November 22nd has never been the same since they killed JFK

[Grammy23]

63. I was in my 10th grade biology class in high school, Ft. Worth, TX.

I had just passed my 15th birthday on Nov. 13th. There was an announcement on the PA and Mr. Van Meter, my teacher, went out in the hall. The announcement was kind of garbled and he went out to see if he could find out more. We knew the President had been shot but no one knew if he was still alive. Eventually we learned he had died and there was a lot of crying and shock as the truth started to sink in. Some boys cheered but were quickly told to stop by the teacher.

We changed classes and I went to my English class but we didn’t do any work. Mostly we just sat in semi-stunned silence. School was dismissed early and I rode the bus home.

As soon as I got off the bus, I noticed a commotion at a house near ours that was separated by a street and a junior high school track. But you could clearly see the house surrounded by police and people in plain clothes. As it turned out, it was the home of Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother. We did not know the lady (we had just moved to Ft. Worth that June) and only learned who she was in relation to the shooter later that night on the news.

As it turned out, my parents had had an opportunity to attend a breakfast for President Kennedy that morning in Ft. Worth but both had decided they would go to work. (Much to their regret later!) A few days later, my mother, sister and I came home from church to hear from my grandfather that Oswald had been killed on TV, live. He was normally a quiet, non-talkative man, but he was chattering away trying to explain what he had seen on television.

It was a chaotic time in America, in many ways. Even though Johnson had been sworn in as President, it felt odd, almost like we had no leader. Eventually, that feeling dissolved but for those sad days in November, it was frightening and disturbing. I think many people felt vulnerable and got a sickening taste of reality that things can change in a moment. It was a real eye opener for me as a teenage girl. Probably a turning point. Oddly enough, my own father died four years later after a sudden illness that took his life in eight days. Those two events made me keenly aware of how most of what we take as normal and stable are simply illusions that help us maintain our sanity and a false sense of “control”.