<p>“If you’re ever in Dallas, the Sixth Floor Museum is really nicely done.”</p>
<p>Nicely done?! What does that mean? Does it show a comfortable perch for Oswald and a clear shot to the motorcade? I’m sorry, but what does “nicely done” mean?</p>
<p>I was less than one so obviously I have no memories but my husband who is 6 years older has memories of his teacher crying. When 9/11 happened my kids were in 4th and 1st grade. My husband and I were transfixed by the TV but I remember my youngest saying how tired he was of the news and that he wanted to watch Sponge Bob instead.</p>
<p>I was in high school in San Antonio, TX and was just about to start eating my lunch in the school cafeteria. Suddenly the din quieted down as an announcement came over the PA system that President Kennedy and Governor Connolly had been shot in Dallas. </p>
<p>I remember throwing my uneaten fishsticks and corn in the trash.</p>
<p>The students in the cafeteria returned to class and sat, stunned, listening to radio announcements that were broadcast over the PA system. After a little while, they said that Kennedy had died. </p>
<p>A foreign exchange student in my class had been so excited the day before when JFK and Jackie had passed right by our high school in their open limo and we had all lined up along the sidewalk to wave. I liked Kennedy and had been excited too.</p>
<p>Now the foreign exchange student was sobbing and everyone else was very grave and still, if not teary eyed.</p>
<p>Next period (the last period of the day), my chemistry teacher told us we didn’t have to do our lab experiment if we didn’t want to.</p>
<p>After that, everybody went home and sat for two days with their families watching TV coverage of the assassination and its aftermath. It was the first time that regular programming had ever been preempted continuously, for hours and hours and hours, like that. It was the first time I ever heard a TV announcer use the word “recap.”</p>
<p>The assassination was on Friday. On Sunday, shortly after we had finally switched off the TV, I (a newly licensed driver) volunteered to be the one to drive to the store to buy some milk.</p>
<p>On my way home, the car radio announced the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby.</p>
<p>I walked into the house and said, “Turn the TV back on.”</p>
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<p>It’s a good museum. Info on Kennedy, the family, the campaign, the political climate at the time, the various stops in Texas, then the assassination, Oswald, Tippett, Ruby, the funeral, Johnson, etc. Besides still photos and text, there are videos to watch of various lengths. And yes, it does reproduce Oswald’s lair. But there’s nothing exploitative or sensationalistic about the museum. It’s only been open since 1989…it took Dallas a long time to get there.</p>
<p>I was in 10th grade in Houston. The night before, my parents had been to a dinner where Kennedy spoke. That day, I was in biology class after lunch. Another teacher came in with the news. The room fell totally silent, and that’s what I remember for most of the rest of the day–silence and occasionally the sound of quiet weeping. The girl who sat next to me in my last-period class made a nasty comment about Kennedy. I still remember what she looked like and how stunned I was. My father was a newspaper editor, and he didn’t come home until very late that night. He wrote a beautiful editorial, and I still have it, framed along with the moving Bill Mauldin cartoon showing the Lincoln statue from the Lincoln Memorial with head in hands. Ironically, today is also the anniversary of my father’s death.</p>
<p>Five years old and I remember my parents watching the funeral and crying. I didn’t understand what had happened, but I knew it was something important.</p>
<p>Reading this thread and all your accounts brings it all back so vividly. I was in high school, and we got the news during the change between school periods. I heard it from the person with the locker next to mine. I went to the next class, and a student went bounding up to the teacher, and announced he was thrilled that Kennedy was dead, it should have happened sooner. The teacher slapped him, and started to cry.
To this day, the sound of school lockers slamming always makes me think of President Kennedy’s death.</p>
<p>My parents drove all the way to Washington DC to see Kennedy’s grave. It was the temporary one, out in an open space in the ground, with just the eternal flame over it and surrounded by a rope barrier. I remember being in the longest line I had ever seen, in silence, the only sounding being the shuffling of the feet on the grass.</p>
<p>High school chemistry class. The principal sent the student council president to the classroom to make the announcement rather than making it over the loudspeaker. Odd now that I think of it. And then some of us hung out in one of the few TV-equipped classrooms and watched Walter Cronkite announce the President Kennedy had died. Even now remembering that afternoon is shocking.</p>
<p>I don’t remember going home early. They made an announcement over the loudspeaker and must have brought TVs (no small feat back then) to other rooms but I was in Sr. Hildebert’s 3rd grade and we watched the news coverage in Sr. Patrine’s 4th grade room. I do remember that my mom (who loved JFK) crying.
The biggest thing I remember? My cousin’s birthday sleepover got cancelled. That really ticked me off!</p>
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<p>We were there in the spring of '64 and that’s what I seem to remember.</p>
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<p>Isn’t the lack of security back then breathtaking?</p>
<p>I was 6 and I remember but barely- that time was a blur - there was so much happening- but it seemed isolated in my mind to the television and the radio- we lived in the suburbs and I don’t even remember the riots in Seattle.</p>
<p>First grade. Our teacher got called out of the room, and came back in shortly afterwards, crying. I don’t remember whether we were sent home early. By the time we heard, there was probably less than an hour left in the school day anyway. I rode my bike home myself, as usual.</p>
<p>It was my little sister’s first birthday.* We had been planning a party in her honor for all the neighborhood kids, and had all sorts of goodies for it. I think I remember sitting on the front steps with my mother, my other sister, and the baby, and telling kids as they showed up that we weren’t going to have a party anymore, but they could have a bag of candy if they liked.</p>
<p>And of course I remember the funeral cortege on TV, the riderless horse and John-John saluting. That got me. I could identify with him.</p>
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<li>Thank you, thread, for reminding me to call her.</li>
</ul>
<p>3rd grade. I remember my teacher crying as she told us and then we were dismissed early. It was my Mom’s first day home from the hospital with my little sister.</p>
<p>Too young, less than a year old. But I remember MLK’s funeral, and my mom crying and asking her whether we were related to him.</p>
<p>It seems so strange that Jackie still had John-John’s birthday party on the day of his dad’s funeral. Was that shock? I just can’t imagine doing that.</p>
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<p>That must be a universally weird experience for all kids…seing their parents cry at the death of someone who wasn’t a relative or close friend.</p>
<p>I was in fourth grade.</p>
<p>Someone from the office came to see our teacher, and she talked with that person out in the hall for a long time. When she came back, we could see that she had been crying, but she did not tell us why. Apparently, she didn’t want to distract us from our schoolwork for the rest of the afternoon, and she wanted to give our parents the opportunity to tell us the news. This did not work. We spent all afternoon speculating about why she had been crying, and we learned about the shooting on the bus from our friends.</p>
<p>I remember watching the funeral and noticing Caroline more than John (because I had a younger sister the same age as Caroline). I also remember seeing Oswald shot, but I didn’t see it live – just on tape a few hours afterward.</p>
<p>I only saw the Zapruder film (on YouTube) a few months ago. It’s quite horrifying. To say that it was evident that the second shot that hit Kennedy was fatal is something of an understatement. “Blew half of his head off” is more like it.</p>
<p>I had forgotten that about the birthday party. I think it was really strong of her to do that - to try to keep his life as normal and planned as possible int he face of overwhelming tragedy.</p>
<p>I just sang at a wedding at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in DC, where the famous photo of JFK Jr. saluting was taken. There is a huge medallion in front of the altar inscribed with the message that this is where Kennedy’s remains rested during the funeral Mass. It is very moving to see. I didn’t know the church had this history until about a week before I was set to go up there.</p>
<p>I had just turned 5. I remember my older sibling coming home from school early and standing on the front porch listening to church bells toll. I also remember endless TV coverage of the shooting(s), the swearing in of LBJ, and the funeral.</p>
<p>I was totally confused by all the official photo portraits of Kennedy that were published in the newspaper and on memorial cards in the aftermath of the assassination; I knew he had been shot in the head and I couldn’t figure out how they had taken such nice, life-like photos of his body after he had been killed like that. (It never occured to me that lots of photos had been taken of Kennedy long before the shooting and it was those photos that were being published/displayed.)</p>