November 22nd, 1963

Geico266

Geico266

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I was in grade school playing on the monkey bars with Susan Hackila. The teacher came out of the front doors and called us all for an announcement. She was crying and was followed by the principle. We knew something was terribly wrong, interrupting recess was a big deal!

She announced that President Kennedy had been shot.

The world literally stood still while we just stared at each other. I can tell you exactly what square of the sidewalk I was standing. I looked down searching for something that made sense. Being 8 I just wanted to go back to the comfort of the monkey bars, but I knew the world had changed forever.

The coming weeks, months, years, were consumed with investigations, rumors, conspiracy theories, lies, and distortions.

What could have been and what could have been avoided, Vietnam, the cold war, civil unrest. Who knows?



Where where you when you learned Kennedy was shot?

If you where too young or not born yet what is your perception of the this date in history?
 
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Re: November 11th, 1963

Really?

Was she in on the assassination, considering she came in ELEVEN days prior to the event and announced it?

Or maybe she could have prevented it if she had clairvoyance enough to see eleven days into the future. Is she still alive? Can she tell me the next powerball numbers?

To answer the question, I was probably reading my "Book of Presidents" sometime in the early 80's, and when I got to the chapter on Kennedy, it said he was shot.

My perception: Overblown hoopla. He had 46 chromosomes just like 99.9%+ of the other people on the planet. His death is no more "important" than that of any other law abiding citizen, and had he not been shot 50 years ago, he'd probably still be dead today.
 
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Re: November 11th, 1963

EdFred said:
My perception: Overblown hoopla. He had 46 chromosomes just like 99.9%+ of the other people on the planet. His death is no more "important" than that of any other law abiding citizen, and had he not been shot 50 years ago, he'd probably still be dead today.
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I'm not so sure about over blown.

Kennedy was only in office for 1,000 days. In that time he started the Peace Corps, NASA Space program sending the first man to the moon, civil rights leadership paving the way for minorities to go to college in all 50 states. He was young, energetic, charismatic, smart witted, and a war hero.
 
Re: November 11th, 1963

This reminds me of the time the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor on December 17, 1903.
 
Re: November 11th, 1963

Brad Z said:
This reminds me of the time the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor on December 17, 1903.
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As a friend of mine used to say "A day that will live in infancy". He was always getting things like that slightly wrong.

I have another friend who likes to call the Mitsubishi dealer on Dec 16th to ask if they have any Zero down Zero financing offers.

As for JFK, I was too young to remember. My 1st big world news event was Dad letting us stay up late on July 20, 1969. Well, that and growing up seeing the Vietnam War on the nightly news. :-(
 
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Re: November 11th, 1963

Geico266 said:
I'm not so sure about over blown.

Kennedy was only in office for 1,000 days. In that time he started the Peace Corps, NASA Space program sending the first man to the moon, civil rights leadership paving the way for minorities to go to college in all 50 states. He was young, energetic, charismatic, smart witted, and a war hero.
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James Garfield is not impressed.
 
Maybe this is a reflection on the change in general feeling with society, but I don't view his assassination as a big deal. One person is just that - one person. It surprised me that Obama hasn't received any assassination attempts.

To me, that is one of the risks of having that job. You're going to **** off someone. I don't want to be president.

As I was looking out the window watching the World Trade Center burn and collapse, one of my high school teachers said to me "This will be for your generation what Kennedy was for mine." The point being a realization that bad things happen, and people are sometimes killed by others.
 
I'm with Geico on this. It was a big deal. Yes, he was mortal, but he did accomplish a lot in a short period of time. I think he could have accomplished a lot more.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Maybe this is a reflection on the change in general feeling with society, but I don't view his assassination as a big deal. One person is just that - one person. It surprised me that Obama hasn't received any assassination attempts.

To me, that is one of the risks of having that job. You're going to **** off someone. I don't want to be president.

As I was looking out the window watching the World Trade Center burn and collapse, one of my high school teachers said to me "This will be for your generation what Kennedy was for mine." The point being a realization that bad things happen, and people are sometimes killed by others.
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Interesting perspective.

I agree that the risk is inevitable; but I still regard kit as a Very Big Deal.

Having grown up in Dallas, I can tell you that it was a trumatic event; for a long time thereafter, when we traveled as a family, when we told people that we were from Dallas, folks (especially in the northeast) would say, "Oh, you killed Kennedy." Very hateful (and Oswald was not even a Dallasite!), not at all fair, but human nature is an odd thing.

There is much which I find utterly repugnant about our curent President, but an attack on him would be an attack on my country and on me.
 
On watch in #4 engine room of the USS Enterprise at the pier in Norfolk, VA
 
6th grade. We were all called into the gym/auditorium and told the news.
 
What you think about probably has a lot to do with if you are old enough to remember it or not. It was all over the news for years, or so it seemed. Probably as much as 9/11.
 
SCCutler said:
Interesting perspective.

I agree that the risk is inevitable; but I still regard kit as a Very Big Deal.

Having grown up in Dallas, I can tell you that it was a trumatic event; for a long time thereafter, when we traveled as a family, when we told people that we were from Dallas, folks (especially in the northeast) would say, "Oh, you killed Kennedy." Very hateful (and Oswald was not even a Dallasite!), not at all fair, but human nature is an odd thing.

There is much which I find utterly repugnant about our curent President, but an attack on him would be an attack on my country and on me.
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I agree that the world viewed it as a big deal, my point is more that they shouldn't have. But I'm in the (admittedly small and unpopular) camp that believes AF1 should be a Gulfstream not a 747, and that we devote too many tax dollars and resources to protecting someone who's supposed to be a public servant.

I also agree that I don't want to see our president the victim of an assassination regardless of whether or not I agree with his views or policies, but my point is I'm surprised that nobody has tried. Our current President is very polarizing and a divider - there is a billboard outside of my office that says "Impeach Obama!" I'm not sure I saw anything like that for Bush or Clinton.
 
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Re: November 11th, 1963

Reading these accounts of tears at JFK's assasination makes me depressed. Usually such kind of expression is reserved for worst personality cults of dictators like Stalin and Mao. I don't want to express too much revulsion at this hollow cult manufactured by then-omnipowerful media -- every folk on Earth was so vulnerable to manipulation. And I don't think I could tell anyone back then "Get over it, he wasn't your mother". I would be affected as well. But we must consider that mass psychosis for what it was if we are to learn from it.
 
Do you know what JFK would be doing today if he were alive?
 
Tom-D said:
Do you know what JFK would be doing today if he were alive?
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Probably ****ting himself in a nursing home somewhere while waiting for a sponge bath. He would be 96 after all.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Maybe this is a reflection on the change in general feeling with society, but I don't view his assassination as a big deal. One person is just that - one person. It surprised me that Obama hasn't received any assassination attempts.
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He was well liked by most, but just the fact our President had been assassinated was what ripped the heart out of our country, whether you were a Republican or Democrat.

My story which I shared with Facebook friends:

I vividly remember this day in 1963, sitting in my First Grade class at Jefferson Elementary on the second floor, east side facing the chalkboard and staring at the brown speaker mounted up high as Mr. Melvey, our Principal, announced the assassination of JFK. Etched in my memory 50 years later.
 
Banging on the lid hollering let me out..






Yeah sick, I know
 
Ted DuPuis said:
I also agree that I don't want to see our president the victim of an assassination regardless of whether or not I agree with his views or policies, but my point is I'm surprised that nobody has tried. Our current President is very polarizing and a divider - there is a billboard outside of my office that says "Impeach Obama!" I'm not sure I saw anything like that for Bush or Clinton.
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I think Obama has had a record number of threats on his life. Who knows what might have progressed into an attempt on his life were the SS not so aggressive in pursuing every hint of threat against him (or any President), as it should be. They don't take even joking about it with a sense of humor.
 
LDJones said:
I think Obama has had a record number of threats on his life. Who knows what might have progressed into an attempt on his life were the SS not so aggressive in pursuing every hint of threat against him (or any President), as it should be. They don't take even joking about it with a sense of humor.
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Obama's best life insurance is Biden.
 
ScottM said:
If we counted in base 2 rather than in base 10 we'd have celebrated the 100,000th anniversary of Kennedy's death 18 years ago
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Don't you mean 10010 years ago?
 
Sitting in a 4th grade classroom. Strangely, I don't remember which class it was. But I do remember Mr. Halsey walking in and announcing "The President has been shot." And then we were taken to the auditorium for an assembly of the whole school, students and faculty. We were all wondering whether he would make it at that point, but it was soon confirmed that he had died.

I suspect my reaction was unusual, but I actually had doubts at first that it was really happening. It was the early 60s, we had been through more than a few unannounced disaster and bombing drills in school during and after the Cuban crisis. Until the announcement that he was actually dead, I wasn't totally sure whether this might be yet another simulation.
 
LDJones said:
He was well liked by most, but just the fact our President had been assassinated was what ripped the heart out of our country, whether you were a Republican or Democrat.
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I think that today you might find similar as well, and I view this as a reflection on society putting too much value into one mortal.

LDJones said:
I think Obama has had a record number of threats on his life. Who knows what might have progressed into an attempt on his life were the SS not so aggressive in pursuing every hint of threat against him (or any President), as it should be. They don't take even joking about it with a sense of humor.
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I'm sure, and they must be doing a better job today than 50 years ago given that nothing has come very close.

Like I said, it just surprises me. I hope it doesn't happen for a number of reasons.
 
In 1963, as it is in 2013, November 22 was a Friday.

I was a student of Andrew McNally Intermediate School in La Mirada, California. The campus was only three blocks from home, and I had a permit to go home for lunch each day. I was on the sidewalk just outside the school gate on my way home for lunch. As I passed the teachers' parking lot, my science teacher was walking the other direction, head down, a transistor radio to his ear. It was from him that I heard the news.

When I got home, my father, a California Highway Patrolman who worked the night shift, already had the Zenith black-and-white console TV tuned to the network news. It might have been Cronkite, I don't remember.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
I'm sure, and they must be doing a better job today than 50 years ago given that nothing has come very close.

Like I said, it just surprises me. I hope it doesn't happen for a number of reasons.
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Which is crazy, because there's a big 30nm bullseye on him at all times, and we are told exactly when he's going to be in said bullseye. A device used to take out AF1 can be made without too much difficulty.
 
Re: November 11th, 1963

Geico266 said:
He was young, energetic, charismatic, smart witted, and a war hero.
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Please!! If anyone else had been in command of PT-109, they would've been Court Martialed for dereliction of duty!

Money and political power can buy you the kind of political spin to re-write history.
 
Gerhardt said:
I'm with Geico on this. It was a big deal. Yes, he was mortal, but he did accomplish a lot in a short period of time. I think he could have accomplished a lot more.
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Other Presidents have accomplished much more, and had a much greater impact on the country and world history than Kennedy. In fact, Kennedy isn't even close to the top. Kennedy had plenty of high and lower profile failures, but he happened to have a wife and family that, despite his persistent dishonesty and frequent philandering, were able to market both him and the family as some type of American royalty. The positive image surrounding JKF in particular, and the Kennedy family in general, is largely the result of a massive but mostly fictional PR effort. Even if it were all true, and JFK was effectively a superhero President, we are not a country who should worship our leaders, we are a country who should value our liberty. The fact that many are still essentially worshipping JFK and his "accomplishments" shows just how much we've lost since the beginning.

With that being said, regardless of one's opinion of any President or his policies, the Kennedy assassination serves as a fairly modern reminder that serving as the President is not an easy job. Whether you're deemed to be brilliant or incompetent, you have enormous responsibility and enormous personal risk that you cannot avoid. It also serves as a demonstration to the world that the stability of our government and our values do not depend on any one individual or royal family.


JKG
 
Gerhardt said:
I'm with Geico on this. It was a big deal. Yes, he was mortal, but he did accomplish a lot in a short period of time. I think he could have accomplished a lot more.
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Maybe---, instead of nailing Marilyn M. and at least one of his interns he might have gotten to Liz Taylor,Bridgette Bardot and a few other hottie's of the time.:wink2:
He was charming and witty but was not his Dad's first choice for Prez. His older brother was.
I always felt sorry for Jackie and his kids though.
He also had some good PR writers to pump up the mass's.
I will agree it was a big deal ,the people that voted for him were devastated (except LBJ he was a happy camper), the people that didn't vote for him could have cared less.
As far as where was I? I remember being in 8th grade standing stark necked in P.E.swim class against the cold cement block wall when our P.E. teachers Mr. Anderson and Mr. Armstrong made the announcement.
Why they made us swim with no suits still erks me.
I came from a family that did not favor the Democrats ideas . I remember hearing " the only good Kennedy is a dead Kennedy"at family gatherings.
Well I guess there were a few good ones after all.:rolleyes2:
 
Sophomore Turlock, CA High school. PA announcement while in English class.
 
Re: November 11th, 1963

Capt.Crash'n'Burn said:
Please!! If anyone else had been in command of PT-109, they would've been Court Martialed for dereliction of duty!

Money and political power can buy you the kind of political spin to re-write history.
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Ah, I don't think so. His brother Jo was killed on a secret flying mission when the bomb he was carrying went off before it was dropped.

If he used his influence to get a cush job in the war it would not have been a PT boat captain in the south Pacific. :dunno:

Seriously, do you really enjoy beating up a dead man?
 
Re: November 11th, 1963

Geico266 said:
Ah, I don't think so. His brother Jo was killed on a secret flying mission when the bomb he was carrying went off before it was dropped.

If he used his influence to get a cush job in the war it would not have been a PT boat captain in the south Pacific. :dunno:

Seriously, do you really enjoy beating up a dead man?
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Do you have any idea what happened with the PT-109 incident??

He got the boat he was in charge of, rammed by a Japanese destroyer.

You're in a fast, small manuverable boat and you get rammed by something 5 times your size.

He was an inept commander, period.
 
Geico266 said:
Where where you when you learned Kennedy was shot?

If you where too young or not born yet what is your perception of the this date in history?
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I was barely two years old living in Winnipeg Canada. I do not remember it, but I do remember RFK being shot (I was 6 at the time).
 
The old timers who recalled the event when I was growing up in MS weren't terribly upset over it. I take it he wasn't popular in Mississippi.
 
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