<p>I was 8 years old at the time. No announcements were made at school, but as soon as we got out, we started hearing rumors (maybe some kids heard teachers talking or we heard moms picking up their kids talking outside school). I grew up in Queens, NY, so my friends and I walked home from school ourselves. About half a block from school, we passed a bar that had the front door open. My friends and I, as well as other kids, stood in the doorway of that bar and watched the TV to confirm the horrible rumors.</p>
<p>The rest of the weekend was filled with non-stop news. I remember watching the TV as Jack Ruby shot Oswald. It was surreal and horrifying. I was glued to the TV during the funeral. Caroline was only 2 years younger than me. My mother’s birthday is the day in between Caroline’s and John Jr’s birthdays, so we were very aware that their birthdays would forever be entwined with the assassination.</p>
<p>My grandmother, an immigrant, was enthralled with JFK. (No, we’re Jewish, not Catholic) She had a picture of him hanging in her living room. I now have that picture she so cherished. She was devastated by his murder.</p>
<p>I recently read Stephen Hunter’s latest book, The Third Bullet. I love Hunter’s books anyway, but this one addresses the problem of LHO as the sole shooter and the physical manner of how he might have been given “help” in a highly convincing way.</p>
<p>One of my great uncles, an Irish immigrant who served in WW1 and shared his love of horse racing with me, died within days of the assassination. It is all intertwined for me. I remember my mother saying that the Kennedy assassination had a lot to do with his death. He was something particularly special to Irish immigrants.</p>
<p>GolfFather’s post reminded me I had saved our copy of the Milwaukee Journal with the ‘Extra Extra’ ‘Kennedy is Slain’ headline. It’s in our basement somewhere. It’s been 5 or more years since I’ve looked at it. At this point it’s most interesting to look at the ads and seeing what things cost and also what else was going on in the world. Also, which comic strips were in the comics section. I’m going to dig it out and look through it again.</p>
Not really until the mid-80s, IIRC. When I was in high school (1976 - 80) the war was as cold as it ever was. I just remember it being overshadowed by problems closer to home, or maybe people were so used to the threat of nuclear war by then that they just stopped talking about it all the time.</p>
<p>I remember my fifth grade teacher (Mr. Butler) coming into the room and telling us that the President had been shot. He asked us to pray for the President and told us to put our heads on our desks and to close our eyes. It was clear that Mr. Butler was very upset. Shortly afterwards, we were dismissed and sent home. I didn’t know the President had died until I got home.</p>
<p>We didn’t have a TV, but my widowed aunt (who lived in our house in an inlaw apartment did) so we all gathered in her apartment. I saw Ruby killing Oswald, which confused and frightened me. Mostly, I remember that my family was glued to the tv for the entire weekend. My parents (immigrants to the US) loved Kennedy as did all of our neighbors–it was a Catholic neighborhood and Kennedy was the first Catholic president. I’d never seen adults cry before and that made a big impression on me. My parents, who had immigrated from Yugoslavia were very anti-Communist and were sure that Castro and the Russians were behind it all. They doubted the Warren Commission from the very beginning.</p>
<p>The ‘real’ cold war of the 50s and 60s with Khruschev saying we will bury you, later pounding his shoe at the UN, the Berlin crisis, the Cuban missile crisis, the building of the wall, the school nuclear attack drills, some people building bomb shelters in their backyards, public service civil defense ads on TV, civil defense shelter signs being put on buildings and being publicized etc., was from my view a totally different atmosphere from the 70s on. Efforts toward Detente began in 1972. Though there were crises along the way it was a different atmosphere. We lived in Miami from '59 - '62 and I remember all the local public service ads about communism only being only 90 miles away.</p>
<p>I was in middle school and didn’t know what happened until I opened the back door to go out to my bus. Groups of high school kids from next door, the parents, and the teachers were all running around the parking lot sobbing, and I watched them as I walked 50 yards to my bus. The bus driver had the news on the radio rather than his rock and roll station so I soon understood that JFK had been shot. I spent the weekend watching the TV coverage. There were few actual photos of the shooting, but many replays of Ruby shooting Oswald. NFL football was cancelled.</p>
<p>As a Catholic kid growing up outside of Boston I followed JFK’s career closely. He was my generation’s inspiration, and I sometimes wonder how our history would have changed had his vehicle taken a different path that day in Dallas.</p>
<p>You and Bromfield mentioned Kennedy’s Catholicism - Most Catholics did admire and vote for him but not all. My father, God rest his soul, was as Catholic as the Pope but was also a dyed-in-the-wool Republican who wouldn’t have voted for Kennedy if his life depended on it. He was as horrified as anyone else when he was shot, though.
And on a different note … we didn’t move to West Virginia until 1965, but even today he’s regarded as a hero in this state. JFK stopped in a restaurant in my hometown to have coffee while he was campaigning in 1960 - it’s still open and to this day people come in and request that booth. An elderly couple in our parish to whom I take Communion was active in politics at that time and got to meet him when he campaigned in the coalfields. They told me about it on our last visit and it was like they were describing a rock star. They even got photos and an autograph.</p>
<p>I was in 9th grade in Queens, NY (we all should have been in 8th grade but anyone who was in NYC Schools back in the day who was S.P. student (Special Progress) skipped a grade… so anyone we were changing classes and for unknown reasons, one girl had a transistor radio and heard the news. We went back to PM homeroom and the official annoucement was made by the principal over the PA system. The last period of the day was cancelled and we sat in homeroom until the buses arrived to take us home. I remember sitting in front of the TV for three days with my family and also saw Oswald being shot by Ruby. The whole episode was traumatic and coming after the fright of the Cuban Missile crisis the year before, even more so.
When I cleaned out my parents house, I found a copy of the NYTIMES from that weekend wrapped in plastic which I still have in my basement.</p>
<p>I went to the Sixth Floor Museum about 10 years ago when I went to Dallas on a business trip. It was really interesting and I recommend for those who have never been. What stays in my mind is a series of photographs they had on exhibit of the people who were awaiting his speech at maybe the Merchandise Mart… where the motorcade was headed to and their reactions upon hearing the news…</p>
<p>Actually, in some places it did happen on 9/11 – including in some school districts in the Washington, DC metro area, where cell phone lines were jammed and traffic was snarled because of the attack at the Pentagon and perceived threats to other landmarks. Some elementary school students came home to empty houses, and those too young to have keys were stuck outside, unsupervised, while their parents were trapped in traffic with nonfunctioning phones, unable to get home or to call someone to come and take care of their child.</p>
<p>The schools didn’t make that mistake again. The next year, when chaos ensued again because of the Beltway Sniper, the schools dismissed at their regular times.</p>
<p>I think definitely there was more palpable fear in the 60’s among children than from 1970-2000 because of the assassinations, civil rights struggle, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. </p>
<p>I was also curious about people’s comparisons of Americans’ reactions to 9/11 versus to the JFK assassination. People on this thread seem to have made the same parallel. It seems like the level of sadness was greater after the JFK assassination. There weren’t people sobbing in the streets after 9/11, at least among those not in the New York area. From my observation, it was more disbelief, anger, and a general pall of depression and loss among the adults I was around. However, I was home when it happened, so I didn’t really see everyone’s immediate reaction. Also, I wasn’t around children. In New York City, I think some of the grieving was suspended by the fact that people needed to evacuate and/or locate their loved ones, and so they needed to concentrate on what they were doing rather than emote.</p>
<p>Lets see. I was 13 years old and in 8th grade. I attended HP junior high school in Dallas and was in world history class when the principal came on the intercom to announce that Pres Kennedy had been shot/killed. Thereafter you could hear teachers in the hall yelling at each other over who was glad/responsible etc for what had happened. The 1960 presidential election had been brutal in Dallas. It was the first and only time my father had us go to the airport (Love Field) and waive flags for a candidate (Nixon).</p>
<p>I was a paper boy for the Dallas Times Herald (an afternoon paper) and threw a residential route near my home after school. I remember that the papers were really late to us to distribute that Friday the President was killed since they had put out a special issue. I kept a copy of that issue.</p>
<p>I was watching the TV and saw Ruby shoot Oswald live. That was something I will remember.</p>
<p>Dad knew FBI field agent Gordan Shanklin who was agent in charge in Dallas in 1963 and who was put in charge of the FBI investigation of the assassination. He had his personal phone number by the late 1960s (not sure when and how he got that). </p>
<p>My wifes family were longtime friends of Dallas CIA agent James Walton Moore who many (especially Bill OReily) claim was the CIA control for de Mohrenschildt who some believe ran Oswald. Mr. Moores daughter was in my law school class. At my wifes request, I never asked Mr. Moore about any of this. He died a few years ago. He was a fascinating man starting when he was in the OSS in WWII and parachuted into to China to rescue a missionary school in Japanese hands.</p>
<p>I opened my restaurant in the 1970s in Downtown Dallas at 1404 Main Street. This address had previously been the Eat Well Café where it was reported Ruby and Oswald had been spotted eating together and where Rubys roommate George Senator was shown to have been eating when it went out on the radio that Ruby had shot Oswald at the other end of downtown.</p>
<p>It was the 1960s. In our neighborhood, every kid knew where the “hidden” key outside their house was. I let myself in by the 1st or 2nd grade. I hated staying for lunch, so I always came home. Monday was Mom’s bowling day. I let myself in and made grilled cheese and tomato soup - the Catholic kid’s lunch. This started in 4th grade.</p>
<p>I come from a large (7) family. This was also the “come in when the streetlights go on” era. Our parents didn’t know where we were every minute of every day. Sometimes I think they were happy as long as the same number of kids came home at night as left in the morning.</p>
<p>UMDAD, I’m not sure if your post was in reference to mine but I was commenting on Marian’s post that it had been done on 9/11, which was a very different time than the 60s.</p>
<p>I was just noting the differences between 1963 and 2001. More like waxing poetically - what a different time from a child security perspective. We as kids in that era had so much freedom and such a long tether. How did we ever make through childhood alive?</p>
<p>Collegealum314, in my experience the differences between the Kennedy assassination (at least on the day the events occurred) were: Kennedy assassination – shock and grief. 9/11 – a combined feeling of disbelief (almost too much to process) and fearfulness about what additional attacks might occur.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>07DAD, did you mean that there were people in Dallas that day who said they were glad about the assassination?</p>