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Add My StoryWhere were you when you heard President Kennedy was assassinated?
“I was at school in the 2nd grade, I thought the world was coming to an end because all the teachers were crying and they sent us out to play until they got all the bus drivers together to take us home. The only time I had seen grown people cry was when some family member was dead, so I knew it must be something big because everyone’s family members couldn’t be dead and they had never closed school before!”
-Tommy Pinkard
“I was in Dallas on that day on a Harley Davidson motorcycle … and boy, what mayhem!”
-John T.Stanger
“I was driving my very cool red convertible Corvair , famously deemed ‘unsafe at any speed’ by Ralph Nader. I remember that it was a mild day for a Pennsylvania November. As I tooled down the Route 309 expressway listening to music on the car radio, the program was interrupted by an announcement that ‘something’ had happened to Kennedy’s Dallas motorcade, quickly followed by ‘shots had been fired.’ I was about ten minutes away from my home. By the time I pulled into the driveway I heard that he was seriously wounded—or dead. I sat in the car for a long time, unable to move. Now I realize for the first time why—beyond obvious reasons—I was so devastated. Franklin Roosevelt, our national father, died suddenly when I was 19, my father died suddenly when I was 23, and now Kennedy, just a few years older than my 37 was still another father figure.”
-Witnify User
“Walking home from the bus stop after school, innocent of what had happened. Strolled into the house with the usual teenaged insouciance. I remember seeing my parents crying, and the shock of their crying was worse than the reason they cried.”
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“I was in high school at the time, and I remember being sent home from school early–something that never happened at my large, public high school on Staten Island. I walked, stunned and crying, to the bus stop with friends. I don’t think I had any idea how to process the news. I don’t really know if I thought about it then, but I had been so excited by the Kennedy election. JFK had made a campaign stop at the Staten Island ferry terminal in the months before the election and my Dad had taken me to hear him speak; I shook his hand and he autographed a paper for me that I still have. I suspect that must have run through my mind at the time, although all that is clear in my memory now is a feeling of very personal loss.”
-Elaine Ingulli
“I think it was midday and I was seated at my desk typing up a brief for the judge when one of our law clerks literally burst into the room. He had a newspaper under his arm, and he was ghostly pale. I asked what was wrong and he told me, ‘The President has been shot!’ I remember saying to him, ‘Surely you jest.’ He said no and proffered the newspaper. There it was in black and white and I had to believe it. We poured over the paper looking for details as though we did not believe our eyes. My state of shock and tearfulness lasted a long time.”
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“I was in the 3rd grade at Hoffer Elementary School in Banning, CA. Our Principal came in and whispered to our teacher. Our teacher, Mrs. Graham went to the front of the class and told us that President Kennedy had been shot. A half hour later the Principal came back in the classroom and whispered again to Mrs. Graham. Mrs. Graham begin to cry and being so shook up, went to the chalkboard and wrote, ‘The President is dead.’ I will never forget that moment.”
-Deborah Dukes
“I was working at home in the kitchen, the baby napping and the older children in school. Since I had neither the television nor radio on, it was a total surprise when the delivery man arrived at the back door sad said, ‘The President had been shot.’ My initial reaction was that it couldn’t be true, but I also knew no one would say such a thing unless it were true. The telephone began to ring as others shared the news and we all remained glued to the television for the following dreadful days. I recall on Sunday the Minister at church preached a magnificent sermon on the tragedy and wondering how he managed to create it so quickly. We were a country, perhaps a world, united in sorrow.”
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“I was on the way home, from the Laundromat, in Central Falls, Rhode Island, when my neighbor leaned out her 3rd floor tenement apartment and yelled, ‘Joan, the President’s been shot, in Dallas, TX!’ I couldn’t believe it. Like everyone else, we were glued to the TV for continuing coverage of all that was happening. I was my church Sabbath School Secretary, for that Sabbath, and I completely revised my report, sharing my views of what had happened.”
-Joan Philbin
“I was a sophomore living in Ann Arbor. I walked to the diag that day, knowing nothing, and saw some groups of students standing in groups of 2 or 3. It was unnaturally quiet and the figures seemed as though they were pieces of a frieze. I can almost imagine wisps of fog hanging in the air but probably it wasn’t the case.”
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“I was 11 years old and I went to the grocery store for my mother… I was standing in the check out line when they announced it on the radio… I remember people crying and I was not real sure what was going on… I went home and asked my mother and she explained it to me… And I remember crying too with my mom. It was a very sad day in history! I’ll always remember that day!”
-Deborah Novotny
“I was an accounting clerk in a ball bearing factory. There were huge machines which punched out different sizes of ball bearings. The sound was deafening, and even when one became inured to the sounds, it still remained in your consciousness. Thump, thump, thump. A foreman came into the office, ashen and shaken to say that the President had been shot. The shock seemed to silence all sound for a few moments. Then the thump, thump, thump returned as the sound of grief.”
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“I was in high school in 1963. We were all taken to the gym. No one told us what it was about, but it was obviously very important and probably bad. When they told us Kennedy had been shot, many students burst into tears. It didn’t affect me very much. I never met Kennedy and don’t form emotional attachments to people I don’t know. The only rare exceptions are people like Martin Luther King Jr., who I admired so much that I grieved when he was killed.”
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“I was nine years old at the time of the JFK assassination. I was ill that day, and I was at home, rather than in school, watching television from the couch in my parental home. I recall that the television program was interrupted with the announcement that JFK had been shot, in Dallas, Texas. The next announcement I heard not long after the first, was delivered the same way as the first one. This time, the announcer, who may have been Walter Cronkite, said that President Kennedy had died as the result of a fatal gunshot wound. My immediate reaction was disbelief. I cried. I thought there much be some mistake. I told no one.”
-Lorna Huckabone
“I was teaching at Lenape Jr. High School in Central Bucks the day our president was killed. It was just after lunch that the principal came over the loudspeaker to announce the news. The silence was astounding, and a little later more of the details were revealed. Schools were closed on the day of his funeral, and all eyes were at home on the TV, a very sad day in the history of our country.”
-Witnify User
“At a research laboratory of the University of Kansas Medical School, I was discussing a biochemical problem with another post-doctoral fellow when we heard the President had been killed. I was frozen, so to speak, because the immensity of the fact couldn’t be incorporated quickly. On the way home after work I passed a young nurse who was married to a physician. Someone told her the President had been killed and she said I’m glad. For the next two days I could do nothing but follow the news on television.”
-Witnify User
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