A Rich Life: What's the first major news story you can remember living through as a child?

I was in my classroom at school on November 22, 1963. We had just come back to the room after lunch. The teacher got our attention. I don’t remember how she did it any differently than any other time. But the words she said were different than any I had ever heard or felt in my life. She said President Kennedy has been killed. I’m not sure if she said anything right there about his having been shot or if she used the word assassinated, but she made it clear that our President was dead. He had been killed. 

It was shocking to hear. I remember that one boy in our class cheered. Looking back he probably didn’t think it was real or he, and his family, perhaps didn’t like Kennedy. Or he was just being funny or trying to be.  But I still remember that he cheered. But there was no more of that. Not from him or anyone else.

I don’t remember the rest of the day at school. Since he was shot on a Friday shortly after noon, we had the weekend at home to find out more. We watched on TV and read what came out in the newspaper. Big bold letters of headlines saying President Kennedy Assassinated and pictures and descriptions. 

We were numb. How could this happen to our President? I was only 13 and our family was Republican but he was our President, still, even though he was a Democrat. That’s the way that it was in those days. He was our President. And he was dead. By an assassin’s bullet.

It was a crazy weekend. A new President was sworn in, Lyndon Johnson, and leadership of the country continued. But we had lost our President. He was so young and so positive. People had called his time in the White House the days of Camelot. Only later would I see some of the tragedies of Camelot itself, but for now while he was alive it was a new day. A hopeful time. Working to put a man on the moon and take care of the needy in our country and help in the world. Such ideals and such hope. 

Then he was shot down. Murdered. Assassinated. 

Two days later, Sunday, November 24, Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who killed Kennedy, was being moved from one place to another and out of the crowd Jack Ruby pulled a gun and killed Oswald. It was unreal. We were still learning about Oswald, it had only been a few days, and he was murdered. 

One more shocking detail added to it all. Later there were investigations of all of it but for that weekend it was just simple details. Our President had been assassinated and then the assassin had been killed.

It was all so big and so horrible. Our President had been killed. The blood-stained dress of his wife, Jackie. The way she stood by the new President, Lyndon Johnson, as he was sworn in as President. The mourning and the grief and the funeral and the processions. 

Sometime later in my teens, our family visited Arlington National Cemetery and saw the Eternal Flame that was at President Kennedy’s grave. The flame was a sign of hope. Yes, he was shot down and died way too young. But his vision of hope would continue. We could be better than all of this. America could be a place of hope for the world.

I still remember. I still hope. And the first song at our wedding that we danced to was from Camelot.