Sixty years ago, on this day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. I hadn’t thought much about that day since I wrote about it ten years ago, on the fiftieth anniversary:
I was in my chemistry class at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, in an old gray stone building on the North Oval, taking a test. Perhaps that’s why the news didn’t make it into that particular classroom. After class I went up to Campus Corner to buy a few things and as I waited at a cash register, I overheard some people talking about the president being shot. I interrupted them and they confirmed what I’d heard: The president of the United States had been shot.
Horrified, I raced back to my rooming house a few blocks away and found everyone already huddled around the television. For four days, until after the funeral, we stood watch with the rest of the world. We ordered in food rather than go to the boarding house for meals. We went to bed reluctantly, if at all. We spoke in hushed, disbelieving voices.
In 1963, November 22 came eight days before Thanksgiving. I have no recollection of the holiday. Perhaps there was no Thanksgiving that year.
Perhaps time stopped the day the President died.
I will never forget it. I was at school in the 2nd grade
I can only imagine adults trying to explain to children why everyone was crying.
I was just overwhelmed by seeing them all
I remember. It was something we couldn’t take in.
Imagine – a time when we couldn’t believe that a person had been shot dead in public ..
A national tragedy … and only the beginning
I was in high school when they announced over the intercom that he had been shot. It was shocking but I was sure they would save him. How could the president of the United States be killed? I think that broke open something in this society that led to all the turmoil of the 1960s and 70s.
I agree. It showed that no one, not even the President of the United States, is safe. A terrible awakening.
I was in PE – 6th period. They rolled in a blocky TV. As always I walk about a mile home after the bus dropped me off at the stop. My younger friend was shaken, but I knew no matter how bad it was, we were safe – and the US would go on – sad , in disbelief, and in mourning – be the country would stand. We weren’t a banana republic…then. Still threaten, but less secure and solid in unity now
It was a history lesson none of us wanted, or could believe. The end of the innocence.
I was three years old and my mother had driven me to pick up my 11 year old brother from school. He wasn’t in his regular classroom and was eventually found in the only room at the school with a TV – he was helping his teacher connecting it to the new school antena so they could watch the TV news of all the events.
Hard to imagine there was only one tv in the building at that time. It must have made quite an impression for you to remember from that age.
I was a journalist in the Navy and working at the base newspaper. We had just put the issue to bed and scrambled to change the front page to a picture of President Kennedy. A short write up was also added by the editor. A really unbelievable tragic time.
I was part of the civilian population. I can’t even imagine the reaction of the military. And as a journalist you really had to keep your wits about you and respond accordingly. I remember the tv anchors trying to keep their composure while reporting matter-of-factly.
Very moving post, Susan. I was in 6th grade and they sent us immediately home from school. I had visited the White House with my family less than 3 months earlier and memories of Jackie Kennedy at the White House swirled with the b&w TV reportage of the assassination. Some of those images are indelibly etched in memory even after all these years. I think we were out of school for an entire week? What a tragic era.
That must have been doubly shocking for you, coming so soon after your White House visit. I’d forgotten schools were dismissed. Probably our university classes were cancelled too. I just don’t remember. It’s a tribute to the country that we held together after that. I shudder to think what would happen if a president were assassinated today …
I was in 7th grade on this day 60 years ago and an announcement was made for all students to return to their homerooms where we waited for our buses to arrive to take us home early. My homeroom teacher looked very shaken and told us the president had been shot. It felt unreal, surreal and scary all at once.
Well, it was unreal, surreal, and scary. You study American history all the way through school, and the President of the United States becomes almost mythical, somebody in history books, or on Mount Rushmore, or way off in the White House. And then suddenly it becomes very, very real.
I was a kid in Junior High. JFK’s death was very sad and truly shocking, but Oswald’s murder in the main Dallas Cop Shop screamed something nefarious was really up….and we haven’t come down yet. We, as a nation writ large… may never.
That “may never” is what worries me.