Do you remember the JFK assassination?

Technically I was alive, I guess. I was born six months later.

I’ve seen pics online of what was left of his skull. I don’t get why they bothered to try to save him. Maybe it was just what they did back then, a courtesy to the survivors or something.

I was in third grade. Our teacher brought in a radio because President Kennedy was going to give a speech in Dallas. I heard the whole thing happen. School closed immediately after.

I'm a Canadian. I was in elementary school and we were just about to changes classes when a teacher came in and told us that the President had been shot.

We were frightened and for some strange reason we thought that the Russians were now going to try to get everyone.

It's a date frozen in time that you never forget.

I was eight years old in the fourth grade. We had to stay in school as the news broke. Out teachers told us that something happened to the president and that he might be dead. When they finally dismissed us for the afternoon, we were told to go home immediately.

Elementary school. I was 10. We were all called to assembly, and the school principal announced that President Kennedy was dead. I didn't see the film of the shot to Kennedy's head and a piece of it being blown off until I was an adult.

Bedlam.

He had just been shot.

Yes--I was nine--our teacher was notified during the afternoon and immediately started crying; what innocence there was for me previously, evaporated; everyone was already under severe stress because of the heating up of the cold war, & then the Cuban Missile Crisis had shifted everything into ultra overdrive. Every child had individual serious survival supplies stocked in storage at school in the event of a nuclear detonation and we really did practice "duck and cover", among other things. We were within ten miles of a major Air Force Base, and were acutely aware of increased aircraft movements during this time.

Everyone was crying--men, women, children, news readers. I remember watching Walter Cronkite's delivery, and how even he was affected. That Friday night was horrible--our parents were extremely upset, talking very quietly, while bulletins kept breaking on TV. And then the aftermath with Lee Harvey Oswald . . . I will always remember the funeral cortege, and the drums--thump, thump, thump, the caisson pulled by horses--clip clop, clip clop, and John-John saluting his papa.

A little of me died that day, along with so many others around the world. He was truly loved; our country was forever changed on that day, and some ways, I think we have never recovered. Dark, dark days filled with unspeakable grief. To this day, my favorite car is the 1963 Lincoln Continental.

Natalie Portman did not look like Jackie. One could see Natalie Portman wearing Jackie clothes & speaking strangely.

Regarding his assassination, I have no memory of it. First US history memory for me was the fall of Saigon. It was dreadful.

I was in the third grade and pissed that nothing was on TV that entire weekend but the news. And then the funeral preempted more shows. Jeez it went on forever.

I was just 16 months old, but I remember watching the news from my bassinet...my mother was hysterical.

Much too young, OP.

I was 10. We were in reading group. The first announcement very carefully stated that he had been shot but wasn't killed. Yet. We heard that a few minutes later. I just remember wandering around the playground.

I agree with R9. I died a little too that day.

I remember watching it on tv. When RFK was shot I have a clear picture of my mother crying as she stood at my bedroom door. She said something like, "Well it's another Kennedy."

The JFK assassination was one of my first memories. I was three. I remember looking up at my mum and she was ironing and crying. Steam was rising when the iron went over her tears. I was scared because Ii thought my dad had died. Always been fascinated with the Kennedy's and ironing.

Gawd they aren't kidding when they say DL skews old.

I just turned one a few days beforehand. I was putzing or napping in my playpen that afternoon. My mom said the news of it had her crying,

"Gawd they aren't kidding when they say DL skews old."

The next thread will be: "Do You Remeber When They Invented Fire?"

I was 12 and I remember it. I was in Catholic school. The nuns made us say the rosary and then we went home. Sister Michael, our principal, interrupted classes to come on the PA, and we could hear the radio in the background all crackling, and she said that someone has shot the President. I remember those exact words, and she said that he was taken to the hospital and then she said we would all now pray the rosary. When we finished praying, there was silence, and the she came back on and said President Kennedy has died and she said that in a few minutes we would be dismissed and we had to remain perfectly quiet. She wanted no talking. When we were being marched out I remember the nuns crying and blowing their noses. I had never seen a nun cry before. As we walked home, I remember seeing people in cars crying and cars pulling over so drivers could listen to the radio. The other thing I remember is that all my friends, everyone in the world it seemed, was watching TV all weekend and there was only the Kennedy assassination on TV. Very unusual to have 24 hrs of news back then No other programming. And of course the live shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald on Sunday morning. Now that was incredible. my mother literally jumped out of her chair when that happened and shouted "No!!" Then she was fanning herself, very agitated. Everyone was scared.

JFK was buried on my 21st birthday. How is that for a bummer

[quote]To this day, my favorite car is the 1963 Lincoln Continental.

The Kennedy limousine that he was assassinated in was a 1961 Lincoln Continental.

Thank you, R21. That was helpful.

I was 7, at school in the UK. The shock was enormous, even there. A real feeling that a positive era had abruptly ended. All these years later, on the date of his assassination it still pops into my mind, "oh, today's the anniversary". I am well aware of JFK's failings but the contrast with the current occupant of the WH is stark. I think the loss of JFK is compounded in people's minds by the later loss of his brother Robert.

It still has a grip on the imagination.

I was just over three yrs old. The casket laying in the Rotunda on our black and white tv is one of my earliest memories, although very vague. My mom—who was born in Massachusetts—was sad beyond words.

Jackie is very good. The tone is very somber and maintained throughout.

My dad was schpp; aged. He turned on the radio and heard the news.

He was an Australian and a minor Kennedy fan. He took drove me into the city to take me to breakfast and watch Oliver Stone's JFK on a big screen when I was 9 years old!

I was nine and home from school (we got out early on Fridays) and preparing to go to the doctor to get my weekly allergy shot. When Mom and I walked out of the house our neighbor across the street, whom we called Eyeore because of his dour personality, told us the president had been shot. We weren't sure whether to believe him because he also had a dry and warped sense of humor, but we finally realized it was true. My parents were pro-Republicans (Dad loathed JFK) so not much was said in the car on the way to the doc's. While in the waiting room the receptionist came out to tell us the president had died.

It was really the weekend that followed that I remember most. Everyone was glued to his television set and we were at my grandmother's after church on Sunday afternoon watching when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, the birth of modern media. Life just kind of stopped for everyone over the weekend. I don't remember my parents crying, being sad, or really saying much of anything about the assassination, but even given their political proclivities it seems odd they had no visible reaction.

The presidential limousine was used for many years after that. It's on display at the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

Catholic school. 7th grade. Principal gets on the intercom to announce we are all "going across the street to pray for the immortal soul of our president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was shot this afternoon in Dallas, Texas." Since we lived in New Jersey, heaps of derision were piled upon the words "Dallas" and "Texas." "Across the street" meant "to church," in case it's not perfectly obvious.

Most of our parents were parked at the sidewalk when we came out of church. My mother gave this nasty, bitchy girl who had debated for Nixon in our fourth grade Nixon-Kennedy debate a ride home. In the car, I looked at Barbara like I wanted to kill her, and hissed "Happy now?" And then I said to my brother, "Her own parents couldn't be bothered showing up to pick her up. WE had to give her a ride home (and her brother and sister)."

11 y/o, 6th grade in Catholic school. We'd just returned from lunch when the nun made the announcement. We were sent home.

My older sister was going to have her first boy/girl party that evening. Of course, it was cancelled, as was everything else. There was nothing on television (which consisted of the 3 networks,, PBS and an independent station) that night (or until the funeral was over the following Monday) except coverage of the murder, the funeral, etc.

I think Lee Harvey Oswald was the first person to be killed on TV, another jolt to the nation's collective psyche.

The next day I went to my art class. It was decided we would get more out of having something to do besides watching TV.

Sunday was Jack Ruby Day, by which time I had heard my grandmother tell her Nancy Hughes story twenty times to twenty people. Or was it Lisa?

r30, ah, Catholic school. I remember it well.

For everyone who was sent home, did you have to walk? Or were the buses called to send you home early?

The principal pinged our mothers, r32, who then had to text Y or N as to whether they'd be there to pick us up.

R33, texting was not born yet.

I was 5. My father had quit his job, and we were about to move to a new city and his new job. He was playing with my brither and I when my Mom let out a loud scream. Dad said, “let’s go see what wrong with Mom”. I just remember them embracing each other and both crying. We knew it was bad.

No TV that weekend.

You know I was born about a month before he was shot so I dont have any memory other than my older sisters telling me exactly what some people are saying here. The teachers stopped the class, turned on the radio and told the kids in elementary school he was shot dead. They said all the kids started crying, the closed the school for the day etc.

If that happened today, kids would know right away via internet, BUT the schools would probably shove it under the carpet, no announcement, probably something like please refrain from discussing politics while in class kind of bullshit PC. People were so much more connected back then it seems even without the internet.

Obviously, with this President, there would probably be more cheering than tears. But I digress.

there is a russia connection here too

No shit, r34.

I was 11 years old and a 5th grade north of Boston Catholic schoolboy at the time. My memories are very close to several others already described here. When the announcement came over the classroom speaker (a single wooden speaker hung over the main doorway at the front of the class) the nun reading the announcement must not have been close enough to the microphone because initially her words were garbled at times. Our class had just won a prize for selling the most tickets for a school fundraiser and I at first thought the nun had said 'the president was shocked' and I thought 'the President knows about our prize ?".

When the announcement was finished our Sister cleared up the confusion. There was widespread shock and bewilderment. Even in our young class there was speculation that Russia might be involved. We were let go a bit early (in those days virtually everyone had a stay at home Mom). Many of the nuns were crying. JFK was the first Catholic president and was very popular among Catholics. My parents and siblings also reacted with shock and bewilderment and it was indeed the first time I can remember the whole family glued to the tv for news. There would be many more such days before the sixties were over.

When Oswald was shot I had just left the tv room where my brother, father and I were awaiting a glimpse of Oswald as he was being transferred from the local jail . I was in the next room making a cup of tea at the kitchen stove when my brother started yelling "They shot him, they shot Oswald !". I ran back in. The tense atmosphere of the tv proceedings from earlier was now at near panic level. In those days it seemed like it took forever for them to finally show the replay. It seems like I must have seen it a hundred times before that day was over.

The day of the funeral was beyond somber. Jackie Kennedy veiled in black with loyal Robert (a hero of mine) right beside her. Little John John saluting the casket as it passed. A lot of attention was paid to the symbolism of the riderless horse which was part of the funeral procession. Empty riding boots were positioned backwards in the stirrups (is that the right word ?) to symbolize the fallen leader. It was a beautiful young horse and he bucked and pulled and made life difficult for the young serviceman who led him. The horse's recalcitrance seemed to symbolize the entire nation's reluctance to believe what had occurred.

R34 could be the OP of the Greatest English Rock Band thread.

I was in 6th grade at the time, they told the teacher but not the students. The principal stuck his head into the classroom and ask if he could see her in the hall for a second, when she returned she was visibly shaken but we proceeded with normal activities. I found out when I got home from school, there was nothing else on TV for days and you have to remember in much of America then there were only three channels.

The killing of Lee Harvey Oswald is something I have much more of a memory of since I saw it happen live on TV. I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing but they ran it on a loop for quite a while. Only time I have actually seen someone die in real time.

r1 don't let the left hear you speak like that. Life doesn't matter before birth.

r7 what a stereotypical teenager in the background; rolled up jean cuffs, Converse, letterman's jacket, grease backed hair or military high top, so typical. I guess the late 50's Jame Dean style hadn't gone out by 1963.

r19's is your brother the Princess Diana Screamer? I want to know if the hysterics run in the family.

[quote]I guess the late '50s James Dean style hadn't gone out by 1963.

The Beatles would bring new haircuts to NJ in the months that followed. By eighth grade, Kirk M. and I were nagged constantly by our nun to "Get ya bangs outa yeh righs" in a full Southie accent.

We were because we did it!

Yes, it's my earliest memory. I was already in trouble for using a crayon or a lipstick (can't remember which) to draw all over the living room carpet, and my Mom had had to discipline me, and was scrubbing the carpet, and the TV was on in the background, and my poor Mom was sobbing, and I thought I had made her cry, and it's only in retrospect that I realized what she was crying about. Of course, I was still too young to take it all in.

It was a Friday and I was in last period of 7th grade when the principal dismissed us saying the president had been shot. On the school bus going home, my friend had a transistor radio and it was said that he was dead. It seemed too incredible to be real.

Remember the JFK assassination? Just how old do you think we are, OP?

Even today, watching the video on You Tube, still brings me to tears. hundreds of thousands of people lined up to view the lying in state. Everyone s quiet and crying. The image we get of Jackie is how stoic and dignified she was, and she was! But in one clip, she's standing with her kids as they are unloading JFK's casket to take him in to the capitol, and she bows her head obviously sobbing.

It was such an elegant funeral. We needed that. I never fully appreciated what a comfort it was to refocus people's attention from the shock and horror of the assassination, and Dallas, to the dignity of the mourning and funeral service. Jackie really did an amazing job. In a way she was telling us who we were. All the history and the traditions that were drawn upon during that time. It was sending a message about America at a time when the whole world needed to come together. It was incredible to me to see the foreign heads of state all walking to the Cathedral. Even Charles De Gaulle.

Of course I remember. 8th grade. I was in Phys.Ed. class, last period. One guy burst into the locker room, wild-eyed, saying "Kennedy's been shot."

I was in college. Walked around the campus. Remember thinking if Kennedy passes away - tragic, but Vice President Johnson has enough experience to take over. By the time I drove home President Kennedy had died. Heart Breaking.

[quote] Gawd they aren't kidding when they say DL skews old.

Wait till you see the overwhelming response to the "Do you remember the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand?" thread.

So. Let's all talk about the Normandy Invasion..... do we have any veterans here?

This eldergay was a freshman in college.

The best book on the assassination is "The Reporter who Knew too much," about Dorothy Kilgallen. She had Marcello and Giancana pretty well nailed for it. Excellent read.

I thought it was interesting that “With the Beatles” was released in the UK on November 22.

I was in 9th grade, walking from Latin class in one school building back to Study Hall with fellow students, when we met some younger guys heading in the opposite direction. One of them told us the President had been shot. I scoffed, arguing that he was joking. But,when we soon arrived at Study Hall, the upper school Principal verified it was true.

We were all shocked, and I really felt like an idiot. Shortly after, that Principal announced the President was dead, and went outside, where he lowered the flag to half mast. Some of the girls cried at their desks.

Two days later, as my parents slept in, I was up early, and witnessed Oswald murdered on live television. Same archival footage you still find online.

I had just seen Kennedy live in a motorcade, on a boulevard in front of the school just two months before. That boulevard was lined with crowds of well-wishers, thousands of them, for all of the nearly twenty miles on the way into Pittsburgh. That man just commanded adulation.

And, curiously, even then, everyone somehow knew his death was the end of an era. A week later, I went with my family to see the touring company of the musical, “Camelot.” Already, it was taking on mythic proportions.

Twelve years later, I happened to have a short conversation with Jackie. It was like talking to a shadow.

Sixth grade, California public school. It happened in the morning for us (due to the time difference.) People were on the playground starting and passing all kinds of rumors about what was going on. Eventually we went home; everything was shut down for the next three days. Nothing on TV but coverage of the event (remember that there were only three networks and a few independent stations back then, and certainly no cable.)

I have an image of my white and turquoise clock radio burned into my mind as my memory of the assassination. I was home alone, sick, from school, and listening to the radio from my bed. The music was interrupted by the news that Kennedy had been shot, and I entered a surreal fugue state, not knowing if this could possibly be real.

My mother had been running errands, but came back right away as she had heard on the car radio. I remember watching out the window to see her teal metallic station wagon turn into the driveway, and she came running in to check on me.

Seeing Oswald shot was another burnt into the brain experience. Life was getting very real in the scary way that nightmares are made, and the subsequent assassinations of ML King and Bobby Kennedy began the turning of the world upside down that accelerated into youth protests and riots.

Legit, so when you got home did you just walk into your house if your mother was at work and amuse yourself?

That's a whole other thread, r61.

[quote]If that happened today, kids would know right away via internet, BUT the schools would probably shove it under the carpet, no announcement, probably something like please refrain from discussing politics while in class kind of bullshit PC.

WTF are you babbling about? Are you drunk?

I was in eighth grade at St. Anthony's. The announcement came over the loudspeaker, and we were told to grab our coats, and the nuns herded us off tho the church to say a group rosary. First time I'd ever seen a nun cry......guess they were human after all! JFK was the first ever Catholic president to grace the White House, and I'm sure that his death was a personal blow to Catholics everywhere.

Afterward, we were all sent home "to be with our families" per the nun's request. I arrived home, only to discover that even my dad was in tears. I had only seen my dad cry one other time, and that was three years earlier when my grandfather died.

Do the Catholics remember better?

I was in the seventh grade in a small town on Boston's South Shore, halfway between Boston and Hyannis Port, so deep in the heart of Kennedy country. That and my mom was born a year after JFK on the same street the Kennedy's lived on at the time, Beals Street in Brookline. His family didn't know my grandparents and they moved a couple of years later, but she always said she felt a sort of connection to him as a toddler in the same part of town. He was a god in Massachusetts then: the Kennedys were the closest thing Boston had to royalty and he was the Crown Prince. He appealed to my parents' WWII generation in a way no politician before or since ever has and by extension to their kids. Ike was Howdy Doody, Nixon was an ogre, LBJ was cornpone and JFK was sex on a stick by comparison. Nobody knew about the sex and drugs - it was all PT-109 and the pictures of him and Jackie and Caroline and John coming out of church in Palm Beach or playing with their kids that people saw and said, "He's one of us" until, of course, they learned the illusion wasn't the truth.

The teachers brought us all to the school auditorium (500 or so kids) to watch it on a 21" TV with poor reception. We were sent home earlier than usual. I was learning how to play golf and spent the remaining daylight hours hitting wiffle balls in the backyard, crying. The world changed that day - the end of innocence - because after that the war in Vietnam followed in short order, then race riots, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, more riots in Chicago and then Nixon's election. In retrospect November 22nd, 1963 was the day the music really died. The 1960's and 1970's, my formative years, sucked. September 11th, 2001 was the only day since then like it with the whole country numb and in shock.

[quote]November 22nd, 1963 was the day the music really died.

[quote]“With the Beatles” was released in the UK on November 22.

One of these statements is not true.

I remember very well. I was sucking this guy off in the janitor's closet at my school, he was very close to nutting and there was all this commotion. We ran out and heard that the President was shot. I never got his load, but sometimes when I close my eyes I can still remember the smell of his musky uncut cock leaking precum.

Did we say "nutting" in 1963?

I was 11, in the 6th grade. There happened to be no school that day in my town, for a teachers conference. I was home, watching Jayne Mansfield being interviewed on The Mike Douglas Show, having a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, when NBC broke in with a bulletin saying JFK had been shot in a Dallas motorcade. I remember calling out to my mother what had been reported. The television remained on in the house for the entire weekend.

Leaving the Janitor's closet for a momnet, I'd like to share some observations. JFK's assassination seemed like it heralded a period of great turbulence in our country.

I did some research, based on what I can remember, and looked up the dates:

June 12, 1963 Medgar Evers was murdered in his own Drive way in Jackson Mississippi He was a nationally recognized Civil Rights leader

September 15, 1963 The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed by the KKK and four little girls were killed.

November 22, 1963, JFK was assassinated

June 21, 1964 James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner CivilRights workers conducting voters' registration, were tortured and murdered, and their bodies were dumped in a construction site in Neshoba County Mississippi. The bodies were found after a nationally publicized search, August 4th 1964.

February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was murdered as he spoke to 400 hundred people in Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan

February 26, 1965, Jimmy Lee Jackson was gunned down while sitting in a restaurant in front of his father and his sister and other patrons, by police officers in Selma Alabama who were angry at the Civil Rights marchers.

March 11th, 1965, Rev. James Reeb was beaten to death in the streets of Selma when he travelled South to support the Civil Rights Marchers.

March 25, 1965, Viola Gregg Liuzzo of Detroit, was shot and killed while driving Civil Rights marchers during the Selma to Montgomery March for Voting Rights. An FBI informant, Gary Thomas Rowe was in the car with the shooters.

April 4th 1968, Rev. Martin Luther King, jr. was standing on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel with his friends and fellow Civil Rights activists preparing to address the Garbage Workers on strike in Memphis Tennessee, when he was shot and killed.

June 6th 1968, Robert Kennedy died of a gunshot to the head. He'd been shot the night before by a Palestinian worker in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in downtown Los Angeles after successfully winning the California Primary for the Democratic nomination for POTUS.

From about 1964 through to the early 1970's the United States was riven by rioting in cities all over the United States beginning with Cleveland and the Watts district of LA, to Detroit, Harlem, NYC, Chicago, etc. usually driven by police violence against African American communities and morphing into anti war protests. Then on May 4th 1970, The ohio National guard opened fire, shooting 67 rounds into a crowd of anti war demonstrators killing 4 wounding 9. On May 15, Police fired on demonstrators at Jackson State University in Mississippi, and killed two.

During this period, our nightly news was a filled with scenes of mass arrests, police dogs and fire hoses, and people being beaten as the got off buses in the South, then with massive anti war demonstrations in Washington D.C. and across college campuses all over the country. Mix all of that in with the rioting in many of our cities, and that was how I grew up.

R71 here. As I look at this list, and recall the news of the day, watching my older cousins get drafted and go off to Vietnam, I am grateful that we did not have the kind of Congress then that we do now, and the kind of President then that we have now.

It feels like just yesterday, I was 16 and my neighbors dad was fucking me deep and hard, he had one of those thick pieces that angle upwards and really hit your prostrate. I remember the radio was on because I was loud and he was really close to cumming and I was biting down on the pillow and they announced it and he went soft. It was such a sad day.

[quote]And also has anyone seen "Jackie" with Natalie Portman, and how do you think her performance was?

The JFK assassination was before my time, but I did watch JACKIE just a few weeks ago and thought it was a great film. I watched it because I'm currently obsessed with Mica Levi who did the incredible score. Portman's performance is very good. She does look or sound like Jackie, but she's good at conveying the emotional state of someone going through those awful events.

* She DOESN'T look or sound like Jackie

Weird. I thought there were only 4 people in the car.

I remember it well. We were let out of school from the day of the assassination to the day after the funeral. The day he was shot someone came to our classroom and called our teacher outside in the hall. She started crying and the principal came in and told us that school was being closed early and we would all be going home. He wouldn't tell us what had happened. There was no entertainment TV for 4 days. Every TV channel broadcasted nothing but JFK programming all day until sign off each night. One off the flag bearers in the funeral procession was the husband of my cousin. I was watching the TV with my parents the day Jack Ruby stepped out of the crowd and shot Lee Harvey Oswald. It was all a bit much for a 10 year old.

I saw Jackie with Portman and I hated it. I didn't like the way she tried to imitate Jackie's voice. And there was something inauthentic to her acting. it was like, "Look! I'm ACTING! I'm Jackie." I used to adore Natalie and I still respect her politics, but I don't think she's as good an actress as I once did. Maybe the movie bothered me because as an eldergay (late 60's) I remember the real Jackie very well.

My dad was eight years old at the time, and he says it's one of his earliest memories. He didn't really understand what was happening - we're British, he didn't even know who the president of the United States was at that age. He just remembers all the adults around him shouting and going crazy.

I was in junior high. I remember leaving school and everyone was all sad, the grief was palpable. I didn't know what to do so I went home with this black kid who had a gigantic cock. He fucked me for hours. I remember watching Jack Ruby shoot Oswald on TV and feeling the slightest tingle of that black kids load in my hole. Tragic times indeed.

LOL Nothing like great old memories, is there R80?

I was in 5th grade, happy that it was finally Friday and near the end of the day. Someone came into our classroom and gave the teacher a note. They told us we would be let out a little early. The end of the day was usually 3pm. We were let out about 2:50 pm. The adults, teachers, office workers, all of them were quiet, unusually so. For some reason we, the kids, sensed something and just left quietly.

My mom as were many other moms was waiting outside. Some of them were crying. We lived just down the block from the school so she didn't always come to pick me up. People weren't really worried about child snatching in those days. My mom was quite. As we approached out apartment before she got out the key she told me she heard that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas TX.

We came inside and turned on the TV and Walter Cronkite was taking his glasses on and off, obvious that he was crying. We knew then. At 10 the first think I thought of was those little kid's daddy was killed. I didn't think about what it would mean for our country. My mom left me in front of the TV and went to call my father and some of her friends. I guess she knew enough to be worried about the entire picture, not just 2 little children who now had no daddy.

Come Monday my father's office was closed and we were watching TV, about Kennedy and Oswald of course when suddenly Jack Ruby shot Oswald. We both just stared like we could not believe our eyes.

I don't know which was more shocking. The main things I remember about those three days was hearing Kennedy was shot. Walter Cronkite crying, Oswald being shot before our eyes and the kids saying goodbye to their daddy.

The driver of car, William Greer, was from Ireland. Jackie was not impressed with his performance that day.

When I was a kid, I saw a BBC documentary marking the 30 year anniversary of the assassination. It really shook me up and I couldn't sleep that night. Like, really scared me. Since then I've been fascinated by it. I know all the conspiracy theories quickly become like a rabbit hole, but one thing I desperately want to know is, who the fuck was that "babushka lady"???

I can't stand Natalie Portman, but I thought she was very good as Jackie, the best Hollywood Jackie to date.

The Babushka Lady was an eyewitness who filmed the entire assassination on the non grassy knoll side. She wore a scarf and the film was taken from her.

[quote]he had one of those thick pieces that angle upwards and really hit your prostrate

Oh, dear!

r70 The FHA administrator looked like Jayne Mansfield?

[quote]On November 22, 1963, Douglas was speaking with Federal Housing Administrator Robert C. Weaver, when station newscaster John Dancy interrupted the live broadcast by walking through the audience in order to give the first reports of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The show soon ended as NBC began its four-day coverage of the tragedy.

JFK was killed before I was born, but this story comes to mind.

My father was a highly decorated Green Beret under the Kennedy administration. He trained for 18 months as a medic and weapons specialist at Fort Bragg before being deployed to Vietnam. In 1963, during one of his classroom training sessions, a cohort entered the room and announced that Kennedy had been assassinated.

The teacher of this class, a Colonel, turned and kicked the chalkboard, shattering it. The name of the class he was teaching was, “Assassination.”

My father doesn’t necessarily believe that a member of our military took out JFK. But our government has certainly trained the military to do things that are unconscionable to regular people like you and me.

Interesting short piece on the mysterious Umbrella Man at the assassination site.

I still get goosebumps. We knew the world had suddenly shifted, and the rest of the world did, too. It was scary. In the attached photo, walking in Kennedy's funeral procession: Heinrich Luebke, president of West Germany; President Charles de Gaulle of France; Queen Frederika of Greece; King Baudouin of Belgium; Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia; Philippines President Diosdado Macapagal and South Korean President Chung Hee Park.

The death car to which you refer R28, was sent immediately that weekend of November 23rd to Ford Motors (bullet holes in the front window shield and all) to be stripped and refurbished even though it was, effectively, the crime scene.

And, morbidly, that exact refurbished car was then used by LBJ as the Presidential car.

I was 13 and in junior high in CA. They announced over the PA system that the president had been shot. I immediately had this weird feeling JFK was dead. The first thing I did after my class was over was call my mother who told me to come home. We got out of school early and I went home scared. We didn't know if it was the Russians and we had just had the Cuban missile crisis a year earlier. It was a very scary time. We were a Kennedy family and my mother was a huge fan of Jackie. I have never seen my mother so depressed. Both my parents had the same birthday and their birthday was Nov 24th the day of the funeral. My mother dressed up in black as if she was at the funeral and we watched the funeral.

In 1980, Jackie Kennedy was asked to name her greatest accomplishment.

She replied, “I kept my sanity.”

Amen.

Inevitable that one generation's heart breaking tragedy becomes another generation's punch line?

I also remember that Jackie gave birth to her third child, son Patrick, while living in the White House. Sadly, he died shortly after birth and I remember my mother and my aunts commenting in regard to losing a child as the greatest loss a woman will ever bear. Little did anyone know the tragedy that was just around the corner.

I also had a great respect for Ted Kennedy. His personal life may have been a mess at times, but he was a great political leader, and the rock that the Kennedy family inevitably leaned on tragedy after tragedy.

My parents were head over heals adherents of the promise of Camelot. There was a ceramic bust of JFK in our living room that was to be revered and a replica of his presidential portrait in which his arms are folded and his eyes downcast.

Alas, I was in utero when he was killed. But I have hazy memories of my parents reacting to the evening news reports of MLK's assassination. Then not too long after, Bobby Kennedy. When Life magazine arrived with that photograph inside of a waiter squatting next to RFK as he lay mortally wounded, I studied it like crazy. That weirdness of almost being under a spotlight.

Bobby wasn't even supposed to go through the kitchen. he decided to go into the hotel kitchen spur of the moment to say hello to the hotel workers. That's where he was shot. But I'm thinking that Sirhan Sirhan would have followed him no matter which route he took through that hotel because he was determined to shoot him. I wonder if he is still alive.

changed the life of a generation.

was at lunch hi school break when screams were heard, folks had heard he was shot ... in texas we all knew immed that LBJ did it, he hated JFK

R24, Thompson’s wife looked like a 12 year old. She doesn’t even have breasts.

My god. How old was she when she married him?

Sometimes I wonder if I remember it or if I saw pictures in magazines, or replays and documentaries of it on TV so much that I think I actually saw things as they happened when I really didn't. I was just little. A 7 yr old.

I was alive but too young to remember it.

Seventh grade for me. Principal knocked on classroom door. Sister Whatshername turned around and told us. She plugged a radio in and we listened for a while. She suggested the class then read, study or pray silently. I read the same paragraph over and ever, trying to concentrate and then the bell rang.

My parents were devastated: JFK was their generation and a Catholic. That was a big deal then. It was a very long weekend. Life dragged on for two months. Then the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. Things got better after that.

R98 Sirhan Sirhan is still alive, now age 72, and continues to serve out a life sentence in a California prison. He his repeated requests for parole have all been denied. Doubtful that he'll ever be released from prison.

Kennedy was only 43 years old when he was elected President. America was in love with having a young family in the White House.

Well they woulda loved me then! Beeeeeeeeelch!

Do you think Ethel Kennedy ever got laid again?

Ethel Kennedy was involved with singer Andy Williams.

It was the beginning of First Grade. We were sent home.

All of the teachers, all women, were crying.

I remember Jackie, Bobby, and Ted at the funeral, walking together behind JFK's casket on the horse drawn caisson. I'd never seen anything like it before.

There was that. Then there was this.

^ Thank you, England. We needed that.

I was in the 5th grade in a Catholic school in Dallas. My mom was a Kennedy fan and while we begged to get out of school to go she wouldn't budge. It was cold and rainy that Friday and my mom suddenly changed her mind about going and she and a neighbor lady drove down and parked west of where the plaza was. She said they were on the street corner near Elm and where the police station was and she did notice something weird with several suited men who seemed to be ignoring on the oncoming motorcade. She assumed they were secret service. Since she was at the corner she didn't see the shooting but heard the pops of the gun and she swore there were 4 shots, the last ones seconds apart. She and the neighbor lady just left - got in her car and drove home. There was a request on tv and in the paper to come forward if you were witness to it and my dad told her don't get involved. The neighbor lady was supposed to have pictures but I never saw them.

[quote]I guess the late 50's Jame Dean style hadn't gone out by 1963.

Um. There’s still douchebags that put that sticky crap in their hair and comb it like young alive Elvis.

R108, And Frank Gifford, way before Kathie Lee.

"Sticky crap in their hair?" R114?

Spoken like an older gentleman who prefers the soft, touchable look and feel of Brylcream.

Elder gays will remember Vitalis . . .

I never wore shit in my hair. That was for greasers (the St. Bernard's and Scotch Plains crowd).

I'm a borderline millennial/gen xer and I has a quiff. I use this...

I would not want to touch r120.

I don't think he'd mind being touched, just not his hair.

I don't care what he would want. I don't touch goop.

Senior year, high school, math class, notification came over the PA system

But it dries, like gel. Please touch me :(

No. You can feel the texture of gel. Leave your hair alone.

[quote]I don't touch goop.

Neither do I.

I was 10. My younger sibs and I had been to the children's Mass that Sunday morning, and were home reading the Sunday comics in front of the TV, Next thing, Oswald is shot. We all saw it. When my parents got home from 11 o'clock Mass, we ran and told them. It was the first time I heard my mother say Holy Shit!

r91, who is the only living head of state that was an official guest at JFK's funeral?

And don't say Prince Philip. Last time I looked Teresa may was Britain's head of state.

Prince Philip

No. Wrong, r131.

Harold McMillan, in the UK, I think. But De Gaulle was still running France.

My sister was born that day (I hadn't been born yet). My mom said there were no TVs in the maternity ward so my dad brought her a radio.

I said still in power. There is one.

Neither does Chris Martin r123

R91

Head of state in 1963 or who subsequently became HoS?

r136 Very original.

R91

Beatrix, then Crown Princess of the Netherlands who later became Queen and thus head of state was there but she abdicated five years ago. She's still alive but she's now a former head of state. Likewise Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg was there and he's hanging on at age 97. But he abdicated too.

Who?

R130

Theresa May is the UK's head of government. QE2 is the head of state.

Oh R16 deal with it. You will be OLD FAR LONGER than you were young.

I was in 1st grade in Detroit. My classmates & I were seated around our teacher, who left the room in tears upon hearing the news. I told my classmates that this meant that Rockefeller would now be president!

Harald, King of Norway

Well I'm old, and I was young until just the other day! Am 83 now .... was walking up Fifth Avenue after lunch, saw clusters of people in doorways of Bonwit Teller. They were listening to news on a transistor radio. For you children, that is where the Trump Tower is now. The city quickly went into mourning when JFK died.

It should've gone into mourning when Bonwit Teller died.

I was in the same class as Sharon Connally at O.Henry Jr High. We were supposed to get off early to go to the parade in Austin. My father had bought tickets for the fundraiser that evening.

The principal came to take her out of class at one point. We saw her leaving the school with two men. She was crying her eyes out. We knew something was up. Then the principal came over the loudspeaker and said there had been a tragic shooting in Dallas, JFK and Gov. Connally were seriously injured and they'd contacted our parents to tell them to come pick us up.

I never asked my father if he got reimbursed the tickets for the fundraiser...

Everybody was in shock. We just stood around outside waiting for our parents or the bus. Everybody was confused. My father came to pick me and my sister up and took us home. We turned on the TV and didn't turn it off for 3 days.

No mystery, R90, the "umbrella man," who testified in front of the House Committee in 1977, was protesting the president's father, who was seen as an appeaser of Hitler. The umbrella was a reference to Neville Chamberlain.

And R133, Harold MacMillan was no longer prime minister at the time of the assassination, having left office just a month earlier.

I was 5 years old, at the vet with my Mother and our German Shepherd. I remember the nurse turning up the radio as everyone in the waiting room listened. The fear discussed was that the assassination was the start of an invasion of the US. Very scary.

None of you have guessed it. This man was his country's foreign minister at the time of the assassination and was the official representative and is now the head of state. Barely alive.

Mom packaged us up and brought us all to Church. All seven kids.

I think you're talking about Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria?

Haille Selassi?

I will always love and never criticize Jacqueline Kennedy for what she went through and how she handled her life afterwards. She could have been killed very easily that day. She was sitting right next to a man who was shot twice, once in the throat and then they literally blew his brains out. He slumped over towards her, and she cradled him in the car after she climbed on the hood trying to retrieve a piece of his skull. She was covered in his blood and bone fragments and brain matter. If that isn't enough to render you an hysterical lunatic for the rest of your life I don't know what is. I could never have survived such trauma and not lost my mind. Talk about PTSD. And yet she planned a magnificent funeral, and refocused our attention from the horror she experienced, and then went on to raise two very good kids.

During lunch, the principal announced the President had been assassinated, and we were sent home. We all walked to school or were transported by parents, but all the students were within walking distance. I was 9, but I remember that and the next few days to this day.

[quote] Gawd they aren't kidding when they say DL skews old.

R16 Yes DL does skew older but judging by this thread makes no sense. The title of this thread is "Do you remember the JFK assassination?" it only stands to reason that the majority of responses are from people who do remember it and are therefore older. Younger people will have no memories to comment on.

My grandfather, now deceased, remembered the Lincoln assassination. He was 10 years old at the time. He remembered his mother telling the kids not to "hoop it up" in front of strangers.

Bravo, r151!

Abdelaziz Bouteflika, well, there's a household name.

Whole point of trivia.

Pretty much the same for me r154 but I was in the first grade so we didn't really understand. The principal put the radio on the PA system and I do remember one kid clowning and making dramatic chest clutching and gasping gestures and pretending to slump over. He caught hell from the distraught teacher for that.

After lunch hour was over we were all sent home. And then 3 long days of constant news/funeral tv coverage that my brother and I were supposed to sit quietly and watch. I have to admit we were bummed with no weekend morning cartoons or going out to play or anything. But I was 6 and he was 8 so our brains really had no way to process what was happening. All we really understood was that it was something very bad.

We were finally released and allowed to go outside and play sometime during the Monday funeral and allowed to return to some semblance of normal.

But I do agree with everyone who's said their was a collective loss of innocence that day.

I wasn’t even near being born when JFK’s assassination took place, however, I appreciate all of the posts detailing the recollections of those who were of age to remember.

I’m not OP, but thanks for posting, everyone! Really interesting thread.

I was 8 years old and we were at Disneyland celebrating my older bro’s birthday. We always went to Disneyland for birthdays. Especially on weekdays when it wasn't crowded.

It seemed like we had just gotten there, and did a couple E-ticket rides, when over the PA it was announced President Kennedy has been shot in the head and the park is closing.

People were screaming, running, crumpled, and crying. I couldn’t make sense of it as I heard “President Kennedy was shot in the LEG.”

My parents, Republicans and die-hard Eisenhower/Nixon supporters (my Dad was in WWII and we were from Whittier so of course Quaker Nixon was a hope for the future) were frantic. My parents did not like Kennedy. But they thought our “duck and cover” drills might be coming to fruition. My parents thought Russia was behind it.

So off we went from Anaheim up to the hills of Whittier, while my Dad drove the 1956 Belair and my Mom was turning the radio knob to listen to every AM station. My older bro and sis were really scared but I was generally unhappy about having to leave Disneyland when we just went on the E-ticket Matterhorn!

So we get back to Whittier and Walter Cronkite is on during the daytime, on our rabbit ears black and white tv. Then he cries. Then my parents cry. Our tv was on continuously that weekend.

Then Jack Ruby shot Oswald and my Dad had a fit.

My parents are still here - ages 93 and 91. Man, they saw a lot.

I was a Junior in Catholic HS. All Girls. Just got back to my classroom when we heard it over the loud speaker. President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas Tex. while riding in a motorcade. There were only a few girls in the room at the time and at first we were all pretty much in shock. Then all of us at once broke down crying. Others quickly came back to the room and our Home Room Nun came too. She stood in the front of the room crying and many of us ran to her and we all put our arms around her and each other. She then asked us to sit in our seats and pray for Pres. Kennedy and his family. That is when we all heard the tragic news. President John F. Kennedy had died. I couldn't wait til I was old enough to vote. I was planning on voting for him. Yes, I also believe that something died that day. Something died inside many of us too.

We went home on buses and many were picked up. People on the bus were crying too. When I reached home, my mother met me at the door crying. My brother was only three. My father came home early and of course we all were glued to our TV like everyone else. I too remember how very sad that family looked standing there in front of their father and husband who had been taken from them in such a violent way. We all sat and watched crying and my mother and I were ironing too. We ironed almost everything in those days. My mother and I cried especially hard when we saw the children. Especially John John because my brother resembled him somewhat and near the same age. They both also had the same little coat and hat. My mother and I both had also bough matching pillbox hats like Jackie's that Easter. We missed Oswald being shot. We were busy tending to my brother. I did see it years later. A few years ago we visited the horrible sight of the shooting and the Grassy Knoll. We saw all the pictures and videos. It all seemed so surreal to me now.

When Bobby was shot I was already married and standing in front of the TV holding my baby son. It wasthe same horror all over again.

I was with my grandparents at their country house north of New York City for the weekend with my whole family, the thought being there could be riots in the city. When Ruby shot Oswald, my Grandfather said "Somebody wanted to shut that guy up fast". He always thought there was a conspiracy from day one.

Jack Ruby certainly had an easy time slipping into that parking area with a gun. If that happened today, Ruby would have been blown away on the spot by the cops.

Or not, R165.

I don't believe this country has ever fully recovered from the assassination of JFK. Look at some of the inferior POTUS we've had since 1963.

Ruby was allowed in to silence Oswald. JFK was murdered on orders from the owners of the Fed due to his actions to severely limit their strangle hold on the American people.

I for one am relieved JFK was assassinated. JFK would never have passed any meaningful legislation. He was a great sounding President who spent all his time chasing pussy. LBJ passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and all the other social justice programs which are the only social safety net beyond Social Security we have in this country. JFK's assassination helped LBJ get all that through Congress, that and the fact LBJ knew where all the bodies were buried and could cow the Dixiecrats which JFK and bro RFK could not.

I've told my story here before but will repeat it.

I had turned 5 the week before. My aunt was babysitting me because my mother had a hair appointment and my father was working. I recall sitting in the front seat of my aunt's car. We were in the parking lot of my older cousins' all-girl Catholic high school. My two older cousins got in the car and they were weeping. I asked my aunt why they were crying and she told me it was because "Someone shot our president". That night I had a nightmare about the assassination. Two days later, I was sitting in front of the tv after we got home from church. I saw Ruby shoot Oswald. I turned to look at my mother who was on the phone talking to an uncle. I remember the shock on her face as she dropped the telephone.

In a remarkable coincidence, I now teach at the school building where my aunt told me the news. It is now a public school as it was bought by the local school district several years ago. I think about that day every time I pull into the parking lot. I now have a framed photograph in my classroom of JFK making a speech while standing on the fire escape of our school. He visited there while running for president in 1960.

His death has affected me for my entire life. For years I was afraid to go to sleep at night for fear of having another nightmare about it. I used to gauge things as happening pre and post assassination. I must have over 100 books and dvds about Kennedy, his family, and his politics.