Every Baby Boomer remembers where he was when he learned JFK had been shot in Dallas, 22Nov63.

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1970 240Z

Sure do.

I was in my Jr. high School auditorium in Levittown NY for an assembly when they announced it. Lots of disbelief and crying, Very troubled walk home from school.

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John Kish
1971 240Z - original owner

I was 15. The principal announced the shooting (and the race to save JFK) over the school PA system toward the end of our history class, and told us to expect further instructions. When the bell rang we walked to gym class, but never suited up. Our two burly gym teachers, both WWII combat veterans, sat us around the walls still holding all our books and told us to pray. At the other end of the big gymnasium, the girls' gym class was quietly singing America the Beautiful. Minutes later our gym teachers came back out of the gym office, both crying, and told us our president was dead.

We were told the school was closed. We were to go to our lockers and get our coats and all of our books, then to walk straight home and stay there until official instructions came by radio, TV or police. I remember how oddly quiet the halls were as 1500 kids walked out the exits three hours early, and how many teachers were openly crying. I don't remember if any kids were.

I lived about 2 miles from school and all along my route, National Guard jeeps and trucks were dropping off two soldiers to take control of each intersection. If we stopped to ask them questions they repeated the same rehearsed instructions to walk quickly home and don't stop to talk to anybody.

Weeks later, a national sympathy card drive was held at each neighborhood fire station. My best bud and I, both 15, stood for an hour in the block-long line in the snowy Syracuse night to eventually sign a scroll of thousands of signatures to Jackie Kennedy. We were then given a small paper cup of hot chocolate and told to pray for our nation. Even tho we were only kids, a policeman and a firefighter shook our hands as we exited and earnestly thanked us for coming out to express our condolences. That made me feel a part of something much bigger than my own little 15-year-old world.

Some weeks later a grieving Jackie Kennedy appeared on TV, beautiful and stately, thanking the nation for the millions and millions of signatures expressing love and shared grief over the loss of her husband. She pledged to answer the condolences from all 800,000 cards, but of course that was not humanly possible. Somewhere in Boston's JFK library there is probably a scroll with my own signature, and the signatures of everyone I grew up around, from that event.

I don't remember crying about the assassination until several years after graduation, when my understanding and respect for our nation had grown much deeper. ("I don't remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride; something touched me deep inside, the day the music died").

It hurts me that today's Leftist news media made absolutely no mention of this anniversary all day.

Frank

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1970 240Z

I found this.

https://youtu.be/hg1wqYS8Xdc

Jackie was a 1947 graduate of Miss Porter's School (a finishing school for women) in Farmington CT.
JFK was a 1935 graduate of Choate Rosemary Hall high school in Wallingford.

Neither was a top student, and both got into trouble for mischief.

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1970 240Z