OT: Where were you on November 22, 1963

[Fairfield Fan]

I think second grade in an elementary school in Maryland. We were told to get onto the buses home early. On the bus some kid said Kennedy had been shot. Someone said "no way." The girl said, "Uh-huh! He got shot in the head!" When I arrived home, my mother was crying- no, sobbing- while bent over the radio listening to reports about the assassination. My mother and father had attended- one of the masses who attended- Kennedy's inauguration.

School was cancelled. I stayed home. Was watching television when they brought out the assassin, who was murdered on TV, right in front of me and the national television audience.

It was boring, being out of school, and with little to do, but hear or watch about funerals. Didn't mean anything to me at the time. It does now. And I can never forget where I was.

 

[LouS]

I was at Uconn driving to my class and heard he had been shot on the radio. I got to class a little late and informed the class what had just happened. That essentially ended all classes for the rest of the day. The Student Union put out large speakers on the patio and we waited to find outthe President Kennedy had died.
An awful day in my life.....

 

[chj001]

As I mentioned earlier, I was in Junior High that afternoon, but can't really remember where exactly. I can remember, though, within a few yards where I was when I heard live "Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed!" even though I was in a moving car at the time. I was driving home on Northern Boulevard (25A) from my lifeguarding job during the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college and was in the middle of the intersection turning onto Huntington Bay Road. That image is as fresh in my brain as when it happened over 51 years ago. Later that night, my family gathered around the TV set to watch Neil Armstrong take "one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."

 

[Drumguy]

3rd grade I think, classroom, they announced it over the loudspeaker. We watched the funeral in our classroom a few days later - all the rooms would have an AV techer wheel a TV in ofr important events. Later on it's how we watched most of the space launches.

 

[Ozimoto]

I was at home as I had just turned 3 years old the month before. Have very fleeting memories of the funeral procession on TV but that's about it. My parents didn't talk about serious stuff in front of the kids back then. I'm sure my sister, who was 9 at the time, would have more memories about it, but I've never asked her. I may have to do that.

 

[McFly]

Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas, going to school on the equipment I would later maintain. Hanging around the barracks after lunch, waiting for the afternoon classes. To a guy from Mass, the area had very little to recommend it, and at that moment, I hated everything about Texas.

 

[SoFla Steve]

Standing on a chair in my 3rd grade class washing the blackboards after school.

 

[ME Husky Fan]

On the playground, 6th grade, Allentown PA, when word came he had been shot. They had to call the buses in to get us home as they closed schools. To fast forward a couple of days - to see Oswald get shot on live TV was one of those 'where were you' moments, comparable, in my mind as far as the surrealism, to seeing that 2nd plane crash into the south tower on 9/11.

 

[bantamlaker]

I was a high school senior in Brooklyn. I got out early and heard on the radio that Kennedy had been shot and turned on the tv in time to hear Walter Cronkite tells us the President was dead.
The shooting was on a Friday of what was supposed to be a weekend of football and partying. My school had a very successful season and added on an out of town game in New Rochelle for that Saturday. To play a road game outside of Brooklyn was a really big deal back then. As sports editor of the school paper I had to be at the game and in the hours immediately after the shooting no one could find out if the game would be played. Of course it was cancelled and what was supposed to be a fun weekend turned out to be one of great sorrow.

 

[warbler1055]

I was at the University of Vermont (UVM), Williams Science Hall, in the Physics Lab.

 

[ShmiCO]

First grade in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Our teacher back came into the classroom after lunch with tears streaming down her face to give us the news.

 

[Txhoopsalot]

I was at the University of Vermont (UVM), Williams Science Hall, in the Physics Lab.

Fifth grade in Dallas, Texas. Our class had been watching the motorcade on television earlier the same day. It was a very big deal at that time to have the president visiting our city. As someone above posted, the teachers were called to a meeting on the intercom. Awhile later, the teacher came back to the room to tell us the president had been shot. I perceived that teacher as a mean, old lady. She cried that day. We were dismissed from school. Later that day, I learned that President Kennedy was dead. For years, the assassination of JFK defined Dallas to many around the country. Five years later, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy would be murdered within two months of each other. By then I was fifteen. The impact on me was even greater and more direct. I was hurt and scared about the country I lived in. I wondered if assassinations were to be the norm. I always think of the three assassinations together, almost as one event.

Edit to add: It hurts me today to think about those events.

 

[Argonaut]

-21 years old.

-25 for me. Sheesh, you're old...

The way you some of guys are describing JFK's assassination is nearly identical to how my generation would describe watching 9/11 at school. It's really interesting to read.

 

[SallyH]

10th grade History Class. We were dismissed early and I had to take public transportation across town - Shaker Rapid to The Terminal Tower, across Public Square (Cleveland) to a bus stop. I remember how quiet the whole city was. There were televisions in all the store windows and everyone was in shock. Terrible.

 

[uconnfan68]

Junior high school - 7th grade.

I was in math class when an announcement came over the pa that at the bell we would all report to homeroom. Principal came over the pa and made the announcement.

Also in 7th grade... and they informed us as we were lining up to leave that day.

 

[Zanzman]

Unborn

 

[skilz]

I was 23 hours old...just born!

 

[TylerTx]

I was in the eighth grade in Dallas, Texas. My father was a State Trooper stationed in the Dallas area. He practiced for three weeks driving the motorcade route. His car was 13th behind the President. As he was preparing to leave for Love Field, he asked me if I wanted to ride with him in his empty car. After leaving home he got a call on the radio that everything changed he was no longer in the motorcade. Time 07:30 in the morning. He pulled to the curb, let me out and I took a city bus home. He proceeded to the office, picked up a Sergeant and two other patrolmen. They then proceeded to Stemmons Freeway past Baylor Medical center, Methodist Hospital and UT Med Center to Parkland Hospital, the county indigent hospital, where they secured the Emergency Room. My father then took his car to the top of the off ramp on Stemmons to secure the off ramp and await further instructions. Time 08:20. I’m not sure the President had landed yet in Dallas.
I had returned home, was watching cartoons with my brothers on our black and white TV. A portion of the motorcade was televised up until it got to Dealey Plaza downtown. To the left was WFAA television and to the right was the school book depository. For some reason the route turned right then an immediate left. A camera rolled out on the TV station patio would have captured everything. There was no camera there.
After the shots were fired the President in his convertible limousine sped away to Stemmons Freeway, taking the exit at my father’s off ramp then down to the Emergency Room of Parkland Hospital. As I was preparing to go to school, television programming was interrupted with news of the shooting. Shortly thereafter a family that were eyewitnesses on the “grassy knoll” were interviewed. Ironically the entire family was killed in less than a year in a one car crash.
I walked into my English class and started to tell the teacher that the President had been shot in downtown Dallas and she shut me up. At that point they didn’t know. Five minutes later the principal made the announcement over the PA. It was later that the President was pronounced dead.
My question, what did someone suddenly know at 07:30 in the morning? My father stayed at the hospital for six weeks guarding the governor who was injured in the shooting.

 

[boontonbomber]

teaching in Ct. , it was end of the day activity period. I had a group of 8th graders for model car club. the announcement came over the intercom that he had been shot. to best of my recollection, the kids went on gluing their model car pieces together, and I just let them. after school in teacher's room, announcement that he had died. everyone in shock. was at a convenience store on Sunday, a tv behind the cashier. looked up to see Oswald get shot.

 

[Longtime fan]

Less than 25% of today's U.S. population was alive when President Kennedy was killed in 1963. Everyone seems to remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.

I was two weeks shy of my third birthday. I couldn't comprehend what happened, but I remember my parents and older brother and sister were glued to the TV all weekend. Years later they all said I was a pain that weekend. I wanted to play.

I was in graduate school. It was the night before a final exam in managerial economics. Needless to say, the exam was re-scheduled.

 

[Papa33]

If my memory serves, Walter Cronkite was the person who announced the death of JFK to the television world (and maybe the whole world). I think my parents DVRed it .

Yes, it was Walter, serious and auvuncular as could be. I had a foretaste of the moment, however. I was sitting in a classical music appreciation class, listening with classmates to the Beethoven 7th symphony funeral march's somber tread. As we listened, an American flag fully visible through a classroom window descended to half-mast, much to our amazement. Only when we left the class a few minutes later, did we hear the horrid news shouted from several students. I ran off to my fraternity house to see a replay of Walter's announcement that our young, charismatic President had been shot . . . and died. Many students (all male at that time) were in a kind of shocked stupor; others openly cried and sought each others' comfort. As you can tell, the memory is still vivid.

 

[ME Husky Fan]

Can you even imagine something such as this sort of tragedy happening today and then fast forwarding 55+ years and reading the blogs, should such forums exist, as to what people were doing, where they were, etc? Most would have found out and commented about it via twitter - such is progress?

 

[ed4ourgirls]

I was at sea, in the wardroom of the USS Shangi-La watching the evening movie "It Happens
Every Spring" (Ray Milland as a scientist who discovers a chemical concoction that repels wood,
and becomes a star pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals - not quite as bad as it sounds).

When the movie was stopped to announce the president's death my first thought was
wondering what kind of president LBJ would be.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

Third grade, Mrs. Nicholas's class.

Others are correct about the other memories - the moon landing I watched at home with my parents - that was a "scheduled" event. The Challenger Disaster - on vacation with my mother, on TV at a diner where we had stopped for a bite. The 9/11 disaster - I was home, due to work at a remote location about 30 minutes from my home around noonish. The wife called (and came home from her office) and of course I didn't work.

I think folks are correct - those are the indelible events of our lifetime.

 

[MSGRET]

I was in the fifth grade in Lafayette, Indiana. It was announced in our class rooms that school was ending early, all the kids were whooping it up until they stated at the end it was due to the POTUS was assassinated in Dallas, TX, then everyone got very quite. We were told to go to the gym and wait for our buses or parents/older sibling depending on if you road a bus to school or walked. They wouldn't let any of the students walk home.