It is November 22.

[TNNurse]

The date will always be something to stop and remember. I have not seen a mention elsewhere.

We need to remember. I was 14.

[dweller]

1. I was 9

Remember that day still
🙁



✌🏻

[yorkster]

2. There was a post yesterday asking for

people to write of their memories of that day. Good thoughtful comments.
Sorry I can't remember who posted or the time.


It was irisblue post "What do you remember about Friday, November 22, 1963 from yesterday. No time, just yesterday, but submitted several entries before the last timed post of 8:51 pm.

[John1956PA]

3. Here is a recent DU post.

https://democraticunderground.com/100219744117

[Mike 03]

4. There's a very interesting thread in the Lounge

People sharing their recollections of that stark day.

[MrWowWow]

6. I had this up earlier in the week.

https://democraticunderground.com/100219744117

[John1956PA]

8. Here is the thread in the lounge:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10182098527

[MrWowWow]

5. Here you go

https://democraticunderground.com/100219744117

[2naSalit]

7. Etched in my memory...

Not that long after returning to the NE from our stint in Key West for the missile crisis. We were sent home from school. My dad, in the military and whose family were friends and did business with the Kennedy family, came home and cried. It was the first time I ever saw him cry. I was in the second grade. My dad's father, the only grandpa I ever knew, passed two weeks later and nine days later, my baby sister was born.

It was a very eventful and weird time at our house.

[MiHale]

9. It's my Dad's 107th birthday today...

We never forget

[LSparkle]

10. I was in kindergarten

First time I saw adults openly weeping. The world is a scary place. The drum cadence of the constant funeral coverage on TV for days afterward ... I grew up suspicious and fearful and I’m feeling weird echoes in these times but especially today. 🥲

[Marthe48]

11. I posted a remembrance this morning

I was 11, came home from school. My Gram had the tv on, and told us the President had been shot. It was shocking.

[Ron Green]

12. I never saw anyone cry, and that night our high school played its regular football game.

This has been a divided country for a long time.

[NoRethugFriends]

52. The 24th was also something. Oswald shot on live TV

[Javaman]

13. I was only an infant but I have felt its effects my whole life.

we are were we are because of that day.

[BComplex]

35. Amen to that, Javaman.

I was 14, but I started seeing the effects of it within a couple of years.

[SharonAnn]

14. I was a Freshman in college. My world changed that day.

The feeling of being safe and secure, growing up in the 50’s and early 60’s, meant that Kennedy’s assassination made me aware of monstrous evil. I was shaken.

[Borogove]

15. I remember that day so vividly.

I was 9 and in 4th grade. My teacher was also the elementary school principal and had his office right behind the classroom. His office phone rang and he excused himself to go answer it. After a brief period of time, he announced over the PA system that the president had been shot. He then came back to the classroom with tears flowing down his cheeks.

[Zorro]

16. The event that initiated our sad decline as a nation

I believe this country and the world would be a much better place had this tragedy not occurred.

Remember and weep for what might have been.

[bdamomma]

17. Yes

I said it too myself. That's when everything changed in the USA. Camelot gone.

[DFW]

18. And it's a Friday, as well.

I remember it all too clearly, and I was 11.

Earlier that year, my dad, who was a friend of Pierre Salinger, asked if he could get JFK to personally autograph a photo, mentioning my name. When I got home that evening, I just stared at the photo for a long while. I still have it in the same frame it was in when I received it on my 11th birthday.

[soandso]

44. Oh, wow

I was close to Marc Salinger, Pierre's son. He committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge.

[DFW]

47. I'm sure I met him at one point or another

But it never turned into any kind of friendship, or I would have remembered him.

[soandso]

48. Pic

[DFW]

53. It would have been over 60 years ago

The pic doesn’t stir any memories, I’m afraid.

[barbtries]

19. i was 8.

third grade. I was not yet able to even begin to comprehend what an earth shattering event it was.

so many what ifs.

[Freddie]

26. I was 7

Second grade. I was unhappy the Saturday morning cartoons weren’t on that weekend.

[barbtries]

30. yes.

one of my clear memories of that time is watching some movie about Fatima? Yep, I googled to be sure I had that right and see they made it over in 2020. religious.

and nothing else was on but JFK's death.

I will say one thing. My mother, lifelong republican, would be a total magat by now if she was alive, cried. She did not celebrate.

[soandso]

45. Same

I was 9 and remember days of it all on TV as all the adults were glued to it and I was bored out of my mind.

It was a coup and changed everything, worsening the disaster of Vietnam.

[Ping Tung]

20. I was 19 and on leave from the military.

I remember it well.

[kch22]

21. I was an 11-year-old 6th grader in Austin.

It was to be JFK’s next stop after Dallas.
Our school was to close early so we could go to downtown Austin to see the president’s motorcade. My classmates and I were eating lunch when word spread around the cafeteria that the president had been shot. A strange feeling went through me, like a nightmare had come true. It seemed unreal, but the world had truly changed that day.

[Farmer-Rick]

22. I was in Catholic elementary school at the time

The nuns were all whispering and crying. They finally decided to end classes early. Then they cancelled all classes for the next week and had numerous memorial services.

It came as a shock when I found out in highschool that people in Texas hated JFK. It wasn't just a lone assassin. Others in power wanted him dead too.

[WmChris]

23. High school library

Senior year announced over the intercom system. My initial response was disbelief. Eventually I had to recognize that it had happened and my concept of our government was forever changed.

[Kid Berwyn]

24. Thank you for remembering.

I was 6. And I tell everyone who wasn’t yet born:

THE COUNTRY HAS NOT BEEN THE SAME SINCE.

[AmBlue]

25. I was in kindergarten

It was a terrible day. Even as little kiddos we could see something awful had happened, long before the grown-ups told us. Caroline was my age and I loved her Dad. Then came Martin. Then came Bobby. It was a shocking time to live through and changed us as a nation. And not for the better. It felt like the murder of hope, and of innocence. I was heartbroken then, and always wil be for what we lost.

[SpankMe]

27. I was six months old and I don't remember it, of course

Not to minimize the impact of it, but my feelings right now are that Trump winning this second election is my version of the Kennedy assassination. With no hyperbole or exaggeration, the Trump victory of Nov. 5, 2024 is a worse event than 9/11. That's the state of my emotions right now. I'm totally broken.

Less related, I visited the Kennedy assassination site in Dallas last year. It was a damn circus. People standing in the street on the spot where the bullets hit, taking selfies and blocking traffic. Conspiracy theorists with tables and literature muddying the history. People selling cheap, stupid Kennedy swag while dressed in MAGA-like flag-themed costumes. It was like the Hollywood Walk of Fame with kooks and mindless gawkers.

The sanctity and solemnity of the site is gone. It's a Disney-like bucket list item for anyone under 50. Few would care to stop and think about the real impact the event likely had on American and world history. The history is distorted and largely forgotten, except for those few frames of the Zapruder film that get played endlessly on YouTube.

[japple]

28. I was 14, too. 5th period English class.

[TNNurse]

42. It was Latin class for me. I remember Mrs. Beard telling us

before it was announced to all. I remember the weekend as well.

My mother was cooking in the kitchen and I was in the living room. I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, live on TV. I went into the kitchen to tell Mother and she was stunned to realize ( and help me understand) that I had seen someone killed live on TV.

We mourned for JFK and his family. I had lost my father 3 years before and I felt for those kids.

[TheRickles]

29. I was in 7th grade and learned about it as the school day was ending.

Everyone was in the hallways at their lockers, getting ready to go home. The news spread from person to person like wildfire down the corridor. Oddly, that speedy flow of information made more of an impact on me than the emotions of the day. Not now, though.....

[PCIntern]

31. Fifth Grade classroom...

The look on the teacher’s face was unlike anything I had ever witnessed. She was retired from the WAC and was shaken to her foundation.

School was dismissed early. Got home to see the plane land and the casket removed.

Nothing was the same after that weekend.

[electric_blue68]

40. I hated my 4th grade teacher. But after she was called out of our classroom, then returned...

it was shocking to see that she had kind of turned ashen!
(being told JFK had been shot)

[OLDMDDEM]

32. I was 16.

[NotHardly]

33. I was 12 ... heard it on the radio in our 1 room school house

[johnnyfins]

34. I wasn't born yet,

But I feel like I was ripped off.

[3825-87867]

36. What a difference a day made!

[leftyladyfrommo]

37. I was in grade 10 geometry class

Word spread like wildfire the old fashioned way. Person to person.

It was as big a shock to me as 9/11. Awful.

[Prairie_Seagull]

38. Sorrow will have it's due.

During this time, all the more.

[alterfurz]

39. 61 years ago today...

...during the single phys ed hour of the semester devoted to "hygiene" (what they used to call sex education): Coach was nervously trying to explain the facts to the embarrassed boys when the announcement came over the P.A. That ended the discussion, and Coach never again revisited the topic. Which may help explain certain subsequent aspects of my love life.

[Vegan4life]

41. I was 3

My mother loved JFK. I remember her grief, my earliest memory. The day of the funeral, she held me next to her on the couch, and we watched the funeral on our little black and white TV.

[Scrivener7]

43. It's my first memory: my mother throwing a laundry basket downstairs and saying,

"The President's been shot."

[Xavier Breath]

46. I wouldn't be born for two years, 11 months and 14 days.

My Mom always told the story about how she was babysitting and watching As the World Turns when Cronkite broke in with his cryptic bulletin. She called my grandmother convinced the world was coming apart. She wasn't far off.

[Meowmee]

49. I don't have any memory

Of it, I was too young to be aware. I have to ask my brother if he remembers it. We were not living in the US at the time. When we came here, I learned about it in school and I have some vague memory of asking my mother about it, but I can’t remember what she said- something like it was a terrible time, etc. Tori Amos wrote a song which refers to it called Jackie’s Strength.

[OnlinePoker]

50. My second birthday. Mom stopped making my cake as soon as she heard the news. n/t

[NoRethugFriends]

51. Me too. In Miss Weiser's 10th grade English class