What's the First Big News Story You Were Aware Of As a Kid?

Your mother and mine would get along great.

One of the classic stories of our family involves my mom, then in her early 40s, a wife and the mother of seven kids, climbing up onto and crawling, yes, crawling, over the length of a banquet dinner table in a crowded Las Vegas venue to get to Elvis, who was up on the stage in front of her. She was excited and counted herself lucky when she came away from her close encounter with The King having grabbed and pulled off a hanging arm tassel from his outfit.

My dad, he said, was embarrassed and face-palmed himself in disbelief the whole time.

 

Don't remember the news cover around Elvis' death (when I was 8). Have vague memories of the Bicentennial the year before. Have vague memories of the gas crisis, the long lines and the odd-even license plate days for gassing up. Strongest memories are the Iran hostage crisis/1980 presidential election. 1980 election- 6th grade social studies - we had to do a paper on which candidate we supported. One parent was for Carter, one was for Anderson and I did my paper on Reagan.
Sportswise - biggest early memory is watching the Yankees-Red Sox 1 game playoff in '78 and then the playoffs and World Series games that followed. Also remember exactly where I was the following year when they broke in with the special news report of Munson's plane crash. Vague memories of those Cowboys-Steelers Super Bowls. Also vague memories of watching replays of the Chambliss homer in '76 and the next-day highlights from the '77 Series.

 

Watergate (not in any consequential way), Vietnam (same), Ford presidency, Carter-Ford. Bicentennial was huge, a bigger celebration in American than 1999 turning into 2000.

 

Berlin Wall coming down. (I apparently am in an age division all to myself on here). I was alive but young and have no memory of the Challenger incident, but plenty of memories about it being talked about in later years. After the Wall news coverage, I also remember the fall of the Soviet Union (and not understanding why my parents were in such awe of the event) and the '92 election.

 

I don't remember the wall coming down. My first memory of the breakup of the USSR was watching the Olympics and the Unified Team of Russia and its former holdings.

 

I was twelve for the Munich Olympics and Black September.

In June of 1967 my family did a road trip to Washington, DC. My mother was very into family history and genealogy, and was basically doing a ten day dive into the National Archives and the Library of Congress. My father, little brother and I did tourist DC for about ten days. We were in various parts of the Smithsonian for five or six of those.

Anyhow, while we were there the Six Day War broke out in Israel. I'm watching reports from the Pentagon on Huntley-Brinkley, which was a very odd feeling when we had driven past it twice that day.

 

I agree with you completely. But it can never have the impact on a generation that JFK's assassination did. If there was ever truly a national loss of innocence, it was that day in November. America instantly went from thinking everything was pretty idyllic to thinking everything was pretty bleak.

And then to have Jack Ruby played out in a matter of hours before an evening-news crowd ... it was a perfect storm.