Where were you fifty years ago today when you learned about the assassination of JFK?

I was only 4 years old and remember my mother and family being distraught, hearing the headlines and coverage, but was pretty much lost in my 4 yr. old world.

I was 7 years old, and I came in from recess in 2nd grade, to find my teacher, with her head on the desk, crying.

I was at a techno-rave party in east berlin. Oh I was so wasted that whole week. It was amazing.

I was an egg that hadn’t been fertilized.

On November 22, 1963, I was in college music appreciation class listening to “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.” I saw a few people huddled around a radio and went over the ask what was going on. The president’s been shot in Dallas, they told me. No word on his condition.

I worked for a newspaper in the afternoons and evenings and wasn’t due at the paper for hours, but I knew it was going to be a madhouse there, so I left school and grabbed the subway—a 30-minute ride. I looked around and saw people chatting or sitting quietly as always, and I remember thinking that I was the only person in that crowded car who knew what had happened.

When I got to the paper, it was bedlam. Reporters, editors, columnists and every department—local news, national news, world news, sports, culture—were focusing on the event. Some people were crying, most were going about their jobs with a vengeance I’d never seen.

An hour or so after I arrived, I heard a series of loud “dings” coming from the teletype room. Yes, no iPhones, no computers, no Internet—just Associated Press and United Press teletype machines. I was a copyboy and I knew the dings signaled something urgent. I ran to the room where a dozen machines were clattering away and ripped a length of yellowish paper that was emerging from the machine. I read the headline. KENNEDY DEAD IN DALLAS.

I won’t even try to tell you how I, a native of a small city 32 miles from Dallas, a Democrat and a worshiper of JFK, felt at that moment.

The next seven or eight hours were hellish.

I was in utero. My mom was approximately two months pregnant with me at the time.

Oddly, I don’t remember. (Most people who were alive at the time have very vivid memories of that moment.) I must have been in school, because I was 7 years old.

I was in Sister Immaculata’s 2nd grade class at Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic School in Sacramento, California. Mother Superior came in and told us that our President had just been shot in Dallas. It was about 1:30pm. She had tears in her eyes and her voice snagged. That alone freaked us out. She went to all the classrooms one by one to personally deliver the message. Our parents, or other people’s parent’s, picked us up early from class. We got home in time to eat dinner, then most of us returned for that evening novenas and Benediction Mass. It was a really big deal, especially among us Catholics. We spent from Friday evening until the Eight O’clock Mass on Monday morning on our knees in Masses for the President, and by the end of the weekend, Masses for President Johnson and even for the souls of Oswald and Ruby—interspersed by the Stations of the Cross and our regular Saturday confession. My big brother had just made alterboy and my father insisted I stay glued to his side whenever possible and learn. It was a very tragic, busy, confusing weekend.

Wasn’t even thought of lol

I was in my fifth grade classroom at Rice School in Holden, Massachusetts. It’s funny that I’ve been watching some of my classmates reminisce about the day, the hour, the exact moment that they heard the news (same as I did), but I can’t recall those details. I do recall other details of the time, however, especially how television viewing really sucked for like the next two weeks.

I was not yet a gleam in my father’s eye.

My mother was ~38 weeks pregnant with her second child… I was her third.

My grandmother was pregnant with my mother.

I was on the livingroom carpet in a soggy diaper. I took my plastic pants off because the elastic hurt my legs. My mommy was cleaning my lunch mess in the kitchen while I watched the parade on tv. Mommy got mad when she saw the carpet was getting wet from my soggy diaper sitting on it. She went back in the kitchen and suddenly ran back screaming and crying. Collapsed on her knees she couldn’t believe what they were telling. She kept moaning, “No,no, it can’t be.” I was just a toddler, but it really stood in my mind.

I wasn’t even a twinkle in my Dad’s eye.

I wasn’t born yet.

I was walking home from school and saw the flag at half-mast .
=/

I feel bad too because I don’t have any memories of “the day” he was killed. I was 5. My folks probably didn’t have the same, overwhelming emotional reaction that most people had.
However, I do have a vivid memory of running into the house to watch the funeral. We lived in Florida at the time, and we had one of those pneumatic doors that swung slowly, slowly shut, until it really snapped hard at the end.
So I came running in the house, not realizing that my 2 year old sister came running in behind me. I remember seeing a glimpse of the casket being pulled by the horses…. then all hell broke loose in the house. Screaming and blood everywhere.
My sister some how had her hand on the hinge side of the door jamb while she was coming in behind me, and when the door snapped shut it cut the tip of her pinky off.
It’s messed up to this day.
I also remember Mom showing me when she had found the pinky tip about 3 weeks later, still stuck to the jamb.
So, sure I remember! Some things more than others, though.

I was in our weekly gym class at St. Gregory the Great school in Harrison, NY. I was in third grade. The gym teacher was late to class, while we all stood in our lines. He was an older man, in his forties or fifties, who came in about half an hour late, in tears, wiping his face over and over with his hands and kept saying, “my God, my God.”

He had been in the office when the first news bulletin came over the radio, and stayed listening, finally came in to see us and send us back to class.

After a little while, the Principal came over the PA system and told the school that the President had been killed. We all immediately said a decade of the rosary led by the Principal, then we went home.

I was in a high-school level seminary. The first thing I remember hearing about it was when some of the other students talking, saying he had been shot in the head.

I don’t remember if they suspended classes, but I do remember it was a Friday. We usually had classes on Saturdays (day off on Wednesday), but I think we were in chapel for most of the day. I also remember being allowed to watch the coverage on television, which was a rare privilege for us.

On Friday nights a green van used to drive up our street and toot its horn to let us know it was there. It was a Lipton’s van that sold groceries and more importantly sweeties. As I was leaving the van one Friday night a woman stepped in to say President Kennedy had been shot. I was a bit young to take it in but I remember the consternation it caused. My mother was quite upset, she had a lot of faith in President Kennedy.

@zenvelo Yes. Lots of Rosaries that weekend.

I was one month old. I recall knowing about it all my life, so my parents must have discussed it many times. I don’t remember being told about it directly, I feel like I always knew. They probably talked about it on the news all the time too, in the years following, when I could have become cognizant of such things.

I was in elementary school. I remember all of the teachers crying, which was very shocking and troubling. Many of the children were crying too, but I didn’t know how I felt and so I didn’t cry.

Not born

That was 19 years before my time, my dad wasn’t even a teen yet lol.

I was home from elementary school with a cold or something.
Being a gadget head at an early age I was behind the television watching the tubes glow.
I was not paying attention to what was on the TV.

My mom, who was in the kitchen and was paying attention to what was on the TV, came out of the kitchen and was upset and then crying. The rest of the day was Walter Cronkite being very serious.

*8th grade. The principal announced it over the speaker and we were told school to go home. His voice was very emotional. I was stunned. A lot of the kids parents were waiting outside the school for them. Some of the mothers were weeping others looked stricken and speechless. Few kids went home on the bus – parents were home from work early and wanted to gather the family together.

I got home and my mother said it was all baloney. Next thing we’d hear is that he was fine. She’d said the exact same thing when the Kennedy’s lost their baby months earlier and it wasn’t fine or a con then and it wasn’t a con on this day either.

I was glued to the TV for days and cried.

Here’s a P.S. to my above comment, which I accidentally added to another question.

It was 3 a.m. when I finally left work. I was exhausted physically and emotionally, so instead of riding the subway uptown from Times Square as I normally did – heaven knows there was nothing normal about that day—I took a cab. I was feeling guilty about being from Texas and opened up about that to the cabbie. I remember how kind he was. He assured me that he understood my feelings and sympathized, but that while I was right to feel sorrow, I should not feel guilt simply because I was a Texan; he knew people all over the state and especially Dallas were as horrified as I was and feeling exactly the same way. It wasn’t a lot to make me feel better somehow it did – at least for the amount of time I was in the cab.

Like @flip86 I was an unfertilized egg.

and that’s the way it is….

Old Walters voice, forever branded into us 50 and up peeps brains. lol

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The memory of the event has faded, but I recall I was in tenth grade Spanish class. The teacher, Mrs. Rosario, was a very emotional person. I don’t recall whether she was the one who told us or if the news came from the PA system. I think we were let out early. I remember being insufferably clueless as to the importance of the event. My attitude was, okay, this is unfortunate but do we have to get all weepy over it?

@tedibear My mother was about two months pregnant with me as well.

I wasn’t born yet.