Where Were You On November 22, 1963?

Where Were You On November 22, 1963?

It was Friday, a nice Fall day in Wheaton, Illinois. I was eight days past my tenth birthday, a fifth grader at Whittier Elementary School. It was lunch time when we heard the news that President Kennedy had been shot and had been rushed to the hospital in Dallas, Texas. We all sat quietly in our seats as our teachers gathered in the hall outside our classroom. Some of the children and teachers had tears in their eyes and some were crying. That all escalated when, just after one o'clock, it was announced that the President was dead.

Parents arrived at the school to take their children home early. My Mom was crying as she came to get my sister and me. We all cried in silence all the way home. I was very sad about the President's death, but I cried more because my Mom cried. I probably understood what was happening as much or more than most of my piers, but there is something about seeing your Mom cry. She was always the strong one in crisis. She kept things real. Unlike most of the people in my home town, she was a Democrat who loved JFK. Don't get me wrong, Republicans cried too. Our President was murdered.

Today I watched a few hours of TV and heard almost nothing about that fateful day forty-five years ago. There was one show about the Kennedys on PBS and in one scene there was the assassination. I cried. I remembered my Mother and I cried some more.

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