I was 6 years old, and in the first grade on the day President Kennedy was killed. My story begins with the line that most do who were on the east coast of the U.S. that day " We had just come back from lunch." It was Friday afternoon, and there were only two days of school the next week because of Thanksgiving. I was already antsy, and ready to be out of there when our teacher, Miss Butler - the worst ogre to ever crawl from under a bridge - convened us at our desks for a helpful exercise which, had I paid attention, I'm sure I would a better man today! We weren't at it long before the big, ugly loud-speaker above the teacher's desk crackled to life, and the message rang out through the school " The President has been shot in Dallas Tx." We all did what all the grown-ups did. We sat there stunned, wondering what would happen next. A few minutes later, another message came:"Children are to prepare to board there buses, and return home." At least, I knew what to do next.
As we went to our clunky, yellow buses, kids were talking about being attacked by the Russians Everybody seemed sure of it. After all, it was the height of the Cold War. We had duck and cover drills about 4 or 5 times a year, in which we hid under our wooden desks in order to be saved from a nuclear holocaust. ( It was a crazy time.) Before I got on that bus, I had not been afraid of nuclear war, but I sure was then, in a way that I have never felt before or since that day.
Home made the world seem right again, until I walked in. Our T.V. was on, and like everybody else, we would be glued to it.(in most places, there were only 3 channels, and they usually went off the air from around 1am to 6am) When I got home, they were still saying he was alive, but, in a few minutes, the word came that President Kennedy was dead. We weren't watching CBS, Walter Cronkite didn't give us the news. I don't even remember who announced it on NBC. It really didn't matter. My Mom, and sister and I sat and stared at the T.V. A while later, my Dad came home from work, and we all sat and stared at the T.V. Mom made us a supper, then we went back to the T.V. We saw Air Force One returning to Washington. Jackie Kennedy was still wearing her blood-stained suit. Lyndon Johnson made a little speech, and the President's coffin(an object I had never seen before) was lowered out of the back and into a hearse.
One of the impressions that sticks with me is how the whole Country just froze for a week. Back then, nothing was open on Sundays, and we had a week of Sundays. I was a little kid, and I would get restless, and go outside to run around and play (something all children did, back then) When I stepped out the door, it was like a ghost town. Apart from a few dogs, who were out for their own reasons, I was alone. No businesses were open. Nobody went anywhere, yet, we were all united by T.V. in our national tragedy.
My Grampa died when I was four. But my parents studiously kept me away from his funeral and anything that went with it, as most parents did in those days. As far as I knew, Grampa just went away! The first person I ever knew, whose death I was aware was John F. Kennedy. The first funeral I ever saw was his. The first burial I ever saw was his (and, years later, I became one of the 150,000,000 visitors to his grave). And the first, and only shooting I have ever personally witnessed was that of Lee Harvey Oswald. My generation of children had our noses rubbed in death. We lost our innocence that day, and so did the Country. That's why I think there have been so many conspiracy theories over the years. If we finally know what happened, we will have to let go of that day -including the moment before the shots rang out, and we still had our handsome President, smiling with our beautiful First Lady, and we were still innocent