For those who remember... 45 years ago... Where were you?

[DrZeeLit]

I was in Los Angeles.
Henry Clay Junior High.
I was in the 7th grade, eager to finish school for the day, because we were having a dance that night.
I remember staring at the speaker -- those little wooden boxy ones they used to have in each classroom and in the lunch areas.

I never seem to capture the feeling of that day when I tell my students.
They cannot imagine a time when t.v. didn't go 24/7.
They really cannot imagine the entire nation stopping. Just stopping in our tracks.
Mourning.
Even people who didn't vote for him mourned.
The air was thick with sadness. My little brother didn't sleep for months -- fitfully waking in the middle of the night, hearing those muffled drums and the clip-clop of horses' hooves on that pavement.

When the media starts playing film from that day -- smiling Jack and Jackie, waving from the car, sparkling in the Dallas sun -- I want to yell DON'T GO, STOP! And I always spend a few moments wondering what it would be like if he had not died that day -- if he had been the boy who lived. And then, I return to whatever I was doing, but I return with a bit of sadness and regret.


I was looking for a quote to use in class today, and found JFK's remarks to the steel industry which are very interesting in light of history (note Viet-Nam) and today's issues with the economy and the Auto Moguls.
What do you think?

JFK addressed this to the Executives In Steel Industry

In this serious hour in our Nation's history, when
we are confronted with grave crises in Berlin and
Southeast Asia, when we are devoting our energies
to economic recovery and stability, when we are
asking reservists to leave their homes and families
for months on end and servicemen to risk their lives--
and four were killed in the last 2 days in Viet-Nam
and asking union members to hold down their wage
requests at a time when restraint and sacrifice
are being asked of every citizen, the American
people will find it hard, as I do, to accept
a situation in which a tiny handful of steel
executives whose pursuit of private power and
profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility
can show such utter contempt for the interests
of 185 million Americans.

Yes.... a tiny handful of auto executives????

If you can remember... where were you that day -- 45 years ago... November 22, 1963?

[Mari333]

1. 6th grade english class hebron indiana

one of the teachers came in and told the class.

[Stinky The Clown]

2. Taking the Chestnut Hill bus from Notre Dame HS to downtown Bridgeport, Ct, to transfer to the .....

..... Gray Line to Lordship to get home from school. We saw it in the window of a radio and television store at the corner where we changed buses.

School was canceled for the next three days.

[Mind_your_head]

3. I was only 3 1/2 at the time. I remember my mom crying though.

I had a little yellow record with the JFK song on it, the lyrics were thus (can't find it on the google):

John F. Kennedy
The (mark?) for hu-man-i-ty
at age 43, elected to the presidency.

He was born in 1917, the second child of nine
In the state of Massachusetts
In the city of Brookline.

His graddad was a mayor
His dad ambassador
He.....XXXXXXX <---- (can't remember this part right now)
Then did service in the war

CHORUS:

John F. Kennedy
the (mark?) for hu-man-i-ty
at age 43, elected to the presidency.

Etc....

------------

Does anyone else, besides me, remember this tune? Did you have (or still have) one of those little yellow plastic 45's?

(edit: typo - forgot the 'k' in Brookline *sigh*)

[Mind_your_head]

11. I just REMEMBERED.....more of the song.

His grandad was a mayor
His dad ambassador
he graduated Harvard
Then did service in the war.

Chorus:

John F. Kennedy
The mark for hoo-oo-man-i-tee
at age 43
elected to the presidency!

:-)

[bertman]

4. Rocky Mount, North Carolina. 10th grade typing class.

I remember the principal came on the intercom and announced that JFK had been shot. There was a moment of stunned silence, then yelling and cheering from several assholes in the class. I remember some girls crying and the teacher was upset. I was more shocked than anything because I was not a Kennedy fan.

This was in a very conservative community with a lot of people who thought Kennedy, being rich and Catholic, was evil.

My family was hard right-wing Republican, Jesse Helms types who really disliked Kennedy. But I remember that my dad was uncharacteristically silent for a couple of days after that. Other than that I remember that our football team played in the state championships that night or the next night, and of course, they had the flag at half mast and there was a moment of silence after the national anthem was played. Very somber experience.

Then the game started and all went back to normal for us high-school conservatives.

[DearAbby]

5. I was 8 yrs old

we had just been called in from recess, We came into the room laughing and being kids, when we noticed the teacher's expression. We fell quiet. They announced it over the overhead speaker, shortly after. Then they told us school will be cancelled for the rest of the afternoon.

We were told to go directly to our homes, I remember that day as vivid as if it were yesterday. I remember looking over my shoulder, through the chain link fence, back toward the play ground. How bright and sunny the day was, how empty the school yard was.

I when I got home, my mother was crying, we sat and watched TV the rest of that Afternoon. When my father came home, Mom rushed to him, hugging him and they both cried. My Parents never showed such emotions in front of us, it frightened me.

[TXDemGal]

6. Well, I don't technically "remember"

but my mother tells me I was at home, sitting atop the blonde wood console black-and-white television having my 1-year-old portrait taken by a professional photographer. I was 11 months old.

[stevedeshazer]

7. At home sick with mumps

Ahhh shit, I've told this story way too many times on DU.

[Waiting For Everyman]

8. On a field trip for our whole 8th grade, inside Luray Caverns in VA.

It was about a 3 to 4 hour bus ride from home. As each group of about 20 of us or so emerged from the caverns where we had been all day, we were told. President Kennedy was shot in Dallas and was dead. This was about an hour after it happened. It was very unreal. Then we all had to ride home in shock and silence. Some tried to call home first, but the entire D.C. to Baltimore phone system was inexplicably "down". The kids didn't say much on the ride home, and the teachers even less - they spoke in very low whispers and I wondered why. Eventually I was told why to shut me up, after asking too many times. Everybody was afraid to say what they thought about it, because of who did it (I didn't follow up and ask who, until the next week). When anyone did say anything about it, no matter how innocuous, they were "shh-ed". The half-dozen adults looked and acted terrified, not just for what had happened but for what might yet happen, to themselves and us, possibly on the way home. They were personally afraid, all of them.

Then we watched several days of news about it on TV, nonstop, which had never aired like that before - right through the Thanksgiving holiday, which was surreal too. Everybody was off work and school, and watching it. Then when we thought nothing could possibly go beyond that, Oswald was shot on camera in a police station, and shock turned to something else geometrically bigger but with no word to describe it. Then came the funeral.

And the only thing that provided any break from it, coming several weeks after that, was the Beatles. Looking back, I think we needed them to appear just at that time, a little before Christmas that year. And that's why I think to this day, those of us who were "teenagers" at that time, are very attached to the music that was current then - any kind of it that was on the charts. I think it saved our sanity, in a mass-group way.

It was awfulness on a scale like nothing else since. Even 9/11, which comes close, occurred in an already post-terrorism world. The JFK murder was a tearing of reality as we knew it.

[Waiting For Everyman]

10. "He Was A Friend Of Mine", The Byrds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2_V4XxvI2E

" ...he never knew my name... though I never met him I knew him just the same, oh, he was a friend of mine... "

[Mugu]

9. On the playground of my 1st grade school. n/t

[Undercurrent]

12. .

In class in my 8 room rural high school when a big commotion broke out in the hall. We didn't have a loud speaker system, but the news traveled very quickly.

School was suspended for the day. It was a 29 mile trip on the bus to get home, and I sat quietly and cried the whole time.

My mother was at home as always when my sister and I burst in the door. My dad arrived shortly after. His logging crew had stopped work, and sent the men home.

It was a grim, frightening, and sad time.

[salguine]

13. Actually, 45 years ago it was November 21.