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11/22/63

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Chef, Nov 22, 2006.

  1. Captain_Kirk

    Captain_Kirk Well-Known Member

    I've posted this previously, but there are great photos of the day/events/key characters on this web site:


    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKphotographs.htm
     
  2. cranberry

    cranberry Well-Known Member

    NYC had half-day kindergarten in those days and I had just returned home on the school bus from morning kindergarten. Kids with birthdays from July-December had afternoon kindergarten. After lunch, Mom was ironing (did anyone ele's mom sprinkle clothes with water and put them in the refrigerator before ironing?) and watching "As the World Turns." Dad was napping because he was working a night shift at the factory that week. The soap was interrupted for the news bulletin, which turned into an afternoon of news bulletins. I remember mom crying, going to wake my dad then kneeling by their bed to say a rosary. I was over at my grandmother's house watching when Oswald took his bullet.
     
  3. OTD

    OTD Well-Known Member

    I was not quite 4, so I was at home. I vaguely remember the TV bulletins and I do remember the funeral.

    I was thinking this morning back to 1968 when the King and RFK assassinations happened within a couple months of one another. I remembered the JFK killing and when these happened, I asked my parents why anyone would want to run for office, since they always get assassinated?
     
  4. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    I was about halfway down the block, walking to afternoon kindergarten (we lived 2 blocks away from school), when my mother came out the door and screamed, "Get back in here!!"

    I knew who Kennedy was -- we had gone to see him when he came to town a couple years earlier -- my dad, as a news editor for a PM paper, came home and talked about him every day, and our whole family was Irish-Catholic, so yes, even at age 5, I knew who he was.
     
  5. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    Has anyone here ever seen the full page ad ripping Kennedy that ran in the Dallas Morning News the day he was killed? Majorly creepy...

    They have it up at the museum in Dallas, which is truly amazing btw... Granted, I'm a bit of a history geek, but I've been a few times and it's incredibly powerful and interesting...
     
  6. spnited

    spnited Active Member

    Wow, 24...you are just a pup, spup.

    This old guy was a high school freshman on Nov. 22, 1963...walking to my last period Latin class (Hey, Catholic HS) when the hallways started buzzing that the President had been shot.
    Walked into the classroom and the old Irish brother who taught Latin was sitting on the desk, with the TV on (yes, we had TVs in some classrooms) crying.
    We spent the last period of the day watching Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather and, of course, praying.
     
  7. JR

    JR Well-Known Member

    Grade 9 (or 10, can't remember) history class. Mr. Downie broke the news to us and every time I saw him in later years, JFK's death was all I could think of.

    It was, at least, in my memory, the first event that got CNN type, wall-wall-coverage.
     
  8. writing irish

    writing irish Active Member

    Creepy indeed. Also creepy that people like the ones who bought the ad are still the ones who call the shots in Dallas...no pun intended.

    Less tragic but still regrettable is that the Dallas Morning News won the newspaper war with the Times-Herald. The DMN has come a long way from being the right-wing rag that it once was...but as impressive as its journalism has been in recent decades, the editorial stance of the paper is still an affront...at least in my view.

    My (Irish Catholic) grandfather had just suffered a heart attack and was in the hospital at the time of the assassination. Everyone kept the news from him...they figured he was dealing with enough adversity as it was. He died a few days later without ever having heard the news of JFK's death.

    My (Irish but Southern Baptist) mother was an office worker in Dallas when it happened. She learned of the event when her right-wing asshole boss announced the news to the office by saying "Well somebody shot the son of a bitch" or something to that effect.

    Lou Reed was in a bar in upstate New York:
    "I dreamed I was the president
    of these United States
    I dreamed I replaced ignorance
    stupidity and hate
    I dreamed the perfect union
    and a perfect law, undenied
    Most of all I dreamed I forgot
    the day John Kennedy died
    I dreamed that I could do the job
    that others hadn't done
    I dreamed that I was uncorrupt
    and fair to everyone
    I dreamed I wasn't gross or base
    a criminal on the take
    And most of all I dreamed I forgot
    the day John Kennedy died
    Oh, the day John Kennedy died
    Oh, the day John Kennedy died
    I remember where I was that day
    I was upstate in a bar
    The team from the university
    was playing football on TV
    Then the screen went dead and the announcer said
    "There's been a tragedy
    There's are unconfirmed reports the president's been shot
    and he may be dead or dying."
    Talking stopped, someone shouted, "What?!"
    I ran out to the street
    People were gathered everywhere saying
    did you hear what they said on TV
    And then a guy in a Porsche with his radio hit his horn
    and told us the news
    He said "The president's dead
    he was shot twice in the head
    in Dallas, and they don't know by whom."
    I dreamed I was the president
    of these United States
    I dreamed that I was young and smart
    and it was not a waste
    I dreamed that there was a point to life
    and to the human race
    I dreamed that I could somehow comprehend that someone
    shot him in the face
    Oh, the day John Kennedy died"
    - Lou Reed, "The Day John Kennedy Died"

    I don't buy into the canonization of the Kennedy family like some of my ethnicity do, but overall I'm proud of their contributions to this country, despite all the obvious and not-so-obvious negatives in the Kennedy legacy.

    Slightly off topic...I recently read Gore Vidal's autobiography and was very irritated with his ripping on RFK. Fuck you, Gore Vidal. Never saw you having the brass to get the mob pissed off at you.
     
  9. beefncheddar

    beefncheddar Guest

    I'll second the suggestion that anyone with the opportunity should go to the Sixth Floor Museum. Very powerful, indeed.
     
  10. da man

    da man Well-Known Member

    Someone already mentioned it, but the PBS documentary on the media coverage of the event, ``JFK, Breaking the News,'' is spectacular. If you can find it, watch it.
     
  11. hell, my mother was nine years old when President Kennedy was assasinated, so clearly I wasn't there, but my grandmother told me where she was and what happened. She was a cafeteria lady at my aunt and uncle's high school when they got the word that Kennedy got shot and that literally no one moved for at least an hour.
     
  12. HoopsMcCann

    HoopsMcCann Active Member

    spup, we got vince coleman and rodney dangerfield, too!

    oh, and for the record, negative-12 to the day
     
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