Some say this was when "the 60s" began and gave rise to the social and musical movements that included the Stones.

While I have lots of personal, dark, morbid memories of that day and those that followed emblazoned into my memory forever, I prefer to think of something quite powerful and a little more hopeful that I just read today:

This country changed forever on that day. When we tried to pick up the pieces in 1968 and move forward, again we were body slammed. After that we just became numb. We consoled ourselves with material things, and passing time. Now we are awakened once again. This time, God help us, we will not be denied our due.


So, any memories or thoughts?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2008-11-22 20:31 by timbernardis.

My parents were big JFK supporters, so, consequently, I thought of him as one of my first heroes. In this day and age, when the President is on the TV addressing the nation, most people say, "yeah, big deal, what ELSE is on?" In the early 60s, though, a Presidential address on TV meant EVERYTHING STOPPED. Guess it was just the nature of things then, with the Cold War, anxiety left over from the Cuban Missle Crisis, etc.

I was in the third grade on 11/22/63, in Virginia. We came off the playground, and the normal procedure was to take a rest room break and then finish the afternoon in the classroom. This day, however, our teacher made us sit down. Mrs. Stone told us that a terrible thing had happened....President Kennedy had gone to Dallas to make a speech, and had been shot (I remember immediately having a visual image of the man actually giving a speech at a podium and suddenly collapsing mid sentence). She said that there was a radio on in the principal's office (funny, I can still remember what that radio sounded like down the hall), that we did not know yet what his condition was, we would have to wait and see, hope for the best, etc.

We took our rest room break, and I was standing in the doorway of our classroom with our teacher. A first grade teacher (oddly enough, my wife's first grade teacher....she was two years younger, and we did not meet until high school) walked up and simply said, "He's dead."

I remember the rest of the day being sort of upside down. My dad and I had planned on going to the local YMCA to do some swimming in their indoor pool, and we followed through on that plan immediately after school. Great big pool, and there were only three people there.....me, my dad, and the lifeguard. Swimming in dead silence with only the sound of a little bit of splashing, no conversation, just a feeling of being stunned.

Went to bed that night scared....it seemed like everything was wrong.

My dad was a minister, so we were always the last people to leave the church on Sundays. Consequently, two days later, my mom and I were upstairs changing out of our Sunday clothes when my dad came charging up the steps yelling "they shot Oswald! They shot Oswald!" I am the only person I know who was alive then and did not see it live.

A quick side story. When I was getting my Masters, I had an Associate professor who was in the Army at that time, stationed in Korea. Because of the time difference, it was breakfast time over there. In the US, we had no idea, of course, that we had just ramped up to the highest possible military alert immediately after JFK had been shot (could have been an invasion, or God knows what). He said they were going through the chow line, getting their oatmeal, in FULL BATTLE GEAR, with rifles, bayonets attached and unsheathed, in their hands. They were ready to go.

I visited the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas this past June.
I would recommend visiting this museum to anyone spending any time in the Dallas - Ft. Worth area.

[www.jfk.org]

The link above is for the museum.
The "collections" page has video and pictures of that fateful day.

I was 9 years when this happend, still remember it, although I don't think I knew who he was.
When I came home from playing outside (rolling skating) my mother was in tears and told me that the predident of the USA was killed...............

__________________________




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-11-22 19:35 by NICOS.

That cerainly is a dark day burned into our memories.
I was 13. I learned about it in French class over the intercom.
I remember one girl in class saying "I'm glad he's dead"...strange, huh?
I also remember falling asleep that night in my room and I had left my
coat hanging on the door. I woke up, it was still dark but that coat
hanging on the door looked like Abraham Lincoln....really weird!

I certainly hope and pray you are right and that we will not be denied again.
I'm hopeful and I think we are poised to make a lot of progress.

Marv Peck

Y'all remember that rubber legged boy

I'm reading a book called "I heard you paint houses" by Charles Brandt and Frank Sheeran.

Sheeran was a high level gangster and a Teamsters Union official as well as a close friend of Jimmy Hoffa.

Sheeran apparently is one of the guys who killed Hoffa. He also believes he transported a rifle used to kill JFK (without being told what it was, or for, and he knew not to ask).

A fascinating read and insightful account of the labor movement and the Mafia's corruption of it!

Scorsese is doing a film version with DeNiro.

i have long thought that jfk's public murder and the shock and depression in it's aftermath was, to some large or small extent, some of the basis for the enormously overwhelming hysteria of beatlemania, as those guys broke in the states right about the same time and arrived to pandemonium in nyc (now jfk airport, r.i.p. President Kennedy) feb '64, just two or so months afterwards.

surely teens of the forties screamed for frankie and all that yes. but my feeling is the first year or two of brit invasion bands were part of the venting process from all that stunned grief in society that kids of 10, 12 (and older folks too of course) could not quite deal with just from the funerals and honors. sad to think that little john john is gone too; and his uncle robert.
oooh, still painful all this

'i shouted out who killed the kennedys....'

I was 11 yrs old at the time, they announced it over the PA system in the public school I went to; sent everybody home.
To this day I still think there was more than one gunman but that is another topic.

Too soon gone.

I was 8 years old. Living in Holland in those days, the American president was some sort of hero. The Americans liberated us from the Germans after a 5 years war, taht only ended in 1945. That was the general opinion in those days. Kennedy was a very popular president. Being a child I could only admire him. That morning when I woke up, my father came into my bedroom, telling me they murdered Kennedy. I can still remember that I was thinking ... murdered ... how can that be ... such a big strong guy. In my childish mind murdered meant that somebody put his hands around his throat and smothered him. It was only later during the day that I found out he was shot. Yes, it was very big news in Holland then, day after day on television and in newspapers and magazines. I will never forget.

-------------------
Keep On Rolling

I was in first grade. I remember after school, I was in the playground climbing on the monkey bars while we waited for our school bus. An older boy asked me if I had heard about what had happened to President Kennedy. "No... what?" I answered. He said, "He was shot dead."

When I got home, my mother was in tears. She found a small American flag in the closet, and removed it from its mast. Then she stapled it back on the stick halfway down.

OK, since we are sharing memories here at this point in the thread anyway ...

I was age 6, in the first grade at Sacred Heart Grammar (elementary) School in old east Sacramento. Almost all of the teachers were Irish Catholic nuns, Sisters of Mercy and natives of Ireland.

So, obviously among the students and teachers, and Irish priests of the parish, he was highly regarded.

My recall is that in the afternoon someone came into class or something and said the president was shot or killed, forget which exactly. A good friend of mine all thru school, now having joined JFK in those who have left us, remembered us as being told "the president is sick."

In any event, all the classes went to the gymn to pray. Don't remember much more from that day, but over the next few days, we were constantly watching television. I remember the plane bearing his casket flying in from Dallas to DC, the unloading of the coffin from the plane (Andrews AF Base??), Jacqueline accompanying him all the way.

The huge newspaper headlines in the Sacramento Bee, and more TV. Oswald gunned down. The lying in state in the rotunda of the capitol while huge crowds of mourners filed past, and then the Kennedy family -- Jackie, Caroline (the only one still alive today) and John John (John Jr.).

Jackie in her widower's thin black veil going down over her face.

The day of the funeral, the caisson and honor guard. Whenever I see a flag draped American coffin today, my mind alway goes to and associates that with Kennedy. The crowds and the silence. The procession to Arlington. And the drums, oh lord the drums, that cadence and that specific drum beat, over and over and over, seared into my mind forever, can still hear it today.

The graveside at Arlington, John John saluting his father's casket, and eventually the flame, the ever eternal flame.

I can remember that soon after, the entire first grade class and I suppose many others all had to write a condolence card to Caroline. Dear Caroline ... I am very sorry about your father. He was a great man ....



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2008-11-23 04:28 by timbernardis.

tv memory:
"Hail To The Chief" (which I had never heard before)
played as a slow, death march during the procession to the cemetery.

oh yes, I always associate that with JFK, but dont remember the slow version. I remember being told that he really liked the song.


p

1:08 in this clip has a scene I'll never forget:

As far as i remember, Olive Stone's theory is that people in the CIA killed Kennedy because he intended to get out of Vietnam. That's the theory that seems most plausible to me.

i think it came from a lot of places that were pissed off at the kennedys.
certain elements of the military were pissed that about the bay of pigs thing in cuba, which they wanted to continue to escalate...maybe ringo's point about nam is part of the equation too, i dunno. definetly part of the equation imo was the mob as they were intensely outraged and intensely pissed at bobby, who as attorney general was going after the mob guys furiously...the mob felt blackmailed as a lot of them had helped in the '60 election in various ways, and joe kennedy sr. had a good working relationship with them for many years when he was distributing whiskey during prohibition...
the stories i've heard about the chief mafiosi guy being encouraged to hit bobby because of all the fed prosecutions...his response, supposedly, was something about cutting off the 'head' of the snake and not the tail...
i'd say the mob were in on it bigtime, but someone higher up in american military or intelligence (either renegades of shadow govt. stuff) must've been involved in some way (imo) as the motorcade route was changed at the last minute and a lot of other stuff...hate talking about this excuse me...just wanted to share some of what i've been told and stuff i've kinda investigated about this. we were sent home from school and then watched four days of televsision in a row; every aspect about the flight back with the body, the oswald thing, including a LIVE on-air shooting of oswald by ruby...the funeral processions etc...
it affected every child in the country pretty dramatically i think.
there was weeping and mourning everywhere among the grownups.
it was traumatic.

I was 13 and in 8th grade, at Eastmont Junior High in East Los Angeles. I remember a girl named Betty Goldstein coming in to Mr. Thompson's math class to tell him something. She was crying. He had a shocked look and proceeded to announce to us that President Kennedy had been shot and killed. It was a real shock to many of us. Over the next 4 or 5 days I was riveted to the TV (black and white), as was my family, watching the whole thing unfold before our eyes, including the shooting of Oswald by Jack Ruby. I can still vividly remember the drum cadence as the funeral procession went down Pennsylvania Avenue in DC.

Whether one believes in conspiracies, second shooters or whatever, it was historic high drama and we watched it live. A very sad and shocking day in U.S. history.

Earlier this year I was finally able to visit Arlington National Cemetery and see his and his brother's graves. I had to pause there and try to comprehend the unforgettable events that transpired there.

20 years ago I was in Dallas and visited Dealey Plaza and the grassy knoll. It certainly seemed smaller that it had appeared on television.

Quote
Rolling Hansie
I was 8 years old. Living in Holland in those days, the American president was some sort of hero. The Americans liberated us from the Germans after a 5 years war, taht only ended in 1945.

In the interests of historical accuracy Rolling Hansie, it was mostly the Canadians that liberated Holland.

LBJ's henchmen were responsible...I'm convinced after seeing an LBJ bio on PBS. He never wanted to be anything BUT #1 and he was as crooked as hell!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-11-23 00:24 by knockyourteethout.

I was 8, in 3rd grade, in school, the announcement was made by my teacher, that he was assassinated, At first I didn't know what it meant, I thought he received a big award or something, then when I realized how sad everyone was, reality set in.

knockyourteethout said,

"LBJ's henchmen were responsible..."

Wow, thanks for educating me. I always understood that it was Castro who was responsible . . . .or was it the CIA . . . . . or the Mafia . . . . . .or maybe it was bigfoot . . . .



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-11-23 00:48 by DaveG.

Quote
DaveG
"LBJ's henchmen were responsible..."

Wow, thanks for educating me. I always understood that it was Castro who was responsible . . . .or was it the CIA . . . . . or the Mafia . . . . . .or maybe it was bigfoot . . . .

Who else had a better reason than LBJ (who by the way still had many connections in Texas). He fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident just to win the presidency, the sailors who were aboard the vessel that night have went on record to back this up. Think about it.

Quote
DaveG
"LBJ's henchmen were responsible..."

Wow, thanks for educating me. I always understood that it was Castro who was responsible . . . .or was it the CIA . . . . . or the Mafia . . . . . .or maybe it was bigfoot . . . .

No, it was you and me. Any Stones fan should know that!

My opinion alway's was/is that it got to do with the ammunition industry, because that was/is big business

__________________________

Tippy Toe, you're right! How could I have missed that??

Great post!

Quote
NICOS
My opinion alway's was/is that it got to do with the ammunition industry, because that was/is big business

TippyToe......think you are right forget that one

__________________________

Either HelterSkelter/MicksBrain is using all his willpower to not comment...
or...
he hasn't read this thread yet

Read Gerald Posner's Case Closed or better yet
Vincent Bugliosi's REclaiming History wich put an end
to all the conspiracy nuts. Oswald did it,
and as the title suggests, case closed.

just corrected my half sentence above. What I meant to say was


My recall is that in the afternoon someone came into class or something and said the president was shot or killed, forget which exactly. A good friend of mine all thru school, now having joined JFK in those who have left us, remembered us as being told "the president is sick."

9th grade. teacher told us to turn on our transister radios (which we weren't supposed to have). but we all listened as best we could on those radios. then to go home and see another guy get shot right in front of us (oswald). unbelievalbe times.

then came the beatles and the stones...and life changed.