BS: Bad day in Dallas

Subject: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: kendall
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 02:07 PM

I can hardly believe it's been 43 years since JFK was murdered in Texas. I was putting up storm windows. What were you doing when you heard the news?

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 02:11 PM

Sitting in class with fellow students.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Wesley S
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 02:12 PM

I was in the 7th grade at a Catholic school. They took us to church to tell us all. Then had a prayer service. I can remember thinking "It was the communists that did it".

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: mrdux
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 02:12 PM

Bowling with the other patrol boys (8th grade school outing).

michael

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: number 6
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 02:39 PM

In the 7th grade ... just came in from recess when the teacher told us what had happened down in Dallas ... I remember asking him who did it ... he told me it was gangsters.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Leadfingers
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 02:40 PM

I was in Germany holding back the Communist hoardes !


















or was it communist whores ??

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: fat B****rd
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 02:45 PM

I was at Louth Pavilion(Lincs UK) watching The Undertakers from Liverpool.I heard someone say "Kennedy's been shot" I actually thought it was some local poacher !.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Sorcha
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 02:48 PM

7th grade math class.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 02:51 PM

Freshman year of high school -- had just gotten to Geometry class when the teacher walked in with the news.

Don't remember much more of the afternoon except sitting on the school bus waiting to go home and watching the flag at half staff through the rain rivulets running down the window.

Still have the newspapers, of course.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Amos
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 02:55 PM

Climbing a steep hill in San Francisco on an under-powered Lambretta scooter.

Total stranger in a truck stuck his head out to yell the news to me.

Dumbfounding.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: LilyFestre
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 02:55 PM

I was not yet a twinkle in my mother's eye.

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 02:59 PM

Sitting in my first grade class. It was show and tell day, and I had a Etch-a-sketch.   I had done a crude drawing of a phone booth and a flag and my turn to show the class was coming up. Another teacher walked in the room and whispered the news to my teacher. I can still see her horrified look. She paused for a moment and then told us the president has been shot.   About an hour later my mother came to pick me up. She had not heard the news and thought I was making some sort of sick joke when I told her.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 03:00 PM

oh... I remember that I shook the Etch-a-sketch to erase the picture after our teacher told us what happened.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Micca
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 03:10 PM

I was wheelman on a tanker in the Bristol Channel on the 5 to 10 watch in bound for Newport, South Wales when , just before 9.30 the programme on the radio that the 1st Mate had on for the News and Shipping Forecast was interrupted with the news that He had been shot, They didnt confirm he was dead until sometime later

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Linda Goodman Zebooker
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 03:10 PM

10th grade English class in Philadelphia. We were reading Twelfth Night aloud.

The next day we drove to my aunt and uncle's house in the Washington DC suburbs and went to a pre-Thanksgiving multi-faith worship service which had about 10 times the normal number of people in attendance.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: kendall
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 04:09 PM

And who remembers what they were doing when President Roosevelt died?
I was listening to a battered old battery powered radio. Switching from Canadian radio music program to Superman, back and forth. I was not quite 11 at the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: jacqui.c
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 04:49 PM

Roosevelt - not born then.

Kennedy - I was taking a break from evening class at the Technical college I attended and was given the news by some black college friends who were very concerned about what this would mean for American family members.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: GUEST,MarkS
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 05:11 PM

Roosevelt - Still in the womb so I was gestating.

Kennedy - In chemistry lab, freshman year in college.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: bobad
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 05:20 PM

Grade 8, the shooting was announced over the PA system. Being a Catholic school we stood and said a prayer, one kid who had moved up from the states sobbed.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: GUEST, Ebbie
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 05:58 PM

I was met at the door by a coworker when Kennedy was shot. They had not yet announced that he had died. I didn't actually cry until two days later when Oswald was shot- felt like my country had gone absolutely mad.

I remember when Roosevelt died. At lunchtime the principal of my elementary school announced the president's death and then asked everyone to rise and join him in three minutes of silence. It was the longest three minutes I had ever known. I was 9 years old and had never 'known' another president. I could hardly wait to get home to tell my parents.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 06:15 PM

Yet another seventh grader. It was Spanish class for me.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: artbrooks
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 06:21 PM

High school senior...also in Spanish class. The principal announced it over the PA system and I basically went into shock.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 06:54 PM

Pissing uop agauisnt a wall in a pub toilet just before going into Heritage Folk Club in Oxford. The man next to me suddenly announced it out of the blue - I thought he was taking the piss at first, which would have been appropriate, in that setting.

Then I went up into the club, and we spent the evening singing songs about people getting shot and trying to help the odd American among us deal with it. And most of the night I seem to remember wandering around keeping up with the news and talking about it.

Forty three years! That's quite a thought.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Folkiedave
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 07:23 PM

It came through to the UK around 9.00 pm - 9.30 pm and I was already in bed with a woman who had finally succumbed to my charms after a lot of trying I might add. (At that point the swinging sixties were just getting up to speed).

Remember both of them - reinforcement I suggest!!

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: SINSULL
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 07:44 PM

Sitting in high school English Class. We had been told the President was shot. A car went by with its radio blaring, Walter Cronkite announcing "The President is dead". I can still hear it.

School was let out early and we went in search of a church. The school was in Brooklyn. We found a church filled with people crying. Strange day.

A few days later I watched as Lee Harvey Oswald was shot.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: catspaw49
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 08:20 PM

Mine was a lot like that too Sins. Just happened that I was in Civics class. They turned on the PA with no preamble and just started playing the radio feed. It was weird because not even the teacher had a clue and we all were just sitting and staring. We went home right away and I spent the next days glued to the TV. When Oswald was shot it then became weirdness cubed. The images of those days are indelibly etched in my memory.

A dozen or so years ago Karen and I went to DC for a few days after the Annapolis boat show. We were visiting Arlington Cemetery and as I looked back from the entrance gate, downward and across the bridge towards the Lincoln Memorial, the flashback of that exact scene filled with the huge funeral procession hit me like a ton of bricks. I'm not one to generally have those feelings but I literally began to sweat and my heart beat hard and fast. They must have had a camera exactly there.............The caisson, that riderless horse (BlackJack?), the family and dignitaries coming across,,,,,and finally weird had gone to the tenth power.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Jeri
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 08:47 PM

I don't actually remember them saying what had happened when I was in school. They let us out early, and I heard after I got off the bus. I think it was from some older kids, who'd come home on a different bus. I didn't believe them, but found out is was true once I got to my house.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Wincing Devil
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 09:42 PM

Third Grade at Linton Hall Military School. Sister Gabriel had just uttered that most dreaded phrase "Take out your 'Big Five' tablets", which meant we were going to do math. Sister Vincent sticks her head in the door and said "The president's been shot". To inject some music into this thread, as we watched the funeral procession, some of the drummers from the Drum & Bugle Corps picked up on the distinctive dirge, which I can remember to this day. A few days later, the Drum And Bugle corps played the dirge, and several of the nuns came out, crying, and yelled at them to stop.

I remember talking to a girl one, and asked her what she was doing when Kennedy was shot. She said "Being Born". She was born 11/22/63, AT PARKLAND HOSPITAL in Dallas! (hwre JFK was taken) Her father couldn't get in to see her until quite a bit later.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Wincing Devil
Date: 22 Nov 06 - 09:43 PM

Micca:

I thought you were "the chanteyman who's never been to sea"

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Nov 06 - 01:34 AM

I remember it as a strange, slow motion kind of bifurcated event: as a fourth grader in West Seattle I was among classmates approaching the classroom from recess or after lunch, and the Swedish janitor told us what he had heard on his closet radio, that the president had been shot. (The janitor was a typical tall, gaunt, Swedish immigrant, not too talkative but nonetheless friendly man who reminded me of my mother's Norwegian family.) We in turn told our shocked teacher, who dismissed the message because of the messenger, saying something along the lines of a simple janitor couldn't possibly be correct. It was a while later in the classroom that another teacher entered and confirmed what we'd heard before. We took a break and I remember going to the girl's bathroom, where another girl entered and was so upset that she slammed open the big wooden door and broke its top hinge.

After school I walked home and found mom sitting uncharacteristicly quiet, watching television. It was very similar to when Pope John died earlier that year. It was very unusual for my mother to ever sit still during the day and just do one thing, like watch tv.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Moses
Date: 23 Nov 06 - 11:51 AM

Kennedy:-

It was my birthday and my (then) boyfriend was taking me to the cinema. He heard the news when he went into a tobacconists but didn't tell me until later as he didn't want to spoil my evening.

Got my bus pass yesterday!

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: GUEST,jaze
Date: 23 Nov 06 - 12:04 PM

In a catholic orphanage in Phila. 3rd grade-we were sitting reading quietly while the nun was grading papers. Another nun burst in in tears and said Kennedy had been assassinated. I remember being dumbstruck. I thought that went out with Lincoln. We were glued to the TV for the next several days. The most empty-feeling Thanksgiving I can remember. It freaks me out that I can remember something from 43 years ago!

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Nov 06 - 12:06 PM

I was sitting in my Freshman Science Survey class. I was non-plussed. I wasn't really surprised. Some of the girls started crying and I thought "Oh Brother". I figured it was a.) the Communists b.) the Mafia or c.) some bootlegger's revenge. I was a kid, politically naive and certainly not invested emotionally. Over the years I became aware of the enormity of the event, how it changed and how it hurt America, regardless of my own political views. As this Country slipped more toward hedonism, secularism, socialism, relative ethics, polarization in general, I realized that Kennedy was a pretty good guy after all, strong, visionary, resolute, regardless of his family history and his personal foibles. I realized what a mistake LBJ was and how good it was that Nixon didn't win against Kennedy. I doubt Kennedy could get elected today as he was a little to the right of where Lieberman stands . If its not too late I will mourn him today and tomorrow and hope this nation never has to endure such an outrage again.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Den
Date: 23 Nov 06 - 10:07 PM

I was naked in front of the fire after my mother had dropped the towel she was drying me with. It was a Friday night in rural Northern Ireland, bath night for me. The moment has been indelibly printed in my brain. I remember my mother sitting down heavily in the armchair by the fire after the "newsflash" came on the TV. It felt like the end of things or at least that has been my enduring feeling prior to Bloody Sunday.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Bert
Date: 23 Nov 06 - 10:24 PM

We were driving home after a folk dance in London, just coming up to Edgeware Rd., about to turn North just South of Archway.

A newsvendor on a street corner was selling copies of "The Morning Star", Englands Communist Newspaper. Somehow they had got their papers to the street first, maybe because it was such a small paper.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Little Robyn
Date: 23 Nov 06 - 11:14 PM

First year at Teacher's training college, about to board a bus in Wairakei after spending a week with the science class studying the geothermal region and hydro-electric generation on the Waikato river. (Really exciting stuff!)
But it was actually 23rd November here in NZ because we're on the other side of the dateline and they didn't say he was dead at first. We heard that bit later, when the bus stopped for lunch.
Whenever I travel north and drive past Wairakei, I remember that morning.
Robyn

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Amergin
Date: 23 Nov 06 - 11:59 PM

I never could understand the fascination with this womaniser and his family of thugs....

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: GUEST,KT
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 01:48 AM

Elemnetary public school. I can still remember my teacher's exact words after she hung up the phone. "Class stand for a moment of silent prayer. The President of the United States is dead." Then, shock, numbness, three days of TV and lots of sadness all around.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Maryrrf
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 08:03 AM

I was in elementary school too. I remember the principal coming in and saying the president had been shot, and a few minutes later she announced that he was dead. I remember they dismissed us early that day.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Janie
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 08:59 AM

I was in 7th grade Art class when the announcement that he had been shot came over the PA system. They put the radio broadcast on over the school PA system then. We sat there listening, stunned, incredulous and afraid. I remember Mrs. Carney, the art teacher, starting to cry when the announcement came that he was dead.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Tom Hamilton frae Saltcoats Scotland
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 09:40 AM

another bad day in texas was when George w bush was born

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Tom Hamilton frae Saltcoats Scotland
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 09:41 AM

in 1963 I wasn't born

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 11:00 AM

George W. Bush was born in Connecticut. Not Texas.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Slag
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 11:44 AM

God bless George W. Bush. Before you get too excited I also prayed for William J. Clinton. I prayed that God would remove him from office. It didn't happen. Alas. I prayed that GW would get some brains. That didn't happen either. Alas.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: NH Dave
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 11:46 AM

I was working out on the flightline of Pease Air Force base, when someone came up and told us. At first I thought it was his idea of a bad joke, but it turned out that I was wrong.

Today Pease, along with most of the bases on which I have been stationed are closed, but we still remember them and Kennedy.

Dave

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 04:00 PM

I was crossing Wabash Avenue in Chicago's LOOP--coming back to work at Rose Records Store. The elevated train tracks were above me and the trains were squealing and sparking. Two women looked horror-stricken on the sidewalk. I figured one or both of them was having a bad day. I entered the store-----and that's when I heard about it. I walked out the back door of the store, alone, punched the damn brick wall in the alley, and broke into tears. There was still ten minutes left to my lunch hour--so I just stayed out there in the alley---trying to make sense of it. That night I heard the song, "IN THE SUMMER OF HIS YEARS" as sung by Millicent Martin on the BBC-TV show   "That Was The Week That Was"---with David Frost and others.

That was actually the first song about the assassination and/or Jack Kennedy that I found. There were many others to come over the years... My collection is now in The Archive Of Folk Culture at the Library Of Congress----Washington D.C.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 10:16 PM

I was 11 years old in my last year of primary school & don't remember hearing of his death.

But what I do remember is our neighbour getting a Returned Thanks card from Mrs Kennedy some months later. That was something that stuck in my memory - one of our neighbours in a poor suburb of western Sydney received a card from the widow of the American President!!! And it was signed by her!!

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Alice
Date: 24 Nov 06 - 11:15 PM

That morning was my piano lesson before school with a very crabby nun, and I remembered halfway to school that I'd left my music book at home. I had to run back to get it and then run to school. I met my best friend on the way there and said to her, "today is a terrible day and before it is over I bet I'll be dead." It scared me, as it felt true when it popped out of my mouth without thinking. I had a feeling of dread.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Nancy King
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 06:27 PM

I was a senior in college in 1963, and remember that whole weekend vividly. I'd just finished morning classes when a classmate ran through the dorm with the news that Kennedy had been shot. A group of us stayed in her room, listening to the radio (no TV in the dorm) all afternoon, until the announcement he had died. Awful. The next morning I babysat as usual for a professor's family, and the four kids were very cranky because they wanted to watch Roy Rogers on TV and of course it had been pre-empted. I just sat and watched dignitaries arriving at the White House in the rain. I really believe that was when America lost its innocence. If THAT could happen, then ANYTHING could happen.

I don't actually remember the day Roosevelt died, but I do remember the funeral procession. It's probably my earliest memory -- I was nearly 3, and my family lived in Washington DC. I remember being held by my father, standing on the steps of a big government building and looking up the street, over the heads of the crowd, toward Pennsylvania Avenue. Everybody was completely quiet -- the only sound was the horses' hooves on the pavement. I described that memory to my mother many years later, and she was ecstatic that I actually did remember it.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: Bill D
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 07:05 PM

Kennedy...I was in the Student Union at college, heading for American History class when I heard muttered rumors about 'shots'...went on to class, and the Prof. came in and said "It's true...class dismissed"....and I RAN back to the student lounge where there was a bit TV on the wall...just in time to watch Walter Cronkite making the official announcement....Then....at that time I had a paper route to earn extra money, so I headed down early to pick up my papers at the printing facility, and got 3 copies of the evening paper, one before the news, one with just headlines and minimal info....and the 'final' which I had to deliver to customers. It was a very long evening walking that route.

Roosevelt...When I was almost 6, we were living briefly in railroad 'outfit' cars in Dalhart, Texas(funny gray cars with minimal sleeping quarters for workmen), as my father was a Western Union lineman and was on a temporary job near there. I was standing beside the rail cars with my mother when an engineer told my mother something, and she started crying. I didn't really understand who FDR was until later, but I knew he must be important if his death made my mother cry.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: nosluap57
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 07:34 PM

I took some out of town guests down to Dealy Plaza today. While there I remembered my kindergarten teacher coming into the room crying and sending us all home.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad day in Dallas
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 26 Nov 06 - 11:49 AM

The day Kennedy was shot, I was at work. I distinctly remember my first reaction..."Omigod! Now that sonofabitch Johnson will be running things". Shock over the assassination came a couple of miliseconds later,

I was in my highschool lunchroom whan Roosevelt died. A sudden empty feeling...I'd never had a differernt man as President.