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Today's Poll: An open thread on the day JFK was shot

By Howard B. Owens

We've run two polls related to the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Whether you believe Kennedy was a great man cut down in his prime, or a failed president likely to lose the next election, or whether you believe Oswald acted alone or some conspiracy brought down the president, there's one point of little doubt: Nov. 22, 1963 was a turning-point event in U.S. history.

It's always been said of those who were alive and old enough to comprehend what was going on, you never forget where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news.

I was 2 1/2 years old, so I have no memory of the day, but I could tell you were I was and what I was doing when Lennon was shot, when Reagan was shot, when the Berlin Wall came down and when that second plane hit the Twin Towers.

If you remember Kennedy's assassination, please leave a comment about how and where you heard the news. Not to leave anybody out, if you don't have that memory, share what the historical moment meant to you growing up.

The comment thread is open ...

tom hunt

I remember that day as if it happen yesterday. I was a freshman at UB and was car pooling with a bunch of friends and HS classmates from Batavia. We all drove late model 50s Chevys and all our keys were interchangeable. I finished up my classes for the day early and was sitting in Dave Cohen's 57 Belair in the UB parking lot waiting for him to finish up his late class. I had the radio on listening to music when the program was interrupted by the news flash that the President had been shot in Dallas Texas. I remember the sense of shock and frustration because he was the first Catholic President and I was and still am Catholic. We all could not wait to get back to Batavia and turn on our black and white TVs to watch the unraveling of the events from Dallas. On Sunday I watched the killing of Oswald and could not believe my eyes when Jack Ruby shot him.

Nov 22, 2013, 8:55am Permalink
Howard B. Owens

The thing I remember the most about anything related to Kennedy assassinations probably comes from 1969 or 1970.

I was in my room one afternoon listening to the AM radio, KCBQ, no doubt, and what sounded to me like a newscast came on talking about a Kennedy being shot. I rushed into the kitchen, "Mom, another Kennedy has been shot." She was a little shocked and she came into my room and a song was playing ... "Abraham, Martin and John."

Nov 22, 2013, 8:56am Permalink
Bea McManis

The day FDR died: having a tea party with my doll & my grandfather. He took the call, then wept.

The day JFK was shot: preparing for a weekend getaway. I wept.

9/11: Did not have the tv on. Received call from my California company to get online to monitor MSNBC news chat room. Little time for weeping. Spent the next three days at the computer while take out containers piled up near my desk.

Nov 22, 2013, 9:13am Permalink
Jay Lazarony

I was in Kindergarten and most of my memories of the day are from what my parents have told me. All students were sent home to be with their families where we sat for the next four days in front of the television. I remember many years later reading all the clippings my mother had saved, including one from our Church that asked us to keep the President and his family in our prayers. Certainly one of the most horrible days in American history.

Nov 22, 2013, 9:26am Permalink
Bev Mancuso

I was in 3rd grade at St. Joe's school - I remember watching it on the tv that was rolled into our room - I remember being just shocked and traumatized by this brutal event, even though I really had no concept of how huge of an impact it would have on my life and the world. I also remember attending tap dancing lessons later that day in the basement of the St. James Church - and can still see the looks on the faces of everyone in the room, the shock, sadness and tears. Horrible.

Nov 22, 2013, 9:33am Permalink
Dave Olsen

I was 4 years old, so i don't have any real memory either, I knew something big was going on, but that's about it. It affected my parents quite a bit, they were of the same generation as Kennedy. I was in the Navy with a guy from Birmingham Alabama who was a few years older than me & told me that the kids in his classroom stood and applauded the news and there were celebrations in the streets. Apparently a lot of people in the South hated him.
I heard an interview on the radio yesterday with Tom Brokaw who said that Caroline Kennedy really wanted to be out of the country around this day, so she didn't have to be constantly bombarded about it. Can't say I blame her.

Nov 22, 2013, 10:05am Permalink
Mark Brudz

I was in the 3rd grade at St. John Kanty's School in Buffalo. I remember it so clearly as we had the only non nun teacher in the school and her boyfriend was sitting in the back of the room with a radio and ear plug listening to the entire thing, when the principal announced it, she was so angry at him for not saying something.

My father insisted from that point on that we watched the entire chain of events the next few days on TV, 'This is history" he said, "You will remember this and the events of the next few days for your entire life." He was so right.

Nov 22, 2013, 10:15am Permalink
John Roach

I was in 9th grade, and it came over the PA system that he had been shot. It was hours later when we learned he had died, and we were all home by then.

Nov 22, 2013, 10:33am Permalink
Linda Knox

I was 12 years old in 7th grade Home Economics class at Batavia Middle School. It was the last period of the school day. I recall it was about 2:00 PM when the loudspeaker came on. The principal announced that President Kennedy had been shot and died. We were all asked to gather our things and quietly leave the school at that time. One would think that students suddenly being given the freedom to leave the campus would have hooted and hollered, joked around, and whatever teenagers did then when school is cancelled. On the contrary, everyone was whispering, gathering in small groups to make some sense out of what we had all been told. This didn't happen in our time; it was something we read about in our history books. This became three days of being riveted to the TV. Watching live as Oswald was shot. Little did we know this would be just a beginning for the '60s. Innocence was lost that day.

Nov 22, 2013, 12:58pm Permalink
C. M. Barons

I was in 4th grade, lined up to leave for home as my teacher, Mrs. Genevieve Miller was called from the room, then returned, visibly shaken and explained, "President Kennedy has been shot; we should all go home and say a prayer for him..."

My recollections of the succeeding days were so well reflected in a poem written by Ed Sanders- which I cannot locate a stitch of for this occasion. Instead I paste a snippet from my novel, In The Midst Of:

On November 22, 1963, President John Kennedy was assassinated. Danny was in sixth grade. He became absorbed in television’s unheard of 24-hour coverage of the tragedy. Typically news programming was scripted and limited to a 15-minute segment. The scope of the national emergency caught news departments off guard, and much of the coverage was improvised. Sober detachment, the trademark of network newscasters, was compromised as tension eroded self-control. Choked words and pauses to dab at tears marked the initial reports. An entire weekend’s programming was subject to pre-emption as networks provided a sweeping cinema verite portrait of bereavement. It was the epic unraveling of a neurotic nation on black and white television.
The grimness and distortion of early television made the medium abstract. At best the picture was shadowy and grotesque in appearance. The technical flaws amplified the utter strangeness. The cameras of the time were not portable, weighing two hundred pounds or more. To follow the funeral procession required telephoto lenses that gave the impression of a cold alien eye peering through a telescope at an America shrouded in grief.
The soft focus at the edges of the screen, the discernable compression of vertical height, gray-bleak November, leafless trees somber beside the damp appearance of the pavement, a riderless horse with boots reversed in the stirrups; the whole world was crying via the image orthicon tube.
Danny saw his stage prop adults step out of their static poses. No longer content to be caricatures, they candidly expressed themselves as individuals. They had substance. Each was unique. Danny was perturbed by his apparent loss of control. An unforeseeable event had injected warm blood into his props, and they were performing as if they had minds of their own. The script had been abandoned.
October of 1962, a year prior, two words had almost inspired a similar insurrection among his props; Cuban missiles. But complacency persevered; the props remained deep in denial and too terror-stricken to react. While the Sword of Damocles brandished over everyone’s head, Danny’s cardboard cut-outs drove to the local grocery store to buy canned goods in preparation for doomsday.
The assassination electrified. Inconsolable displays of grief ruptured stiff-lipped Middle America. Millions stared in disbelief, collectively witnessing each upheaval on glowing, familiar screens. Zap! Lee Harvey Oswald claims to be an innocent scapegoat. Zap! Jack Ruby shoots Oswald dead in the Dallas jail. A nation hungry for answers sated themselves on televised images at once dignified, sorrowful and surreal.

Nov 22, 2013, 2:25pm Permalink
Kyle Couchman

I wasn't alive for JFK but I was home sick from school in 4th grade when Lennon was shot. For Regan I was late coming home from my first swim practice of that year that the coach started me swimming the 50, Butterfly and the 100 Individual Medley events.

9/11 I will never forget as I was in Chinatown, a stone's throw from Canal St and Bowery, having breakfast with an old navy friend Justin and my boss. We had intended on shopping for light fixtures and a commercial stove for her new home and an investment property. Justin was a firefighter and just as we walked out after feeling a weird ground tremor he was called in, then to WTC. I was kinda stunned as just after he went around the corner to the parking garage the second plane went overhead. It was then that it seemed we all there in lower manhattan realized that this was no accident.

I went up and was witness to something so unreal that for days afterwards I felt like I had been trapped in a disaster movie. None of what happened really sunk in til I got to our hotel in queens.... I know I cant ever forget that day so I can relate to all those who bear the same burned in memories of the day JFK was killed.

Nov 22, 2013, 3:37pm Permalink
John Simmons

I was 19 at the time, just had a birthday on 18 November, & I was on a "birdfarm" named The U.S.S. Enterprise CVA(N)-65 at sea with the US Navy. The bitch box announced that JFK had been murdered & even though we had a TV on board, it was just closed circuit for the ship only. We did launch some planes that day & they never did came back..
As far as all the rest of the senseless killings & attacks, I don't remember them much but, the 911 attack I'll remember until the day I die. And I never forgive anyone for anything like that at all. And if given the chance, I'd probably take some sort of revenge on someone for that cowardly act!! Altho I do not have a police record anywhere for anything at all .. :)

Nov 22, 2013, 4:17pm Permalink
Sarah Christopher

I was not alive during the Kennedy assassination, but I remember watching the Challenger explosion on a big wooden console TV in second grade. Then I was just starting my 1st year of teaching when 9/11 occurred...I only knew what colleagues told me in quick passing between classes, so I didn't really understand what was going on until I went home and turned on the TV.

Nov 22, 2013, 5:13pm Permalink
Kathy Owen

I was 18 years old and working at GMH on the floors picking up patient's trays after lunch. Heard the news the president had been shot from one of the patient's televisions. Ran to the nearest payphone to call my parents and tell them to turn the TV on. I was stunned and shaken and don't recall anything more until I got home. We sat glued to the television the rest of the weekend, not wanting to move. I watched Ruby shoot Oswald and couldn't believe what I had just witnessed on live TV. Watching the miles of people line up in chilling temperatures to pay respects in the Capital rotunda, the spirited rider less black station, the deep sadness on Mrs. Kennedy's face, Bobby's and Ted's grief, the funeral....incredible emotional ride. Even today when I see the events played out again, I can't take my eyes off the television. It was the beginning, sadly, of more assassinations to come...hard to believe it was 50 years ago.

Nov 22, 2013, 10:16pm Permalink
John Woodworth JR

I see the John F. Kennedy assassination as the turning point where Democrats turned from their ideals. Kennedy stated, "Do not ask what your country can do for you but, what you can do for your country." Country, meaning all the people. We went from people contributing to society as a whole to those who take and steal from society. We went from a government who made us work for what we earned to a government who just keeps handing out to lazy and corrupt of society. Our government as a whole went from serving the people to serving themselves. Golden Parachutes and protecting their so called, "Entitlements." It amazes me that, those who fought for this country can sacrifice all and receives very little. While Congressmen and Senators can give very little and receive extraordinary benefits. Kennedy though he was not a great President was a true Democrat, personable and charismatic.

Nov 24, 2013, 8:56pm Permalink

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