45 years since the Kennedy Assassination

[Flashy]

In just a couple of hours, it will be the 45th anniversary of the JFK assassination...one of the most traumatic events in our nation's history.

any thoughts?

For anyone that was alive, and remembers it, what are your recollections? how old were you? Where were you/ What happened? How did you find out? Did you see the Cronkite bulletin? What were other people doing?


P.S.

I KNOW THERE ARE A COUPLE OF YOU OUT THERE WHO WILL WANT TO, BUT PLEASE DO NOT TURN THIS INTO A "CONSPIRACY" THREAD

 

[nudeyorker]

In just a couple of hours, it will be the 45th anniversary of the JFK assassination...one of the most traumatic events in our nation's history.

any thoughts?Someone asked me recently what were the world events in your lifetime that effected you. McCarthy, Kennedy, The Berlin Wall and 9/11

For anyone that was alive, and remembers it, what are your recollections? how old were you?None of your damn business Where were you/In school What happened? How did you find out?We were released from school after an announcement was made and I remember my teacher and the Headmaster were crying as we left school and people on the street were sobbing and when I got home from school my mother was crying and I remember the images on the television as vividly as If it were yesterday. Did you see the Cronkite bulletin? What were other people doing It was my first realization that the events of the world were more important than my own daily life and that the world was a community.

 

[Flashy]

interesting nudeyorker ^^^^

care to expand a bit for those of us not yet born?




(as an aside, what about the Cuban Missile Crisis? I would think that would have been terrifying world event to live through)

 

[nudeyorker]

interesting nudeyorker ^^^^

care to expand a bit for those of us not yet born?Well...It's difficult to put into words. But America was a very innocent optimistic place when JFK was elected into office, because the country was due for a change much as it is now. But my family was digging out of the rubble of Joseph Mc Carthy and his henchman so perhaps I'm not the best person to talk about the pulse of America at the time. But for many people it was a time of despair after a glimmer of hope. The events that followed, Cuba, Vietnam,(I grew up in LA) Charles Manson, The Hells Angles, Nixon in office! The world just turned on a dime and became a fast and furious time that few could keep up with because all the old rules did not apply any longer as much as many wanted them as a security blanket.
I wish I had a better portrait but in many ways we were raised in a bubble as most of the world felt safe there. When the president was killed the bubble burst.




(as an aside, what about the Cuban Missile Crisis? I would think that would have been terrifying world event to live through)

I would be curious to hear from some of the other baby boomers to get their thoughts!

 

[Flashy]

interesting thoughts...i think most who were alive probably harbor similar thoughts about it being a moment that shattered some semblance of innocence etc...

was there anything else you remember about the event itself, from beginning when you first heard it? Other reactions from people that really stuck out, like the headmaster and teacher crying, and folks on the street and such?

it seems such a surreal moment, that for most of us younger (born 71) things like the Reagan Assassination attempt, the Challenger explosion, and 9/11 are probably the most momentous events, but the JFK assassination seems to have such a surreal and mythical quality to it...

 

[D_Chaumbrelayne_Copprehead]

I would be curious to hear from some of the other baby boomers to get their thoughts!

I was in elementary school in New York City. I don't remember getting the news, but I remember walking down 5th Ave with a buddy of mine I used to catch a crosstown bus with. We were stunned and dazed, even for 2nd graders. When I got home, my parents were both home, I think, and the TV was on, as it was all weekend long. I remember the huge headlines in the paper about it, and how shocked everyone was.

A few days later, at Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, my little brother asked, "Is this for President Kennedy?"

BTW ... about the Cuban Missile Crisis ... I remember headlines in the paper about Cuba, but don't remember anything else about it. I would have been 6 or so at the time, and I got no memories of it at all.

 

[nudeyorker]

interesting thoughts...i think most who were alive probably harbor similar thoughts about it being a moment that shattered some semblance of innocence etc...

was there anything else you remember about the event itself, from beginning when you first heard it? Other reactions from people that really stuck out, like the headmaster and teacher crying, and folks on the street and such?

it seems such a surreal moment, that for most of us younger (born 71) things like the Reagan Assassination attempt, the Challenger explosion, and 9/11 are probably the most momentous events, but the JFK assassination seems to have such a surreal and mythical quality to it...

Something was lost between the shadow and the act...what I remember best and it's difficult to put into words, but time felt like it stopped for a few seconds and when it started again, everyone felt that the world would never be exactly the same again. I felt the same emotions when the Berlin Wall came down and when the World Trade Center collapsed.

 

[Flashy]

Something was lost between the shadow and the act...what I remember best and it's difficult to put into words, but time felt like it stopped for a few seconds and when it started again, everyone felt that the world would never be exactly the same again. I felt the same emotions when the Berlin Wall came down and when the World Trade Center collapsed.

yes, i know what you mean...it seems as if what is occuring is doing so in a vacuum.

do you have a recollection of the Cuban Missile Crisis or were you too young as Krispdx was, not really process the danger/gravity of the situation?

 

[nudeyorker]

yes, i know what you mean...it seems as if what is occuring is doing so in a vacuum.

do you have a recollection of the Cuban Missile Crisis or were you too young as Krispdx was, not really process the danger/gravity of the situation?

Yes I remember the Cuban Crisis. We grew up talking about the world and events and what happened at school at the dinner table for as long as I can remember. There was a thread of fear in America, but my mother and my Grandmother were at the dinner table, and for the first time that I remember talking frankly about WWII, the Holocaust, the McCarthy witch hunts and all of the other factors of the world leading up to that dinner and my grandmother said...'We will see what we see when we see it." I have never felt such comfort from so few words and I still live by those same words today.

 

[Flashy]

very interesting story...why do grandmothers always have the best sayings? :smile:

 

[nudeyorker]

very interesting story...why do grandmothers always have the best sayings? :smile:

Because they know more than we do! Because they know that there are not monsters in the attic, because they had the dragon in the garage kill them!:wink:

 

[Pecker]

For anyone that was alive, and remembers it, what are your recollections? how old were you?

I was 17, a senior in high school in Central Virginia.

Where were you/ What happened?/How did you find out?

In government class the PA speaker suddenly came on and, without an announcement, started playing the news - an odd thing in the days when the only news we got was The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Time seemed to stand still. They sent the 6 students of color home (it was the first year of desegregation in our Central Virginia High School.) A couple of hours later I was in Art class and, the PA system still broadcasting the news, it announced that President Kennedy was dead. That's when the rest of us were sent home.

Did you see the Cronkite bulletin? Only replays.

What were other people doing? A lot of people, men and women, were openly crying in public. Businesses closed. The TV ran the news 24 hours a day until the funeral (back then the TV normally signed off from about midnight to 6 or 7 a.m. I watched the funeral procession on TV with the rest of the family and the next February I visited the grave, which was just dirt and grass, surrounded with a white picket fence, with an eternal flame and flowers.

I knew where they were talking about when they mentioned Dealey Plaza and the Jail where Oswald was shot. My paternal grandfather had owned a bar on Main Street just a couple of blocks away. The Oswalds lived near where I had lived as a small child and the Texas Theater where Oswald was apprehended had been one of my childhood haunts on Saturdays.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

We had just moved to Oregon and were temporarily staying in a hotel downtown.

I do not recall exactly where I was when I was told about it, because it was such an abstract idea for a 5 year old... but I do vividly recall the all day coverage of the funeral... on a black and white TV in a black and white world....


I was much more severely affected by the assassinations of MLK and Bobby Kennedy... but by then I had had five years of vietnam war coverage and civil rights coverage and was old enough to comprehend the turmoil the nation was going thru...

Funny to think about it.... but at the age of 18, I had no recollection of a time when we were not at war in Vietnam...

 

[faceking]

I do recall Reagan getting shot.. and the grade school teachers (whom went thru the Kennedy ordeal first hand) whom where spooked. It was close to the end of the day, so it was easy to get sent home. I suppose.