wild Bill]

I was 21 and a junior at Ariz St Univ and in an International Politics class. People were milling around in the hall so we shut the door and continued the class. We found out about the assassination when the class let out.

No, I am not coming back on the forum. This is a special topic.

[richard petersen]

I was a senior at Austin H.S. in Chicago when I heard the news; remember walking home with a sinking feeling trusting that it maybe the President was only wounded.
The image that I remember the most was when Chief Justice Warren swore in LBJ and Mrs. Kennedy standing in her pink dress.