The Day JFK Died - Where Were You? | Golden Skate

The Day JFK Died - Where Were You?

Ladskater

~ Figure Skating Is My Passion ~
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Jul 28, 2003
The anniversary of JFK's death is this month. This week documentary coverage on PBS features events of his life before he became President and what happened after his tragic death. November 22, 1963 is one of those significant days to everyone - just like 9-11 or November 11 (the end of the great war - WW1). In fact, I just realized after all these years that this tragic event took place on my mother's birthday. We were living in California at the time as my dad was working in the States. We were landed immigrants. I remember hearing the news at school. All I remember is running home from the school bus to find my mother frantically packing our belongings. She said "I am not living in a country where they shoot their leader!" We had just seen JFK the week before as he had visited our part of the country. It just did not seem real. We ended up staying another couple of years, but eventually returned to Canada in 1967. It was really quite something to have lived in California when all this was going on - it has always been a significant part of my memory of those days.
 

Dee4707

Ice Is Slippery - Alexie Yagudin
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My Memories

I attended a parochial school so as a senior in high school we were on Retreat. We had just come back to our homeroom from being at church when one of the nuns informed us that the President had been shot. Sister brought in a radio and we listed for at least an hour when the announcer said the President was dead. I really loved Jackie and remembered how concerned I was if she was OK. I will never forget walking down the street and seeing people openly mourning the loss of our President. I also remember being glued to the TV for 4 days. Crying when I would see Jackie and the children and sobbing when little John saluted as his father’s coffin went by. Can’t believe it has been 40 years ago, because those memories are so vivid in my mind.

Dee
 

Piel

On Edge
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Jul 27, 2003
I went to Catholic school too Dee. It was fourth grade and I was not feeling well so Sisiter sent me to the clinic off of the school secretary's office to lie down. Sister Asunta came in crying and told me to go back to my classroom and tell them that the President had been killed. When I did Sister Mary Pat, my teacher thought that I was making a sick joke and marched littlle Piel BACK to the office.

Piel
 

Dee4707

Ice Is Slippery - Alexie Yagudin
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thought that I was making a sick joke and marched littlle Piel BACK to the office
Understandable how someone could think that way, but poor little Piel.

Dee
 

KwanFan1212

Joey Votto Fangirl
Final Flight
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Jun 24, 2003
^^I'm with her. I wasn't born yet either! My mom talked about it this week though and she was in school. She said she came home and cried with her mom (my grandma) after they all heard the news. I think they all watched the news together that night to find out anything more on his assassination. That is so sad to think about. :cry:
 

Tonichelle

Idita-Rock-n-Roll
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Jun 27, 2003
I wasn't born...

but I can tell you where I was when JFK Jr. died...
 

4dogknight

Final Flight
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Jul 27, 2003
Yes, I remember it as if it were yesterday instead of forty years ago.

I was at work in the accounting department of a soybean processing company on the west side of Chicago. My boss had the department radio on because it was lunch time. As we filtered back from the cafeteria, our boss motioned us to keep quite and we heard the news, The President had been shot while on a visit to the D/FW area.

We just sat at our desks, not saying anything and listening to the radio. I remember the telephones ringing and then answered in whispers. Once a phone was answered it was taken off the hook. (the company had its own switch board and there no off-hook beeping).

All of a sudden one of the men sitting in the back of the room started running his Freidan Rotary Calculator. When told to stop, he replied he needed to get the grain checks calculated. (The Freidan Rotary Calculator was a noisy machine (not as noisy as the Burroughs Bookkeeping Machine that also tended to walk) and had ten rows of numbered keys up and 10 rows of numbered keys across.)

The employee was told again to stop and when he didn’t; our boss walked over to the desk, bent down and unplugged the calculator, then calmly walked back to his desk.

It was then that we heard Walter Cronkite make the announcement that the President was dead. No one moved, no one said anything; we didn’t even look at each other.

The telephone on my boss’s desk rang; he answered it, spoke a couple of sentences, hung up and told us to go home. He said that the company would probably not be open for business until Monday morning. If the schedule changed, he’d call us.

I remember crying while driving home. I remember watching TV with my mom all that weekend and crying intermittently. I didn’t think that anything could ever impact the country more than that terrible act in Texas. Was I wrong, and it only took a week to prove it for the first time and four years more for the second and third times.

4dk
 

windspirit

On the Ice
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Jul 26, 2003
I wasn't born yet. But I've always thought that people must have felt quite scared and powerless.
 

4dogknight

Final Flight
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Jul 27, 2003
I don't remember the media stating anything about people feeling scared or powerless. I think the dominant feeling was of terrible and profound sadness.

Powerless was the feeling during the Apollo 13 saga and the scared part was during the riots following Martin Luther King's assassination but only in certain parts of the country.

However, I can remember feeling powerless while watching TV reports of the civil rights demonstrations in the South and the coverage of the Vietnam War. But I do remember at that time there were options open to people in the northern states to participate in registering voters in the south or in Border States.

I remember watching TV coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. A very close friend was a convention delegate while his brother was demonstrating in Grant Park. Apparently the media got wind of the situation and there was split screen coverage of my friend on the convention floor while his brother was being beaten by the Chicago Police.

But then that situation was one of profound sadness as well. Kent State falls into that category too.

4dk
 
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Lcp88

On the Ice
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Jul 27, 2003
Wasn't born yet, but Bravo's also doing some sort of special about the alleged conspiricy behind it. My favorite little "theroy" was the one about Lyndon Johnson being behind it, just so he could become president :sheesh: :eek:
Laura
 

Ladskater

~ Figure Skating Is My Passion ~
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Jul 28, 2003
windspirit:

First it was shock; then it was sadness; then it was anger. People just wanted the truth, but it was not that simple. It's still being debated today - forty years later.

Abraham Lincolns' assassin was John Wilkes Booth - no undisputable truth there. JFK's assassin will likely never be known. At least not the whole truth.
 

show 42

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Jul 26, 2003
I was sitting in my 8th grade history class when we got the news. I remember dashing to the girl's restroom (we called them lavatories way back then) to cry. I was raised Catholic, so JFK was a "god". The restaurants in the small town in which I lived were all closed that day.............42
 

JOHIO2

Medalist
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Jul 29, 2003
I was in 6th grade social studies class. The class clown had just recently made the usual remarks about why were we studying this crap about ancient Rome. I remember my teacher writing on the blackboard "We are living history" and starting to cry.

As for being afraid -- I was much more afraid the year before during the Cuban Missile crisis. Kids don't have any perspective and all I could think about were those bomb drills and those awful images from tv and movies about nuclear war. On JFK's death, I felt sad.
 

heyang

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Jul 26, 2003
Wasn't even a twinkle in Mom's eye...I was born too late to experience this tumultuous period in US history.

I do remember my 8th grade history teacher telling the class of his remembrances.

The sadness of the country makes a lot of sense. I believe JFK was the 1st president elected under the eye of television. While not everyone had TV, many more did than during the prior election. He was the 1st president that people really saw on TV; he wasn't just a voice on the radio or a picture in the newspaper. Also, his youth and picture-perfect family made the assasination all the more tragic. He represented a new post-war generation.

Even though I wasn't born during the Kennedy years, I am still fascinated by the family. They are the royalty family of America.
 

windspirit

On the Ice
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Jul 26, 2003
4dogknight said:
I don't remember the media stating anything about people feeling scared or powerless. I think the dominant feeling was of terrible and profound sadness.
I just tried to imagine what I would feel. Considering that presidents are the best protected people in the world; the boldness of the move; and the fact that the country would be left without anyone in power (I'm talking about the psychological implications only; I do know that in a case like this the vice-president becomes the head of the country immediately, etc.) If someone kills the head of some little, quiet country it's bad enough, but if someone kills the head of the, arguably, the most powerful country in the world? My guess was you do feel scared a little and powerless, because if they can get to him, they can get to anyone. Plus, if someone kills your president, it makes the whole country seem vulnerable to the rest of the world.
 

Lotta

On the Ice
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Jul 27, 2003
I was in God's mind being shaped in the form of a human that will come out 22 years and two months after JFK's death. But I know at that time, America fell into a stunned silence and grief. And it was a shot that was heard round the country.
 

4dogknight

Final Flight
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Jul 27, 2003
Windspiriit: You are definitely allowed to think what you will about the attitudes and feelings of those of us who were alive and old enough to evaluate the actions in Dallas -November 1963.

But I will caution you that you are applying the customs, thought patterns and mortal attitudes of the latter fifth of the 20th Century to that event in 1963.

As an example: My husband and I were in Honolulu a number of years ago and decided to go to Pearl Harbor. While we waited for the launch to take us out to the Arizona Memorial, we listened to some of the Naval veterans relate the activities of that morning in 1941. These people were there, they saw what happened and in most cases they were involved with the immediate defense of their country. Now I was alive in 1941 but just a couple of months old so I can't say first hand what the prevailing attitude was BUT I did listen to what those people who had been there had to say, how they felt, and what they did.
I did not try to apply the current mores and sensibilities of the 1980's to those of 1941.

4dk
 

heyang

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Jul 26, 2003
If Reagan had died due to the attempted assasination in 1982, I don't think it would've had the same effect upon the nation as Kennedy's.

Reagan was an older president. His children were already grown up.

The nation was not as innocent as it was in 1963. America has become much more cynical since Camelot ended, the Vietnam war, etc.

Sure, the nation would have mourned the passing of Pres Reagan, but there wouldn't have been the same feeling of a life cut short and of fatherless children and potential never fulfilled. I think that's what made Kennedy's passing mean so much more.
 
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