A Day I Can’t Forget

In our pasts there are events so tragic that everyone who lived through them can remember exactly where they were when they heard the news.  These are experiences that tie us together.  November 22, 1963 was such a day for me.  I was sitting in my fifth grade classroom.  There was a knock on the door and our teacher, Mrs. Schneider, went to answer it.  It was another teacher who spoke in hushed tones.  When Mrs. Schneider turned around she was visibly upset and told us that President Kennedy had been shot.  We sat in shocked silence as she walked over and turned on the small black and white T.V. so we could watch the news.

I remember sitting in that classroom with the other kids, staring at that T.V.  The scene is permanently etched in my brain.  We heard the incomprehensible news that the president was dead.  How could such a thing happen?  At home the same scene was repeated.  We sat in front of our black and white T.V staring at the screen.  The same scene was repeated throughout our neighborhood, our city, our state, and the entire country.  Everything ground to a halt.  For 3 days we all sat in front of our T.V.s.  We watched replays of the shooting, the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooting of Oswald, the casket lying in state, the funeral procession, little John John saluting his father’s casket as the caisson rolled by, the grave at Arlington Cemetery.  The eternal flame.

My parents were staunch Republicans but that didn’t matter; party didn’t matter.  We all mourned the loss of the young president, our president.  Camelot had ended.  This tragic event forever changed us.  We lost some of our innocence that day.  And perhaps it prepared us for what was to come.