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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 11/24/2006 1:30:09 PM | I was 13 years old, and in Junior High school. I belonged to the school marching band, and we had an assembly that day. I played the sousaphone (Kind of like a bug tuba).
I remember hearing some announcement, but the sound was very faint. I stuck my ear to the sousaphone's mouthpiece, and used the bell as a listening device.
Then they told us Kennedy had been shot. We got out of school early and rushed home to hear the sad news. | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 11/24/2006 11:20:42 PM | Civics class, 7th grade.
I remember just sitting there in shock...until one of our class mates started clapping her hands and chanting "I hope he dies" over and over. We all just stared at her. Our teacher took her out of the class room and no one said a word.
I also watched Oswald die.
I also got to watch alot of dying when my dad would bring the portable tv into the kitchen so we could watch all the killing go on in Vietnam while we ate dinner.
Watched Bobby die on tv as well.
Surreale.
Then there was Martin Luther King...I was on the phone with my girlfriend. I just wanted to go away somewhere like to another planet. | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 11/24/2006 11:50:03 PM | I was six, and I remember that day well even now.
Being in school, people crying...kids...teachers.
Going home and seeing my Mom crying too... It's rather strange when you think about it. A Canadian family, in Quebec City, but yet we felt a great loss as well. It was like time stopped, for a few days. Seeing the reactions of people worldwide, that funeral...
Our family assembled, like so many tens of millions of others, around the TV screen and just were in shock at what we saw. Suddenly, the world was a very different place for all of us. Something was changed that day for all of us, forever. A Pandora's Box of violence with political motivation was opened. Oswald, RFK, JFK, Lennon, 9/11 ....
Anyone that's our age has seen too many things that one should never see at all.
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/16/2007 5:36:38 PM | I was coming home from school (high school) when a neighbor ran out on the poarch to tell me it had happened. It was my first day of work at my first job, 16 years old and going to work at the neighborhood drug store after school. I also remember that my younger brother, he was 8 then, say Jack Ruby shot on TV and called to us and we couldn't believe that he had really seen it live.
It may have been a myth but it was a beautiful one. | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/16/2007 5:57:48 PM | I had just finished writing a long exam and when I came outside, everyone was talking about it. I watched all the news on TV and even ordered the book "The Torch Has Passed". I remeber all the contraversy about the number of shots and the stories that followed about Lee Harvey Oswald. Then came the similarities between Pres. Lincoln's assassination and JFK's.
I wonder if we will ever know the entire story? | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/16/2007 6:05:50 PM | ...I think I was in the 5th grade and an announcement came over the PA system telling us that the President of the United States had been shot. When I got home from school I found my mom in tears sitting in front of the tv set. I remember how heartbroken my whole family was over his death....we couldn't believe it.
...maeflowers | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/16/2007 7:09:29 PM | Everyone is talking about being in school. I had gone deer hunting with my older brother in law. guess I skipped class?...or maybe I had quit school by then? Can't remember. We stopped at the tiny country store about 2 miles from our house to get some snacks. We heard the news there. I remember feeling kind of shocked. But...nothing really overwhelming.
I'm sure I used this assination, as well as the well known ones which followed in the 60s to fuel my later counter culture affiliations when I got out of the navy in 1970. I think there are still a lot of people even today...who blame the state the world has ended up in on the loss of the Kennedy brothers. (meaning...had they lived...they would have saved the world)...I doubt it! Its something we don't get to know. Ithink Martin Sheen and his son would fall into this catagory...(their new movie...Bobby)
I think that the bitterness and resentments at the loss of the kennedys has been a more signifigant factor in determining the political climates in the last 40 years than anything they might have caused by living. Ironic. | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/16/2007 7:15:03 PM | | My story's the same as Bonnie's. I was 4 and peeved that my cartoons were pre-empted. Since then, I've become one of those self-proclaimed experts. I have all the original LIFE magazines and about 4 shelves full of the various books on the subject. I even taught a college course on the assassination when I was a grad student. If I ever had access to a time machine, that would be the one day I'd choose to return to, and I would position myself so I could see what was going on on the Grassy Knoll the whole time! | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/16/2007 9:37:07 PM | Of course, we will never know how different the world might have been without the occurance of these events,,,, still the loss of a dream is the result, for much of the nation.
Will the whole story ever be known publicly? I absolutely believe not. Was there more we never knew? Of course, there had to have been, but with time, fewer who might have known, remain alive.
My step-dad was a U.S.Ambassador during that time, after his retirement he would talk of many things, but about Kennedy's death,,, we were not even allowed to ask. As a younger woman, I once crossed that boundary.
Suddenly, I was no longer speaking with my elderly parent, I found myself facing Mr. Ambassador. He stood with the help of his cane, looked at me and said "We will never speak of this again" then turned and left the room. I never repeated my questions again.
tb | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/16/2007 11:34:45 PM | "The Day Camalot Ended"
I was in bed at the time happily reading a bedtime story book when my mother came in with the news.
I was too young at the time to appreciate the import of it though. I remember more of the adult's reactions at the time. I especialy remember an uncle who was always manicly going on about dropping a bomb on Cuba for some reason afterwards for a few days. What Cuba had to do with it all I don't know...... | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/17/2007 6:13:22 AM | my father worked as a news anchor for a susquehanna broadcasting station. that day, since he had little to report, he spent some time reading the upi tickertape (in those days the news came over this odd machine as opposed to computers). suddenly, a report came in from dallas. he tore it off the machine, ran into the on-air studio and broke the story.
from time to time, to this day, when he goes anywhere, if someone hears him speak, even in a casual conversation, they will ask if he's j**** d***, the announcer they heard report kennedy's death on the radio.
one woman said, 'i'll never forget that voice.' | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/17/2007 11:21:43 AM | I was in 8th grade English class when the principal came on the PA system and announced that President Kennedy had been shot. Everyone was in shock. They let us go home early and when I got home my older sister was already home from high school and was crying. Since I was only 13, I don't know if it changed my view of the world. But it is something I will never forget.
Thank God a few months later the Beatles came along to rescue us from that sad time! | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/17/2007 7:21:30 PM | I was home sick and watching TV. As a kid I loved watching parades, and in my book seeing the President was just as good!
When the shots rang out I started crying immediately. My grandmother and neighbor tried to console me, but I knew even then that something horribly evil and final had happened. I realized it wasn't just some movie with props but real shots.
I know that people aren't perfect, yet the charisma that JFK had, even reached my child's heart and soul. I felt that I had lost a friend that day and I think we were all a bit bewildered by the events.
It's as if a certain door to evil was opened up that day.
It seemed in a short time we saw JFK shot on TV, then Oswald, and Bobby, ML King, and later our boys at war and Kent State. Yes, we lost innocence that day. | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/18/2007 10:46:55 AM | | I remember clearly that day, I was 10 years old going to be 11 in 4 days when it happened. I thought about the Cuban missle crisis not long before, and how my parents reacted to that time, and was terribly worried that the world would suddenly change for the worse. It didn't get worse quickly, but gradually get much worse it did. For whatever it's worth part of our optimism as a culture died that day, we just didn't realize how much until much later. I've seen a documentary about behind the scenes negotiations with Fidel Castro that if they had come to fruition would have given us a much different world than the one in which we now reside. | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/19/2007 3:29:34 PM | I was just a little kid at elementary school wondering why those other kids were crying.
It was a sad for those who felt a special connection to the president but it didn't change my life in any knowable way at all…I was just a kid and didn’t even know the guy.
The death of my grandfather a while later was to have a much bigger impact on me than the shooting of a stranger.
Even the shooting of John Lennon had a bigger impact on me emotionally because I was familiar with his work on a personal level (having grown up as a musician playing his songs) and because he was not leading a nation but merely minding his own business, leading his less-public life, and doing his art.
I wonder if an assassination attempt on our current president would send this fearful nation into yet another war against some unknown and unspecified enemy to exact revenge or to escalate our nebulous and terrifying war against the military tactic of creating terror.
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bobby7
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Joined: 3/22/2006
Msg: 41 | |
| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/19/2007 6:41:42 PM | I rememer it all too well! I believe the world was a sadder and emptier place..
I also remember the songs about it..They ring true, even today!!
______________________________________________________________________________
I Saw It On TV by John Fogerty (CCR)
They sent us home to watch the show comin' on the little screen;
A man named Ike was in the White House, big black limousine;
There were many shows to follow, from 'Hooter' to 'Doodyville',
Though I saw them all, I can't recall which cartoon was real.
The coon-skin caps, Yankee bats, the "Hound Dog" man's big start;
The A-Bomb fears, Annette had ears, I lusted in my heart.
A young man from Boston set sail the new frontier,
And we watched the Dream dead-end in Dallas,
They buried innocence that year.
I know it's true, oh so true, 'cause I saw it on TV.
We gathered round to hear the sound comin' on the little screen,
The grief had passed, the old men laughed, and all the girls screamed
'Cause four guys from England took us all by the hand,
It was time to laugh, time to sing, time to join the band.
But all too soon, we hit the moon, and covered up the sky;
They built their bombs, and aimed their guns, and still I don't know why
The dominoes tumbled and big business roared;
Every night at six, they showed the pictures and counted up the score.
I know it's true, oh so true, 'cause I saw it on TV.
The old man rocks among his dreams, a prisoner of the porch;
The light," he saw at the end of the tunnel,
Was nothin' but a burglar's torch."
And them that was caught in the Cover are all rich and free,
But they chained my mind to an endless tomb
When they took my only son from me.
I know it's true, oh so true, 'cause I saw it on TV.
I know it's true, oh so true, 'cause I saw it on TV. | |
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pemsit
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Joined: 11/12/2006
Msg: 42 | |
| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/19/2007 9:06:06 PM | I was 13 y/o at the time, setting in Study Hall. We had just moved to Miami, FL. and I guess that a lot of people there wasn't happy with Kennedy due to the influx of Cubans into the area. I remember that they announced it over the PA and that some were clapping and cheering about it. Hatred is a learned process, when parents teach children to hate is the worst.
It brings to mind an old Indian talking to his grandson:
He said my child I have two wolves in my heart
One is full of hate
One is full of love
They are fighting to control me
The child asked grandfather which will win?
Grandfather told him the one I chose to feed! | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/27/2007 5:15:21 PM | I was in the sixth grade when another teacher came and told my teacher the news,
I remember the class and the sadness that came over us. Watching the news and seeing Jackie returning home from Dallas Texas in the blood stained suit she was wearing.The funeral was one that was different from any other president's funeral that I watched.
Who would have thought that five years later Bobby Kennedy would be assassinated. | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/28/2007 2:21:41 PM | Sophomore in high school - biology class, don't remember what I was doing - probably looking forward to school being over and going to the gas station across the road from school where the owner let us smoke.
Not sure it changed me - even at that age - I wasn't buying into all that "Camelot" hype and I really didn't think Jackie was as "beautiful" as the media tried to describe her.
I suppose it changed my life if Kennedy wouldn't have escalated Viet Nam like LBJ did.
They let us out of class and sent us down to the lunchroom to watch the TV reports.
I think I was too young and too naive and too small town for it to have changed my view of the world other than to think such a thing could really happen and not just be something read out of a history book.
Still have a hard time believing Oswald could accomplish what was said with a 20 dollar surplus bolt action rifle. If I recall some of the conspiracy theorists and debunkers - even so called "experts" couldn't jack 3 rounds off in the time LHO supposedly did it - and he was far from an "expert". | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 1/28/2007 3:10:23 PM | It has been interesting to read the comments regarding this day in our country's history. It is amazing that so many can remember exactly what they were doing at that moment in time.
tb | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 2/1/2007 5:15:18 PM | 9th grade health class. The announcement that something had "happened" but they weren't sure of exactly what was told to us by the teacher. We changed classes...I went to an English class and the announcement was made that the President was dead. I can remember the sad faces.
There has been people that wrote here about the Kennedy's not being perfect, and I would like to add a little footnote to that from a historical perspective. JFK caught the imagination of a nation. Granted, little was accomplished during his presidency, but the country prospered during his term of office, and he made bold moves to make sure the Soviet Union would stand down in many areas.
My other memory is that I also delivered newspapers in the afternoon, and the presses were held in order to report what had happened. The papers came very late emblazened with the headline KENNEDY ASSASSINATED.
Friday nights were when I had to go door to door on my paper route and collect for the week's delivery. I was 13. Everybody had their primitive black and white TV's on the only channels availabale. There was no cable then....and all 3 networks did nothing but report about the tragedy. People, generally very talkative and nice, were very somber that evening. They would pay their 30 cents for my deliveries....and look so sad.
What a terrible time that was. | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 2/1/2007 5:34:03 PM | Yes, I remember that I was wondering whether to start dinner and listening to the radio when the news came on. At the time, I'd been married less than two months. We'd moved up north and my husband was working out in the on the trans-Canada microwave communication system. I wondered if they'd let him come home or if he would have to stay at the site and make sure that vital (police, etc. ) communciations didn't go down. Most of all though, I wondered if America would ever be the same after his bright light was taken so early.
And, it seems to me that America changed in some essential way after his assasination. | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 2/15/2007 8:46:38 AM | | Oh yeah--I do remember--TV (B & W) was on, and Mom and I were watching the motorcade. Saw the whole thing. I do remember thinking (I was 5) if we were going to get another President! | |
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| November 22 1963,, The Day Camalot Ended
Posted: 2/15/2007 12:36:59 PM | | I was in HS English class. Everyone was called into the auditorium and told. What a sad, sad shock it was. Now, with everyone in school IMing, I guess gathering students into the auditorium would be anticlimatic. | |
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