Where were you when JFK was shot?

BigBill

Absent Comrade
Joined
Jan 29, 2011
Messages
13,869
Reaction score
13,356
Location
Planet earth
It was a Friday afternoon after lunch sometime. I was in my 7th grade science class. All the teachers were crying.
 
Register to hide this ad
I was sound asleep in a quonset hut in Camp Kaiser, Korea. The first shirt came in about four o'clock in the morning raising hell and said that the president had been shot and we were going of full alert.
 
I was in my high school mechanical drawing class.

LTC
 
I was a 4-1/2 y.o. preschooler, but I remember watching Walter Cronkite and the news coverage (in black and white of course) with my mother.
 
I was in 10th grade English class. A boy who had gone to the rest room
came back and said they were saying the president had been shot. Then
there was a lot teachers out in the hallway. Our teacher Mrs Crawford
said for us to put our heads down on our desk for a few mins. Then
she went out in the hallway. Shortly after they came over the loud
speaker system that the president had been shot. Not long after we
had a second announcement he was dead. I remember it like it was
yesterday.
 
I was in 10th grade. They sent us home early and I was able to watch the news. The records on this were sealed for 50 years. Do we get to look at them anytime soon? We have never been told the whole truth about this and I would like to know.
 
Don't know what class I was in in H.S., principle never told anyone until the 3:00 bell. Then cried while he told us.
 
10th grade chemistry, Mr. Myers told us the news. The coach lived next door to the school and his wife saw it on tv and called the school or came over. A lot of the teachers stayed in the teacher's lounge after lunch. Mr. Myers was about 15 minutes late to class.
 
I was working out of rosenberg texas. I was a foreman on crews treating old utility poles for groundline decay. It had rained us out that day somewhere near galviston. It was a cold rain. I was staying at a very old small old cheap dive hotel in rosenburg. It was called the plaza hotel. A real old single woman ran/owned it. We pulled in and she told us. Two things I recall: My partner said, "Well, he wanted to be just like lincoln and he ended up just like lincoln!" The old lady was wringing her hands weeping and her biggest concern was "What will the world think of texas now?"
That seemed to be the most frequent comment I heard for the next few days! I couldnt relate to that as I thought it would have or could have happened anywhere. The proud natives of texas were all concerned with the same thing, "What will the world think of texas now?" I was 22 years old.
 
I was driving from the Long Beach office of Southern Calif. Edison (my work place), to the Huntington Park office. When I arrived the Home Economists and their audience were all crying.
One very sad/bad day.
 
That was about 2 years before my time. I was in 8th grade social studies class when Reagan was shot!!!
 
Commander of Cadets, ROTC drill period at the Univ of WY.
We received the word when we returned from the drill field and formed up in the armory for dismissal.
 
Six years old, in Mrs. Reeds 1st grade class. Announcement made on the loudspeaker, teachers started crying, after a time they sent us all home. My older brother (9 years old, in 4th grade at the same school) walked me and our little sister (5 years old, in kindergarten) to the house of family friends who lived a block from the school so we'd have adult supervision until mom could get home from the advertising agency where she worked.

I've talked to my brother about that day. It's remarkable how different our memories of it are. Of course, that applies to a lot of things that happened during our childhood, whether it was the Kennedy assassination, Armstrong walking on the moon or Woodstock and Vietnam.
 
Back
Top