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Just got done watching Sunday Morning. The whole show was focused on JFK's life and presidency and I found myself still brought to tears 50 years after the fact. Rewatching all that footage from back in the day sure brought back the memories. They say anyone who was old enough knows where they were when they heard the news of his death. Do you remember what you were doing?
I was a teenager working part-time at a bakery and lunch counter in the afternoons. We heard the news on TV at home and I remember crying throughout my shift that day. I also remember my boss, an old man who had immigrated from Italy, being particularly unmoved. I always wondered about that. Back then there weren't many people who weren't charmed by the First Family, and that fascination with "Camelot" has endured all these years.
We have three different JFK assassination threads going, do we need another?
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Yes, I remember. I was in the drug store and the cashier told everyone to be quiet because something was going to come over the radio. I paid for my scotch tape and left but a kid hollered to me from across the street, "The President's been shot!"
I didn't know what he was talking about. Back in my college dorm room, I turned on the radio and heard it. Then, a little after 2:10 pm, Walter Cronkite said he was dead. I thought, "Better off dead than being so injured that he would be a vegetable the rest of his life."
I was eleven. I had an ear infection and was home from school. Mom and I were sitting on the couch in the tv room listening to Arthur Godfrey's show on CBS raido. He was in the middle of a joke when the bullitan came in. Walter Cronkite read the first bullitan. We couldn't believe it but turned on the tv. For what seemed like the longest time, the soap opera was still on.
I don't remember much after that, and was too stunned, but we sat and waited for word. It seemed like the unimaginable had happened. I don't think we did much than watch the continuous news and film on tv for the next three days.
But I was one of those kids who saw a new tomorrow and a dark cloud had settled over it which never really went away.
I had turned 20 years old three days earlier. I was walking by the elevators on the 16th floor of the Tenneco Bldg. in Houston, Texas where I worked. I had seen them in Houston the day before. Anyway, as I walked past the elevator there was a woman standing in an open elevator and she was crying. I asked her if I could help her and she said no, "the president has been shot". I actually got upset with her because I thought that she said that to be sarcastic because I asked if I could help her. I found out she was telling the truth a few moments later when an announcemnt was made for everyone to take the rest of the day off. I cried on the bus. I wasn't, and never have been, a democrat, but I couldn't believe that someone would kill our president. A sad day, indeed.
Location: Prescott Valley,az summer/east valley Az winter
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Iowa State University was a trimester system in those days. Heard the news when i finished a Calculus final. watched the tv in our student lounge for updates rest of day. Others came and went according to their finals schedule.
I was five and at the dentist's office. My mother and I were in the waiting room. There was a radio--the old-fashioned clock radio type, with a dial clock (pre-digital!) on the table, and all of a sudden my mother said, "What did they say? The President's been shot?" and she ran over to the table with the radio and so did the nurse, who turned it up. I wasn't sure what all this meant but it seemed bad and I was hoping it meant we had to go home and I didn't have to see the dentist. No such luck.
I also remember several days later that my mother was crying watching the funeral on TV and I said, "Why are you crying? Did you know him?"
Then I was confused because there was a picture of this ordinary-looking guy in the newspaper and I didn't think THAT was the president because I thought the president had white hair and looked like the guy on the dollar bill.
I was in the 9th grade about 170 miles southwest of Dallas. I learned of the incident when my friend and I walked out to his mom's 1956 Chevy 4-door Belair after school. His mom was crying.
I find your replies fascinating. Ordinary people faced with an unbelievable event made a permanent impression on all of us who remember. For those too young to remember or who were not yet born, it's history. For many of us, we lived it.
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