Where were you today in 11/22/1963?

[Crankin]

I was in fifth grade, just turned ten. I remember the principal coming to the door of my classroom, with a very pale face. She must have told my teacher. The teacher told us and everyone gasped. Then we were dismissed about 2 hours early. They were afraid the middle school kids would tell us, when we were walking home, since they got out earlier. I remember sleeping over my friend's house that night, as always, on Fridays and being glued to the TV.
The earliest "event" I remember is the first manned space flight, with Alan Shepard. I was in first grade, maybe second? We had a big clunky TV in the room and got to watch the whole 30 second thing.

[skhill]

Well, my mom was in taking a math test (undergrad) and my dad was in the army, serving in Germany. I've heard their stories, though.

The first big really tragic news story I remember was the Challenger explosion (9th grade). Smaller bad news, Reagan getting shot. But I also have vivid memories of some of the bicentennial celebrations, and for some odd reason, Carter's inauguration!

My brother pointed to the night the Berlin Wall came down as the biggest event that us Gen-Xers should be sure to remember where they were. A lot don't, alas. Of course, not everyone heard stories of it going up that we did-- our Dad was in a military intelligence unit in Berlin then, so he had some tales to tell that aren't in the history books...

[Giulianna23]

7 years before I was born.

[goldfinch]

I was home sick from school and I wasn't even all that sick, I had one of my frequent grade school tummy aches.

What stuck with me far more than the Kennedy assassination was when Ruby shot Oswald. Somehow that was a shocker to me, seeing it on tv. Nothing abstract about that.

[bmccasland]

1963 - was in the US equivalent of pre-school in La Celle-Saint-Cloud near Paris, France. We were living on the economy (no US Government housing) when Dad was active duty military. Mom said our neighbors brought over sympathy cards, and were concerned for our safety.

[Bike Writer]

I was in 4th grade and our principal came into our classroom, the teacher cried and were were sent home. His happened just a couple of months after my dad passed away and I thought about the how President's kids didn't have a father now either. It made me sad and I cried too.

I recalled all the relatives being glued to the TV and how our major department store downtown had a huge picture of the President in one of their big windows displays and it was draped in black.

People wept openly over this event. Whether a person thought he was a hero or a scoundrel, he was our President and was gunned down in open sight. President or not he was a young man with two little kids and a wife. This frightened people.

When I look back now I see this in the perspective that this was the death of our innocence as a people. Post World War II people were jubliant and full of hope and felt pride at defeating a threat to freedom worldwide. Men were happy to come home and carry on with their lives and building their families.

People became more jaded as time passed and the ensuing assassinations of others that followed soon afterward foreshadowed a very violent period in our history of civil unrest. Life in the USA changed after Kennedy was killed, I'm not saying that is is necessairly because of it, but it was an event of demarcation. There was the world before and then there was the world afterward and the two were very different.

[new2ride]

My dad came to pick me up from school, we were holding hands and walking home. The school guard asked my dad if he had heard the news, she told him the president had been shot and killed. I remember my dad wiping his eyes and the school guard crying. I went home and watched it all on TV -- I was only five years old, but I remember being very upset over the president being killed. I remember watching the funeral and just feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness and loss.