61 Years Ago This Friday-JFK Assassination

[MrWowWow]

Last edited Thu Nov 21, 2024, 09:11 AM - Edit history (10)

If you were around then, where were you, and what were you doing just before it happened? How did it change your life?
.

.

.

.

.

.

****This was our President****

[Ocelot II]

1. Home from school with flu.

Mom's soaps got interrupted with the news.

[murielm99]

2. I was a sophomore in high school,

in typing class. Typewriters made a lot of clatter in those days. One of the students noticed that the classroom intercom was bonging. Everyone stopped typing. The principal was on the intercom, telling us that the President had just been shot. After a while, he told us to resume our classroom activities. He would come back with updates. The next time he came on, the principal left the radio on for everyone to hear as the news developed.

One of the meanest boys in the school sat in front of me. He shook his head when he heard the President had been shot in the head. When Kennedy's death was announced, that boy cried.

When the bell rang, I went to my geometry class silently. Everyone was silent. I heard only the sound of lockers opening and closing. No one was speaking. Our geometry teacher spoke to us about the death of good men, the death of leaders, and how our government was designed to go on. We continued to be stunned and subdued. Before the end of the hour, everyone was sent home.

I will never forget that day, and the days that followed.

[whathehell]

3. I was sitting in my eighth grade class..

listening to our principle over the PA give us the shocking news before sending everyone home. It was a terrible, heart crushing day.

[Meowmee]

4. I was too young to be aware etc.

I don’t remember my mother saying very much about it in later years. We weren’t in this country at the time either but I have some memory of her talking about it later. I can’t remember what she said, of course I knew about it learning about it in school, etc.

[Ping Tung]

5. I was 19 and home on leave after 1 year in Japan.

I spent the next few days glued to the TV.

[elleng]

6. ;-(

Sophomore year of college.

History or Political Science prof informed the class.

[H2O Man]

7. School.

Likely not paying attention until we were sent home. I learned the president had been killed on the bus ride.

[nitpicked]

8. I was so young they hid the newspapers from me

This was in England.

They let me watch the funeral for Churchill.

When I got taken out to Runnymede later that year, it was "memorial to a past president".

Only when I got to the states did I understand the trauma.

[John1956PA]

9. The memories of that terrible Friday afternoon are seared into my memory.

The routine of my Catholic School second grade classroom was jarred by the abrupt radio news feed blaring from the room's public address speaker. President Kennedy had been shot while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, and was rushed to a hospital. After a bit, the speaker went quiet. The class had its restroom break. After we returned, the speaker abruptly resumed the radio news feed. President Kennedy had died.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

10. Remember

Link to tweet

[2naSalit]

11. Was in school...

Second grade, a school whose students were 80% military kids.

We heard over the intercom, a new thing in schools at the time, the principal made the announcement and then dismissed us for the rest of the day, maybe the week.

We lived in military housing so the whole neighborhood was in a weird shock, the kind I witnessed in Key West during the missile crisis, the vibe was so heavy and numbing that even we kids could feel it like a cold, wet blanket lain over the whole country.

[Rhiannon12866]

12. I was in elementary school, too. On that day and time, my reading group was allowed to go to the school library alone

And we were warned to stay in line, not to run or talk in the hall. We were the last classroom on the hall on the left. Turns out that "Coach," the school gym teacher, happened to have a free period, so he turned on the radio in his office - and heard the breaking news that the president had been shot. He rushed out to the nearest classroom and told the sixth grade teacher the news he'd just heard. And that teacher ran to the nearby school library and told the librarian - and that's when we kids heard.

So we ran all the way back to our classroom and told our teacher who ran off to check it out. It's a little fuzzy after that, we kids were all sent home, but had to wait in the gym for the school buses to arrive. When I got home, my mother already knew, her neighbor who loved "her president" had already told her. And of course my mother was shook up, everybody looked up to the president in those days, especially JFK.

We were out of school after that with the TV always on breaking news. I was watching when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot, saw it happen live and went in the kitchen and told my mother. She grabbed the counter and said she couldn't take any more. And that's when I learned the word "grimace," which they kept repeating.

[GiqueCee]

13. I was a junior in high school...

... and as I got on the bus to go home, I saw that the driver was crying. I asked him why. He told me Kennedy had been shot. Soon, every girl on the bus was crying and the boys were holding back tears. Not a good day.
I wonder if we'll ever get the truth about that murder, as well as the two in '68. You can damn sure betcha there was more behind all three than the public was ever told. My money's on J. Edgar. He was one vicious sonofabitch, and he hated JFK for never affording him the obsequious deference he demanded.
It was less that 20 years since the end of WW II, and the relatively young CIA, successor to the Wild Bill Donovan's OSS (Office of Strategic Services), was WAY too full of itself, and was busily wreaking havoc all over the world.
The lords of the underworld, the Mafia, resented the restraints that Kennedy administration imposed on them, and had a reputation for violent reprisals against anyone who got in their way.
A power-mad head of the FBI, a rogue intelligence agency, and the Mafia, each with their own axe to grind... what could go wrong?
Accumulating evidence amassed over more than half a century strongly suggests that just such a terrible triumvirate may well be the probable perpetrators. We'll never know for sure.

[PlanetBev]

14. I had just turned 13 five days before

I still have the EXTRA LA Times and Herald Examiner from that day.