I was in the first grade and all I remember was that we were let out of school. As all the kids were walking home one of the older kids said Kennedy had been shot. I don't think they knew yet that he was killed. Anyway, this was the same kid who said there was no such thing as Santa Claus so I didn't believe him until I got home and my mom told me.
I was too young to have much of a reaction, but I saw how upset the adults were. It was all anyone talked about for weeks. Waysider's right, it changed the country forever. The age of innocence for the USA was over.
Oddly, it made us (my friends and I) all suddenly feel so vulnerable. Oh, I don't mean we thought someone was going to assassinate us. I mean we no longer had that sense of security as a nation that we had only hours before.
That's what I mean. The days of June and Ward Clever, Disney's Davey Crockett, and Miss America Pie were over. Next came the race riots, campus riots, an unpopular war that all but tore the country to shreds, and exposed political scandels. Our generation became disillusioned and cynical to this day. Just notice the Political Forum threads on this website.
You're right, people felt safe and mostly good about America prior to Kennedy's assassination. Afterwards everything changed. Maybe America was actually living a daydream and this disillusionment was bound to happen. Not that I don't still mourn the death of this great man.
I skipped school that day to go to Dallas and see the president, so I know exactly where I was that day. I was close enough to Dealy Plaza to hear the shots and hear all the screaming.
As my friends and I were going home to Ft. Worth, I remember the sporadic reports on the radio mingled with music. Then the song "Surfin' Bird" was interrupted to announce his death at around 1 in the afternoon. That entire day is so very vivid in my memory.
I skipped school that day to go to Dallas and see the president, so I know exactly where I was that day. I was close enough to Dealy Plaza to hear the shots and hear all the screaming.
As my friends and I were going home to Ft. Worth, I remember the sporadic reports on the radio mingled with music. Then the song "Surfin' Bird" was interrupted to announce his death at around 1 in the afternoon. That entire day is so very vivid in my memory.
I never skipped school again after that.
wOW! If you don't mind, may I ask your age at that time? That must have had quite an effect on a young man.
wOW! If you don't mind, may I ask your age at that time? That must have had quite an effect on a young man.
November 22,'63 was five days before my 16th birthday.
The thing followed me for a while after that. In 1969, I transferred from Texas Tech to the University of Texas at Arlington. I had a foreign language requirement and the Latin I took at Tech wasn't available at UTA, so I decided to take Russian. My instructor was George DeMohrenshildt who I found out was rather deeply implicated in the assassination. He told us he was a professional geologist and just taught Russian at UTA and French at Bishop College in Dallas "for the hell of it".
I was home sick that day from school. I had a cold and a fever and was pretty dizzy-- I was 8. I slept in and got up around 11. My mother made me some soup around 11:30 or so and eventually I camped out in front of the black and white TV with 3 stations in the living room.
She was vacuuming and As The World Turns was on the tube when it was interrupted by one of those "Special Bulletins". I think it was Frank McGee that announced that the President had been shot in Dallas.
It was only a short time later that I remember Walter Cronkite wiping tears from his face announcing that the President had died.
There was abrief period where it was announced that a police officer had also been shot in a theater -- then a suspect caught
There is a blur in my memory after that--It was way too much for an 8 year old brain to fully absorb---I remember basically everything stopped everywhere over the next few days. Everything was closed...my grandparents came to our house, all the adults were very very concerned and serious ..the kids in the neighborhood were not outside playing, nor was I..
The entire weekend was full scale non stop coverage on TV.. I was watching when Jack Ruby shot Oswald on live TV--- there were hours and hours and hours of JFK laying in State--with the only action being the very somber changing of the guards----I dont remember the funeral that well-but I do have the Rhythm Of The Drums burned in myt memory as the casket carrying JFK was moved the from the White House to The Capital, then to the Cathedral and the long walking funeral procession to Arlington National Cemetary.
---I remember the folding of the flag,-- the trumpeter misplaying a note on TAPS and Jackie Kennedy lighting the eternal flame.
I was 8, I didnt know what it all meant at the time but i knew that it was very very very important.
It was at the height of the ColdWar and a time of great fear of the Russians. As an 8 year old I thought that they would come in and take over.
I was a senior in college and just the week before concluded my practice teaching! I still had classes to attend....we did not get "time off" but rather a reduced schedule. I was getting ready for a lab across campus when I heard it on the radio. At first I thought it was some kind of spoof because I was only paying half attention to it....so I ran out into the hall and there were a few others there all asking the same question....so we all knew it was real.
I started down the hall on my way out (to the lab) and it was like I was walking under water so I just stopped at the commons at the end of the hall and sat in one of the upholstered chairs. I stared into space for....I have no idea how long. I don't remember what I was thinking but at one point I was wondering how/why/how dare they assassinate the President of THE United States.....harumph. Briefly I was pi$$ed off.
It was a brand new campus and not nearly finished so we had no flagpole. There was 1 dorm...women on one side, men on the other with the cafeteria in the middle. There were 3 majors, some form of science, Math, or Engineering. Some of the engineering students built a working flagpole and planted it in the courtyard in front of the cafeteria. During the evening, we had a candle lit "remembrance". It wasn't a service, per se..... but it was very brief, then we sang some songs...don't remember what they were (but there were enough of us that it sounded pretty good). We didn't have classes until Monday...but IIRC the day of the funeral classes were canceled also.
I also felt vulnerable as some here have stated. And I was naively baffled as to who would want the President dead. I don't know how the rest of the world fared...but it took me several days before I could function normally....
I was 9 in 4th grade. Just after we came back to school after lunch the intercom started crackling. Someone said the pres. had been shot, nothing more. Then after recess one of the 6th grade teachers was standing just outside the door with a serious look on her face making sure everybody got inside in a timely manner. I knew then that something was up.
Not long after we all got back in our seats, the intercom came back on saying that JFK was dead. They didn't send us home, but they gave us time to react to it. Several kids were crying. I was not.
My dad died on Oct. 22, exactly 1 month previous. After getting that day off from school as well as the day of the funeral 2 days later, plus having every eye in the funeral home seemingly fixed on me because I was so young, well...I just wasn't inclined to cry the day JFK died. By the end of that day everyone of us kids now had been exposed to the reality of death.
As far as American culture never being the same goes, I have always wondered if there was a correlation between JFKs assassination and the unusual degree of acceptance the Beatles received in the USA, just 2 months later. It's like a lot of people were unconsciously looking for anything that might assuage their grief.
I also don't believe for a second that Oswald acted alone. He was seen by eyewitnesses sitting at a table with Jack Ruby in Ruby's night club 2 weeks before the assassination. Several people died of unnatural causes who had connections to the assassination, including What's my line panelist Dorothy Kilgallen. An LA area policeman and a Dallas area reporter who were in Jack Ruby's apartment the night Oswald was killed each died mysteriously less than a year later. The cop was "accidentally" shot by another cop and the reporter was found dead from a blow to the neck near his bathtub.
The weirdest one was a 22 year old actress named Karen Kupcinet, the daughter of Irv Kupcinet, a media person from Chicago, who only died a few years ago in his 90s. She had a role on the then TV show 'Hawaian Eye'. She apparently overheard some of her dad's friends discussing the assassination before it happened. She heard enough detail that she tried to call Dallas police HQ from a pay phone. She yelled, They're going to kill the president, they're going to kill the president!!!" But the call didn't go through; the only one who heard her was an operator. Twenty minutes later, when they DID kill the president, the operator certainly made a tape of her call and gave it to FBI. Six days later, which was Thanksgiving day that year, she was murdered. What a coincidence.
They STILL have not told us what really happened.
Can you believe that JFK has now been dead longer than he had been alive?
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Gen-2
... and about seventeen years after you sat there,... I was born....
I AM the magic Bullet.
>>cackles endlessly<<
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Broken Arrow
I was in the first grade and all I remember was that we were let out of school. As all the kids were walking home one of the older kids said Kennedy had been shot. I don't think they knew yet that he was killed. Anyway, this was the same kid who said there was no such thing as Santa Claus so I didn't believe him until I got home and my mom told me.
I was too young to have much of a reaction, but I saw how upset the adults were. It was all anyone talked about for weeks. Waysider's right, it changed the country forever. The age of innocence for the USA was over.
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waysider
Oddly, it made us (my friends and I) all suddenly feel so vulnerable. Oh, I don't mean we thought someone was going to assassinate us. I mean we no longer had that sense of security as a nation that we had only hours before.
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Broken Arrow
That's what I mean. The days of June and Ward Clever, Disney's Davey Crockett, and Miss America Pie were over. Next came the race riots, campus riots, an unpopular war that all but tore the country to shreds, and exposed political scandels. Our generation became disillusioned and cynical to this day. Just notice the Political Forum threads on this website.
You're right, people felt safe and mostly good about America prior to Kennedy's assassination. Afterwards everything changed. Maybe America was actually living a daydream and this disillusionment was bound to happen. Not that I don't still mourn the death of this great man.
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Ron G.
I skipped school that day to go to Dallas and see the president, so I know exactly where I was that day. I was close enough to Dealy Plaza to hear the shots and hear all the screaming.
As my friends and I were going home to Ft. Worth, I remember the sporadic reports on the radio mingled with music. Then the song "Surfin' Bird" was interrupted to announce his death at around 1 in the afternoon. That entire day is so very vivid in my memory.
I never skipped school again after that.
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Broken Arrow
wOW! If you don't mind, may I ask your age at that time? That must have had quite an effect on a young man.
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Ron G.
November 22,'63 was five days before my 16th birthday.
The thing followed me for a while after that. In 1969, I transferred from Texas Tech to the University of Texas at Arlington. I had a foreign language requirement and the Latin I took at Tech wasn't available at UTA, so I decided to take Russian. My instructor was George DeMohrenshildt who I found out was rather deeply implicated in the assassination. He told us he was a professional geologist and just taught Russian at UTA and French at Bishop College in Dallas "for the hell of it".
<IMG SRC="http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKdemohrenschildt2.jpg"
It was all very fascinating.
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mstar1
I was home sick that day from school. I had a cold and a fever and was pretty dizzy-- I was 8. I slept in and got up around 11. My mother made me some soup around 11:30 or so and eventually I camped out in front of the black and white TV with 3 stations in the living room.
She was vacuuming and As The World Turns was on the tube when it was interrupted by one of those "Special Bulletins". I think it was Frank McGee that announced that the President had been shot in Dallas.
It was only a short time later that I remember Walter Cronkite wiping tears from his face announcing that the President had died.
There was abrief period where it was announced that a police officer had also been shot in a theater -- then a suspect caught
There is a blur in my memory after that--It was way too much for an 8 year old brain to fully absorb---I remember basically everything stopped everywhere over the next few days. Everything was closed...my grandparents came to our house, all the adults were very very concerned and serious ..the kids in the neighborhood were not outside playing, nor was I..
The entire weekend was full scale non stop coverage on TV.. I was watching when Jack Ruby shot Oswald on live TV--- there were hours and hours and hours of JFK laying in State--with the only action being the very somber changing of the guards----I dont remember the funeral that well-but I do have the Rhythm Of The Drums burned in myt memory as the casket carrying JFK was moved the from the White House to The Capital, then to the Cathedral and the long walking funeral procession to Arlington National Cemetary.
---I remember the folding of the flag,-- the trumpeter misplaying a note on TAPS and Jackie Kennedy lighting the eternal flame.
I was 8, I didnt know what it all meant at the time but i knew that it was very very very important.
It was at the height of the ColdWar and a time of great fear of the Russians. As an 8 year old I thought that they would come in and take over.
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Twinky
On the other side of the pond, I heard the announcement of the assassination - probably some hours later.
I was young, but out on my own.
I remember where I was and what I was about to do, at the time.
Maybe it was sombre music. Maybe it was announcers' voices.
I didn't know what it meant, or even who JFK was really, but I knew it was something really serious.
The news coverage went on incessantly.
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krys
I was a senior in college and just the week before concluded my practice teaching! I still had classes to attend....we did not get "time off" but rather a reduced schedule. I was getting ready for a lab across campus when I heard it on the radio. At first I thought it was some kind of spoof because I was only paying half attention to it....so I ran out into the hall and there were a few others there all asking the same question....so we all knew it was real.
I started down the hall on my way out (to the lab) and it was like I was walking under water so I just stopped at the commons at the end of the hall and sat in one of the upholstered chairs. I stared into space for....I have no idea how long. I don't remember what I was thinking but at one point I was wondering how/why/how dare they assassinate the President of THE United States.....harumph. Briefly I was pi$$ed off.
It was a brand new campus and not nearly finished so we had no flagpole. There was 1 dorm...women on one side, men on the other with the cafeteria in the middle. There were 3 majors, some form of science, Math, or Engineering. Some of the engineering students built a working flagpole and planted it in the courtyard in front of the cafeteria. During the evening, we had a candle lit "remembrance". It wasn't a service, per se..... but it was very brief, then we sang some songs...don't remember what they were (but there were enough of us that it sounded pretty good). We didn't have classes until Monday...but IIRC the day of the funeral classes were canceled also.
I also felt vulnerable as some here have stated. And I was naively baffled as to who would want the President dead. I don't know how the rest of the world fared...but it took me several days before I could function normally....
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dmiller
I was in 6th grade. Catholic Grade School. We were sent home for the day after hearing the news.
On top of that - - - It was my parents 13th wedding anniversary on that same day.
With the town (basically) shut down due to what happened, they stayed home that evening.
There's a former "baby-sitter" who didn't get to work in Indiana that night, back in 1963.
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johniam
I still have a lot of thoughts on this one.
I was 9 in 4th grade. Just after we came back to school after lunch the intercom started crackling. Someone said the pres. had been shot, nothing more. Then after recess one of the 6th grade teachers was standing just outside the door with a serious look on her face making sure everybody got inside in a timely manner. I knew then that something was up.
Not long after we all got back in our seats, the intercom came back on saying that JFK was dead. They didn't send us home, but they gave us time to react to it. Several kids were crying. I was not.
My dad died on Oct. 22, exactly 1 month previous. After getting that day off from school as well as the day of the funeral 2 days later, plus having every eye in the funeral home seemingly fixed on me because I was so young, well...I just wasn't inclined to cry the day JFK died. By the end of that day everyone of us kids now had been exposed to the reality of death.
As far as American culture never being the same goes, I have always wondered if there was a correlation between JFKs assassination and the unusual degree of acceptance the Beatles received in the USA, just 2 months later. It's like a lot of people were unconsciously looking for anything that might assuage their grief.
I also don't believe for a second that Oswald acted alone. He was seen by eyewitnesses sitting at a table with Jack Ruby in Ruby's night club 2 weeks before the assassination. Several people died of unnatural causes who had connections to the assassination, including What's my line panelist Dorothy Kilgallen. An LA area policeman and a Dallas area reporter who were in Jack Ruby's apartment the night Oswald was killed each died mysteriously less than a year later. The cop was "accidentally" shot by another cop and the reporter was found dead from a blow to the neck near his bathtub.
The weirdest one was a 22 year old actress named Karen Kupcinet, the daughter of Irv Kupcinet, a media person from Chicago, who only died a few years ago in his 90s. She had a role on the then TV show 'Hawaian Eye'. She apparently overheard some of her dad's friends discussing the assassination before it happened. She heard enough detail that she tried to call Dallas police HQ from a pay phone. She yelled, They're going to kill the president, they're going to kill the president!!!" But the call didn't go through; the only one who heard her was an operator. Twenty minutes later, when they DID kill the president, the operator certainly made a tape of her call and gave it to FBI. Six days later, which was Thanksgiving day that year, she was murdered. What a coincidence.
They STILL have not told us what really happened.
Can you believe that JFK has now been dead longer than he had been alive?
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