JFK - NOV 63 - Where were you?

Third month into my senior year in HS.

 

I was in the 4th grade at Peck Elementary School in Greensboro, N.C..

I remember the day clearly as it was very eventful. Leaving school to walk home a neighbor boy jumped me from behind. He was jealous because I had been promoted in the School Boy Patrol that morning.

Though he was older and much bigger than me, I managed to get on top of him and was giving him a licking. Just then our principal pulled me off of him. He told me he had seen what happened and let me go, but took the other boy back in the school to be punished.

That day was also unusual in that my father had instructed me to walk to my Aunt Rachel's house after school. She lived several blocks away, and so I walked toward her house. Just before I got to her house, an older kid came running out of his house shouting, "Old man Kennedy's dead!". I knew our President was named Kennedy, but he wasn't old in my mind, so I wasn't sure who he was talking about.

Just as I arrived at my Aunt's house, she came out on the porch as though she had been looking for me. She was crying and obviously upset. I asked her what was wrong and she told me the President had been shot and was dead.

I can't remember much after that except it was all there was on TV. I did happen to walk into a friend's house two days later, just seconds after Oswald was shot, I also remember that.

 

Had come home from kindergarten and was eating lunch. As was her habit my Mom was watching "As the World Turns" soap opera when they broke into the broadcast with the news that Kennedy had been shot. I remember my Mom being quite upset and we watched the news unfold that afternoon. I don't remember any of the details but I think my interest in history was sparked that day. I still have the newspaper from that day with the giant font headline: PRESIDENT SLAIN.

The only other thing I remember is that I was bummed out because the news coverage the rest of the week plus the funeral was preempting my TV cartoons.

 

I was in the college library researching a question for a library science reference class with another student. One of the other students walked over to us and ask, "Have you heard? Kennedy has been shot in Dallas."

 

In a sixth grade classroom, doing our math exercises. The principle came on the intercom and gave a brief account of what happened. For those interested, a TV was set up in the school gym to follow the events that afternoon. Classes were pretty much forgotten. Buses and final bell were all on schedule the rest of the day, but no one did much of anything. We were all kids, but we were nonetheless stunned by the whole thing.

I drifted in and out of the gym during the afternoon. The thing that sticks with me, odd as it may seem, is some news writer who came in behind Walter Cronkite and sat down at a typewriter. He rolled up one sleeve, then the bells went off on a teletype next to his desk. He jumped up, ripped the copy from the machine, and sat down again to begin typing furiously. He never did roll that other sleeve up. 'Til late into the evening, he was still at that desk, typing, checking the teletype, one sleeve up, one sleeve down. He never noticed.

By the way, what was he typing that first time? A copy boy grabbed his typewritten sheet and carried it across the room to Cronkite. He read it, as he was giving accounts of an assault on Adlai Stephenson in downtown Dallas, and stopped short, a look of shock on his face: "From Dallas, Texas, the flash -- apparently official -- President Kennedy died at 1 PM Central Standard Time. 2 PM Eastern time ... some 38 minutes ago." He then removed his glasses, briefly broke down, wiped his eyes, and said nothing for about 10 seconds. He then went on, "Vice-President Johnson has left the hospital in Dallas ... " and continued that way for the rest of the afternoon.

I gained amazing respect for him that day. It was destroyed just six years later, on February 27, 1968, when he took it upon himself to pronounce the Vietnam War "mired in stalemate" at the end of his national newscast, without bothering to explain just how that stalemate developed. It was not because we were fighting a superior force. It was because people like Cronkite were bringing the horrors of war into Middle American living rooms every night, and that is what truly influenced the course of the war. Cronkite just gave it a moment, as he did in 1963 when JFK died.

 

At school in the 7th grade in a cafeteria line waiting for lunch. They closed the schools and we did not go back until the next Monday.

 

In my college dormitory room studying for an English test. The window was open and I heard someone passing by say Kennedy had been shot. At first I thought it was a joke but I soon learned it was true. The English class did not meet that day.

 

Boy, most you guys are really old :laugh:

I was 9 days old, most likely napping, with a whole lotta less headaches than I have today. :smilewinkgrin:

 

I was about six months old in Seattle, WA.

 

I was in Mrs. Writher's English class in the home-ec room. Went outside and lowered the flag to half-mast.