Sixty years since the JFK assassination
November 22, 1963.
I’m a sixth-grade student at Sharp Corner School, in Skokie, Illinois. My class has finished lunch and we’re outside for a quick recess. Someone mentioned that they heard that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. The response was either they were lying or it was a joke. Some of the boys even went as far as using their fingers as pretend guns and reenacting what they thought would be JFK being shot.
A few minutes later everything changed.
When it was time to line up to re-enter the building, it became eerily silent. Most of us noticed that the teachers had stunned looks on their faces.
Our classrooms all had televisions. Ours was tuned to NBC. Leading their coverage was Frank McGee. The room was silent as we listened to the different reports from Dallas.
‘The president was wounded but it’s not serious.’ ‘Governor Connelly was in more serious condition.’ ‘A Priest has been brought in to see President Kennedy.’
For a half hour, the reports differed. No one knew what to believe. And then, McGee said the words that no one around at that time will ever forget…President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was dead.
The photo directly above this is of the members of my class that year. The teacher in the middle of the top row is Miss DeMeo. When the president’s death was announced, she immediately started sobbing and ran out of the room. I looked around the room and a few students had tears in their eyes. Others had their heads down on their desks. I had trouble catching my breath because I was trying to hold back my tears.
For the next hour, everyone sat in silence glued to the words and pictures coming from the black-and-white television set. Then school was dismissed early. Everyone quietly left the building and started the walk home. We didn’t return to school until the following Tuesday. I don’t remember ever talking about the events of that day when we returned, but even as an eleven-year-old boy, I knew that the world had suddenly changed forever.
November 22, 2023.
It’s almost impossible to believe that sixty years have passed since that afternoon. The events of that day are still clear and fresh in my memory. John Kennedy was really my first president. I was too young to know both Truman and Eisenhower. When he was killed, I thought this is the way it’s going to be in America. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy confirmed that in my mind.
Thankfully, we haven’t had another president assassinated since then, although we did have attempts on Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. Most of us who lived through that day are now in our upper sixties or older. We’re twenty to thirty years from having only the history books to tell the story of the assassination. However, until that occurs, you can still ask one of us. Our memories may slightly differ, but November 22, 1963, is a day we won’t ever forget.