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Skimming blogs this morning, I found Jan Adams entry on Ronnie Bennett’s blog. ”Fourty Seven Years Ago Today” moved me to introspection.
Where was I that moment? My husband was in school, my daughter Lessa was at day care, and I was on lunch break at the Federal Reserve Bank lunch room. I remember that I had a half avocado in my hand that was filled with French dressing….the oil and vinegar kind. Someone told me that Kennedy had been shot. I didn't believe them. I thought they were joking with me, and I continued thinking that it was a joke until I got home after work.
Up until that moment, I had been a political neutral following the Republican voting patterns of my family. Kennedy's death changed me, woke me up and put me into action.
I’m moved to ask you what you were doing that day?
I was eating lunch outside of the high school on the lawn. One of those 'bad' girls was listening to her radio and then told us what she heard. I, also, did not believe her.
ReplyDeleteI am linking you to a post I wrote in 2003, forty years after Camelot. One of the most poignant sound bites from television is Walter Cronkite's pronouncement of Kennedy's death.
ReplyDeleteI was a junior in high school in Algebra II class when the PA broadcast the news. Our teacher, Mr. Smith, cried.
ReplyDeleteI had walked home for lunch. Per my usual deal, I finished my lunch and headed into the living room to catch the headlines before I went back to school for the afternoon. I yelled for my parents to join me in the living room as the story unfolded. I was in the 6th grade. Very impressionable. Very frightened.
ReplyDeleteAt my desk at the U. of Florida. A graduate student's wife phoned to speak with him (to tell him the news) and told me. Work pretty much went by the wayside for the rest of day as one of my student friends and I walked about the campus crying and talking. In my family, a S-I-L went into labor and delivered a baby in the next county. What a time!
ReplyDeleteIsn't it amazing that we can all remember that day? I have a terrible memory, but I remember the sounds, colors, tears of that day. I was in high school in Hawaii. My math teacher got a message and turned on his radio. He asked us to be quiet and then gave us the news. We were stunned. It didn't seem possible. I heard that our student council president burst into tears when the Civics teacher asked her about her feelings. What a sad day it was!
ReplyDeleteI was eight. My parents owned a variety store and I went there after school to find both of my parents looking very solemn and upset. They told me that the president had been shot. I don't remember much more about it until watching television with my mother a couple of days later, and seeing the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald unfold. That left me feeling much more upset and confused.
ReplyDeleteI was a freshman at Geneseo College in Western New York. Julie Peppitone came running into our Jone B dorm shouting that the President had been shot. There was screaming. A space between heartbeats. A singular and irreversable departure from safety, security and carefree college-life. Everything went crshing into slow motion.
ReplyDeleteI was in a doctor's office with my mother, who was pregnant with my younger brother. The nurse came in to announce the news and everyone broke out in hysterical crying. (We were living in California at the time.)
ReplyDeleteI already commented on Ronnie's blog - I was the mother of two young boys in the UK and remember staring unbelievingly at the radio. It almost had the impact of nine eleven. He was such a symbol of hope all over the world.
ReplyDeleteAnd it seemed to be the start of a series of disasters.
I was a junior in high school, in drama class when the announcement came. Our teacher, the insensitive oaf, asked us to remember our feelings so we could use them in acting. At that comment, most of the class, including me, got up and walked out and went home. I remember being completely devastated, but that was only the beginning. By the time Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had been murdered, I was in despair for our country.
ReplyDeleteHard to believe that forty seven years have passed. I was in 7th grade at St. Joseph's School. Mother Irmina, our principal, interrupted our art class with the news that knocked the pins right out from under us. The nuns marched us all over to church immediately.
ReplyDelete