November 22 1963

[OldGreyEagle]

I was in the 4th grade, just after recess we were assembled to tour the Church Basement, it was to be the week end of the CHurch Holiday Bazaar. Halfway through the tour, I remember furtive voices and we were hustled back to our classroom and told to pray. The School principal came over the PA systemt to say the president was dead, he had been shot. I wasnt sure who she meant, I was looking right at the class president. Then somebody said, JFK was dead

 

I remember watching TV with my dad that Sunday when Jack Ruby shot Oswald, live and the innumerable times they replayed it. The world was less innocent, more gray and not as much fun ever since

 

[skeptic]

Honestly, the assassination was more traumatic for me as college freshman, than 9/11 was as a late middle aged adult. When you added on the killings of Robert Kennedy and MLK a few years later, my once optimistic outlook on what could be was destroyed. Ever since I have been a bit of cynic and, as the name implies, a bit skeptical about most things on a political level.

[Tampa Turtle]

Forgive my free associative ramblings

 

I was just a baby on my mothers hip when she ran into a neighbors apartment to see the TV. My dad was a big Kennedy man and was always sad about it. I vaguely remember RFK's being shot.

 

For me it was the Vietnam War bug out when I was 13. I remember the panic on those last planes out, the co-pilot kicking folks off the ramp. Reading the paper the next day. Really shocked me, we lost. Seemed such a come down after the moon landings when we strode the earth like giants...

 

9-11 shocked me but I had little ones and the feeling of being unable to protect them was difficult.

 

My mom was 6 and lived in Honolulu in 1941 and clearly remembered hearing the explosions. Her best friends Dad died on the Arizona. My great uncles were welders at Pearl and cut the living and the dead out of the ships. That was the big family remembrance. They treated Dec 7 real personal.

 

Years later I am at the Kennedy Museum in Boston at a evening reception looking at some Kennedy memorabilia, John-John's crayon drawing and the oval office photo with it in the background. It is the a couple days after John-John's plane crashed. Met some of RFK's kids, the younger ones, that night. It was a pretty somber affair.

 

 

[packsaddle]

I was in school in The South. Hate was finding open public acceptance although it was still a ways off from its zenith. I will never forget when the announcement went out over the intercom, one of my classmates, a friend of sorts, surprised me when he said - and I will never ever forget this - "...laughing out loud...What do you know, someone finally bumped off old Kennedy!". He wasn't alone in this feeling, at least among white people. They eventually, like Johnson predicted a little while later, became known as Republicans. The hate still remains and it still has its voice...here in The South. It is a darkness of such impenetrable depth, most cannot imagine.

[OldGreyEagle]

We all know that loss of innocence is inevitable, why is it so traumatic? You would think as human's we would have built up an immunity to the pain over all these generations,

 

Just a rhetorical thought.

[Twocubdad]

I was only four and staying at my grandparent's. I don't particularly recall many details except that the TV was on all day. That was unusual. Usually it was only on at noon to watch Jesse Helms on WRAL then in the evening for Uncle Walter and Gunsmoke.

 

I don't remember much about MLK's assasination, although I do remember going downtown that Sunday afternoon and watching a very somber and respectful march in his honor. I also reremember watching people on TV throw rocks at school buses full of black children in South Boston several years later.

 

Unfortunately, Pack, hate has little regard for geography.

 

 

[Tampa Turtle]

Ah yes I still have a 13 year old who still believes in Santa Claus.

[Kahuna]

I was a college junior and having coffee in the cafeteria with some friends (this was at Ole Miss - JFK was booed in newsreels), when a yahoo came in and loudly said, "Guess what, gang, our leader's been shot." We quickly found out what he was talking about and went up to the dorm to listen to the radio. Only a couple of TVs on campus. It was still known only that JFK had been shot. The announcement came from Parkland Hospital and we all just went white with shock. I was tearing up and went out to the upper lobby that faced the student union building. A crowd was out there and there were a few cheers, but most students were horrified. Classes were canceled until Tuesday and most kids were very solemn.

 

I agree with skeptic that it was more traumatic to us than 9/11 was later. We had never conceived of anything like that happening at the time. I think it's hard for people born or reaching the age of understanding after the 1960's to understand how different our world was.

 

Hard to believe it will be 50 years in just two more.

[desertrat77]

I was toddler on 22 Nov 63, no memory of the tragic event that day.

 

11 Sep 01, stationed in Okinawa. Due to the time zone difference, it was about 10 pm there, the kids were finally asleep and I decided to watch a few minutes Armed Forces Network, and noticed that some news was breaking.....

 

Watched TV till about 1 am...all the while, a typhoon was kicking up. As I was trying to comprehend what I was seeing on CNN, the wind and rain were howling.

 

Typhoon didn't amount to much after all...mid morning on the 12th, we were all recalled. Everyone seemed to sense that some challenging duty was ahead.

(This message has been edited by desertrat77)

[Tampa Turtle]

The night before my wife and I had had a big fight and we weren't talking but 9/11 made us forget about it.

 

Sept 11 was going to an off site meeting. Waiting in lobby saw Today Show coverage of small plane hitting tower. Saw 2nd. plane hit live. We had our staff meeting for the next two hours with the picture on and the sound off and tried to figure out what was going on. I found my notes from that meeting recently--we managed to actually get something accomplished.

 

Recall at the time was that 20,000 people were thought to have perished at the Twin Towers.

 

On the drive back realized we were at war. We had turned off the news. When I walked into the downtown conf room the big screen had the news on and a map of the country. The IT guy said that almost all the planes were ordered down but 4. Folks with family in New York were frantic. My son was 3 and at a jewish day school. I suddenly panicked and wondered if that was a target (there were a lot of PLO bombings back then) but realized it was run by a ex-israeli paratrooper who watched them like a hawk.

 

We were sent home early like a lot of Govt workers that day. I remember seeing the police swat team with sniper rifles and M60 Machine Guns on the top of the parking garage next to City Hall.

 

There was a rumor that President Bush and Air Force One was at MacDill AFB a couple of miles from our house. I remember feeling that I wanted that fat juicy target as far from me as possible. Later wondering where the heck was he. A lot of confusion.

 

It was very quiet as people went home early and watched the news. Stores were pretty empty. There were no planes in the sky which felt odd. That night an unsettling sight at home was my 3 year old taking his white airliner toy and flying it into a refrigerator box over and over. He couldn't talk yet and we kept him from the TV but his teachers had the radio on.

 

The next day we would learn that a family friend, a dentist who was a Navy Reservist doing a week at the Pentagon, was missing and presumed dead.

 

 

[Mr. Boyce]

I was a couple of months old.

 

The world event that made the biggest impact on me was the Fall of the Berlin Wall. I was shocked to hear of this on the radio, while getting a haircut at the barber shop, and as the news talk continued, and the idea got more and more real, I realized that everything shifted.

 

It did, that day. A new global world; two billion more free consumers and participants in the economy. Shapes the way we live today.

[CA_Scouter]

I was almost 4. I remember seeing my Dad and Mom cry while watching the television... and my Dad never cried. And he did not like Kennedy.

 

On 9/11 I was commuting to SF very early in the morning and did not hear about anything until my sister sent me a frantic email. I work on the 32nd floor and she urged me to leave right away ( I didn't ). Later in the day we heard that fighters were escorting some jets into the airport as they were over the Pacific when the order came to land... a lot of people did not come into work that day..

 

[Tampa Turtle]

Most of my family is on the west coast. I think it was a different experience East vs West. Most folks found out when they turned on the morning news. Real time vs. happened event. I think there was more rumors, confusion, and fear as it happened.

 

On a side note:

 

When Reagan got shot I was a smart-ass college student. Couldn't stand him --could not believe he got elected. That day I did not have the news on and went to a small store in my south Georgia college town.

 

Lady behind counter "Isn't it a shame about President Reagan?". Thinking I had found a kindred spirit I replied "Yeah, stupid SOB; even that idiot Quayle would be better." She frowned up and threw my purchase at me. When I got in the car I turned on the radio and realized what had happened and hit my head on the steering wheel over and over.

[skeptic]

When Reagan was shot, I had just gotten in my car to go find a place for lunch, and the news was broadcast. I simply had that sinking feeling in my stomach, thinking "not again". Pretty much ruined my lunch. I cannot help but wonder how what affect these series of events had on my views today. I was not sure about my feelings about President Reagan at the time, but the idea that another president was attacked, in the United States, really hurt somehow, emotionally. The idea that our "free society", where everyone had a right to their opinions could allow this to happen was difficult to understand. Whether or not I liked President Reagan, he was still "our" president, and deserved respect and the chance to put forward his and his parties ideas. That is probably why today's attitudes by so many is, for me, almost unimaginable. The levels of enmity espoused against President Obama is truly scary. What is even scarier, to me, is that so many of those with these beliefs appear to be accepted, even when they are encouraging, directly or indirectly, violence against our President, as well as lockstep obdurate negative responses to "just about anything" proffered by this administration.

 

 

[Tampa Turtle]

I found the amount of enmity toward Bush just as bad. While I did not vote for him (I voted for -gag- Kerry.) he is the leader. This is our process like it or not. I concentrate on telling the boys you respect the office; you don't like it help a campaign and vote when you can. Its a tough job regardless.

 

Kinda like my attitude toward SM's.