I was in 2nd grade at Kenwood School in Bend and Nov. 22 just happened to be my 8th birthday. My mother had planned a small party at our house after school would be out that day. Around lunch time, our teacher, Mrs. Darlene Cooper, was called out of the room for a moment, and returned in tears, saying that our president had been shot, and school was dismissing early. Everything was a bit of a blur after her announcement.

And the birthday party just fizzled. I think maybe one friend showed up, but understandably, we didn’t celebrate.

My husband, my son and I had just crossed the border and were new immigrants from Canada with our visas intact. When we heard the news about the terrible tragedy that I was so upset that I didn’t want to have a dinner for my husband’s birthday which was the 22nd of November. All restaurants were closed and we were lucky to get a cottage in Lincoln, Nebraska to rest our weary bones.

On the next day we were heading for Sacramento, Calif. It was a very sad beginning for our new life.

On November 22, 1963, my late husband and I were in downtown Seattle for the final interview before adopting our first child. We left the caseworker’s office to find all the employees clustered around the radio on in the main office listening to the scary broadcast.

We knew that JFK had died, but not really what might happen next. The two of us, from Vancouver, Wash., left Lutheran Family Services and drove fairly aimlessly around the city – there was no traffic at all, and a lot of offices and businesses had closed down.

Being in a large city, with several military bases located in the area, was definitely frightening. We kept the radio on so we could listen to all the news reports and commentators as we finally headed home to southwest Washington.

It was quite a sober journey, not really knowing what to expect in the coming days.

Like everyone else, we were glued to the television for most of the weekend and next week. On the positive side, we were blessed with a 7 day old baby boy about 3 weeks later and that trip to Seattle and back was definitely a much happier experience.

My Dad had just been promoted to being a US Naval Commander and was accepting it on the day Kennedy was shot. Because of this, my three sisters and I (ages 4, 7, 10, 13) were out of school that day and in downtown Washington D.C.!

Being in the hub of the capitol of our country in the heart of all the political goings-on, you can imagine the chaos. I have never seen tears and crying from adults as I saw that day! Looking up into the faces of those strong adults that you look to for comfort, it was quite disturbing. What was to be a joyous day of no school, and then lunch out with Mom and Dad at a fancy restaurant turned out quite differently.

Two days later, on November 24th, we lined the streets along with hundreds of thousands of others as JFK’s flag-draped coffin was carried by horse-drawn caisson to lie in the U.S. Capitol rotunda.

My memories of this, looking through adult kneecaps and everyone grieving to see it pass by is quite clear in my mind, and that day I took my first pictures with my Kodak Brownie camera.

November 22, 1963 was a very memorable day to me because it was my 28th birthday and I had a 1-year-old little girl and a 3-year-old little boy. I was watching television and mopping my kitchen floor in Phoenix, Arizona.

When the news reported the killing, the first thing I did was to call my husband at his office, where he was an Engineer with Union Oil Company. He thought I was pulling a joke on him and he didn’t think it was funny.

When I told him it was no joke, he immediately told the the people in his office and some of the women began to cry. It has affected my life every year on my birthday to this day because I remember the day very clearly in my mind. My husband also gave me a diamond necklace and earring set for my birthday and every time I wear it, It reminds me of the assassination.

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I remember the news like it was yesterday. I was sitting in world history class my sophomore year.

The announcement came over the loudspeaker and we all just sat motionless. The principal told us all to go home.

While waiting for my bus several students, me included, were crying. Some just thought it was a day off. My family never left the television because it was so sad.

The assassination is forever embedded in my mind.

I was a high school freshman and several of us were rounding the corner on the last stretch back (from where we were having lunch) to the school when two upper-class jocks blew past us yelling “The President’s been shot! The President’s been shot!”

We all giggled because they had actually spoken to us, but they reassured us it was true.

We were still a block away from the school but we could tell something really serious had happened because all the students and faculty were heading back to the building en masse.

We walked back to our classrooms through eerily quiet halls and heard teachers and staff alternately crying or talking in hushed tones as we passed the office and teacher’s lounge.

It was pretty somber the rest of the afternoon.

My family was not particularly political so there was no conversation, pro or con, around the dinner table that evening about the days’ happening, other than it was too bad he was taken from such a young family.

Though I do remember feeling sad when I watched the President’s funeral and I saw his son salute as the caisson rolled by the cameras.

I was in a High School Social Studies class at Gilchrist High School when the secretary came into our room and told the teacher, who announced it to our class. Everyone was in a state of shock. Ironically, I was working as the secretary at that same high school on Sept. 11, 2001 when we watched the news of the attack unfold.

I was 15 years old in Mrs. Elliott’s English class at Westchester High School in Westchester, Calif. It was a nice

warm day and we were in a bungalow or temporary classroom off of the main building due to the explosion of baby boomers in that era. Our principal, Mr. Lockridge announced over the school intercom that President John F. Kennedy had been shot and died from his wounds.

I remember a hush came over the classroom and Mrs. Elliott staggered a bit. She sort of walked herself by her hands on the table in front of the classroom until she reached her desk. She sat down and bowed her head and then raised it with blood shot eyes and said that the remainder of the period will be silent reading in our books.

It was a shock to all young people in the U.S. as President Kennedy was the first politician that young people could really relate too. Arguably, President Kennedy had planned to pull thousands of advisers out of Vietnam which might have prevented our involvement there and saved 58,000 young people’s lives.

On Nov. 22, 1963, I was a high school freshman at Groveton High School outside Alexandria, Va., and was in Mrs. Fenelli’s French class just after lunch when the announcement was made over the PA system that President Kennedy had been shot and was followed by an announcement that he had died. I remember the teacher cried, as did most of the students.

Somehow we each made our way home immediately. Many of us had fathers who worked for the government, including mine. Our fathers were streaming out from downtown Washington, DC and gathering with their families in their homes.

In my home, we started watching television coverage of the assassination and I don’t think we stopped for days. We had lived through the Bay of Pigs threats not so long before, and this event had a similarly scary feeling to it, at least to my 14 year old self. My father was terribly upset, as he was an ardent Democrat who had left a job in corporate law in Pittsburgh when Kennedy was elected in order to work for his administration.

The day of the funeral, my father took my brother and me to downtown Washington to watch the cortege pass by.

My dad wanted to pay his own respects to President Kennedy and also wanted us to see the historic ritual, including the riderless horse in the parade that represented the fallen president. I remember that it was a cold, clear day, and that we stood for a long time in a prime position for the funeral parade. The casket came by on a wagon, and the dignitaries eventually came by, driven very slowly in limousines.

At some point early on word spread through the watching crowd that suspect Oswald had himself just been shot. It must have been someone listening to a transistor radio who received that news and I remember thinking that could not be true, but of course it turned out that Jack Ruby had shot Lee Harvey Oswald as we stood waiting for the funeral parade to pass by.

The Kennedy assassination stands out in my mind as the beginning of the tumultuous years that included the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the terrible urban riots, the Vietnam War and its protests, the violent Chicago convention, Kent State, the first man on the moon, etc. No time period since has seemed as shocking and eventful to me. At least not yet.

On 22 Nov 1963, I was 13 years old and living in Fairview Village, PA. I remember sitting in history class at Methacton High School when the announcement came over the intercom. My classmates, our teacher and I were completely stunned at what we had just heard. I also remember the subdued bus ride home where some students cried and some sat in silence wondering what else we would hear and see that evening on the news.

I was a sophomore at Las Vegas High School sitting in a health education class when the announcement came over the intercom from the office secretary that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas.

I was 16 at the time and not involved or interested at all in national current events so I didn’t give the news much thought, probably because after the announcement our teacher just continued on with her lecture. All of us students just looked around at each other and then went on taking notes.

Later I wondered why she didn’t talk with us about it or allow some discussion. Maybe she was a hard core Republican!

I was in the library at Lanier Senior High School, an all boys school in Macon, Ga. Our principal came on the school public address system and made the announcement. His voice was broken with emotion and there was complete silence for quite some time. No one spoke or said anything. Everyone, just stared at each other or out the window. Kennedy was a very popular figure of this time period and his death virtually tore the country apart.

My Mom and Dad did not say too much about it, they were not political people. I will never forget the overwhelming weight of the moment when it was announced. As to who really killed Kennedy, that is another topic altogether….

On Nov. 22, 1963, I was a junior in Tascosa High School in Amarillo, Texas, when several student friends who had gone off campus for their lunch came into the common area saying the president had been shot and possibly killed. I was completely in disbelief of their wild tale and quickly grabbed change for the pay phone in the lobby to call the local television station. The receptionist confirmed the rumor as true.

Students were directed to go to their homerooms; an announcement over the intercom stated the tragic news, and there was a prayer for our country before we were urged to peacefully go home. Three days later I watched Jack Ruby shoot and kill Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. Nothing has ever hit me harder except the day referred to as 9-11.

I was a 14-year old freshman at Grant High School in Portland and in the school ‘book store’ – which was little more than a large closet-sized room that sold pencils, paper, school decals, etc. – when I heard someone standing near me (a clerk, a fellow student, I’m not sure) say “the President has been shot”. It was late morning – maybe between 2nd and 3rd period.

Remarkably that afternoon/evening I travelled with my parents, in their car, and with my friend Millard Roberts III, south on I-5 to either Grants Pass or Roseburg for a quarter- or semi- final OSAA High School Football game, WHICH WE STILL PLAYED.

Grant High School won the basketball game and one or two weeks later became co-champs with North Salem, following a 7-7 tie at Multnomah Stadium in Portland. The NFL schedule played that weekend as well but most of the College game scheduled for Saturday were postponed. The Oregon High School football playoffs, including my game, continued only about six hours after the shooting occurred.

On Nov. 22nd 1963, I was a senior in my 4th period Physics class at Napa High school in Napa, Calif., when our Dean of Students came in and informed us that the President had been shot. Class continued when about a half hour later a counselor entered and told us that Kennedy was dead.

This was before lunch so after class two friends and I walked around and discussed the tragic event and surmised that the communists might be behind it. Later after basketball practice, my group of friends had to decide whether to cruise that night since it was a Friday night. We decided to do so.

The next day I remember the controversy over the playing of the NFL games on Sunday. Speaking of Sunday, I was watching TV that morning in our den when I witnessed the live shooting of Oswald in Texas. I remember yelling to my Mom in the kitchen, “guess what, they just shot Oswald”.

I think at that time I felt less secure after Kennedy was shot. I also felt a oneness with the nation grieving over our fallen leader. The Vietnam War may not have occurred if he had lived and the subsequent unrest in my college days prevented. After being drafted into the army in 1968 my concerns about that would also have been prevented.

That tragic day occurred on the day after my 16th birthday when I was in my 2nd year of high school in Portland. The high school principal announced it over the PA system and I think it was the first shock in my young life. My family was glued to the black and white TV in our basement home for the next four days as was all America.

I think the greatest effect it had on my life was that following that awful period the Vietnam war escalated while LBJ was president and as a result I served four years in the Air Force, three of the years overseas where I kind of “grew up” and this helped me get through college on the GI Bill.

As a high school junior, I was in the school cafeteria having lunch with my friends when the loud speaker came on. It was Walter Cronkite who said “Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States is dead”. We were immediately released from school and when I came home early, my mother couldn’t believe such a fuss would be made over a President who was a Democrat!

On November 22, 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed I was a junior at Forest Grove Union High School and was sitting in Mr. Giansante’s speech class. An announcement came over the public address system interrupting the class with the shocking news. We were stunned, Mr. Giansante cried. I remember sitting in front of the television day after day watching as the events following that day unfolded and murder occurred right before my eyes. I could not tear myself away from watching it and I was a teenager. Every emotion had me glued to that TV: Anger, compassion, fear, heartache, sorrow, shock and confusion.

When Kennedy was shot, I was in math class at Chief Joseph Junior High in Richland, Wash. We had heard a rumor that JFK had been killed, while in another class prior to math. Our Principal, Mr. Skov, made the announcement over the school speaker system.

It was such a shock because he was our leader during the Cuban missile crisis, the threat of nuclear war. Richland was known as the Atomic City since material for the A-bomb in WWII was produced at the Hanford energy site. So we were very familiar with all things nuclear.

Also, we had seen President Kennedy in May 1963 when he came to the Hanford Atomic Energy reservation and dedicated the start of construction of a nuclear reactor. All of the school children from the area had been bused out to a very restricted area so that we could be present to see him. So the announcement put us in shock and great sadness.

It was hard to concentrate on class work after that.

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