As we come creeping up on the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, those of us who were alive and remember that entire horrible event generally can tell you right where we were and what we were doing the moment we heard the news. My parents’ generation can tell you right where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor. These events seem to be indelible universal time stamps on our collective timelines, as Americans.
Many of us will never forget seeing the first lady crawl across that limousine or cradling the President in her arms. We wont forget the days that unfolded as we watched the presumed killer, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated by a small time hood, Jack Ruby, or the funeral itself. Who can forget the caisson or the riderless horse, or that tiny little boy saluting his father?
The Kennedy murder/assassination anniversary started some questions in my mind. What top 3 events in my lifetime have been the most notable, to me. Would other people agree? I don’t mean family events like graduations,, births, deaths, marriage, but events that occur outside one’s family. I have to ponder the third event.
What about you? What top 3 events stand out in your mind? Please share. Will we match? What three events, outside your family, stand out in your mind so you can tell where you were and what you were doing at the moment you learned of the event?
1. Kennedy assasination
2. Moon landing “One giant leap for mankind.”
3. Nixon resignation.
Oh yea, I almost foregot:
1. The Redskins win the Super Bowl
2. The Redskins win the Super Bowl.
3. The Redskins win the Super Bowl.
1. Kennedy assassination
2. Students killed at Kent State
3. Challenger explosion
The first news I remember was the collision of the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm.
I remember that! Holy cow. I don’t remember where it was even, just in the ocean. I remember asking a lot of questions.
1. The fall of Saigon
2. The day Old Yeller died in the movies
3. The day sarah Palin got the Republican nomination for Veep.
@BSinVA
That’s funny, because remember being almost in schock when I heard
about Palin. I mean, SARAH PALIN, next in line to become president of the United States of Amirica. McCain must have lost his marbles.
The one occasion that truly stirred me, was the assination of Bobby Kennedy. I was watching the show when the shot rang out, and the restaurant employee cradled his head in his lap. I cried like a baby. My daughter found me in tears and I told her:
“The future of America will be forever changed.”
Bobby had the trust of the blacks and the Latinos and, in spite of all the dastardly things he had done earlier in his life, at this time in America, he seemed like the only one who could unite us.
That year was horrible.
Pls excuse spelling mistakes.
1) JFK assassination
2) MLK/RFK assassination
3) John Lennon assassination
Many to choose from. 9/11 above all. Among the others:
1. JFK Assassination: I was alone deep in the African interior and knew nothing about it until informed by a local merchant who had a shortwave radio. I was in semi-shock. But some of the Africans around me were in tears. People forget how much Kennedy meant to those people in that era.
2. The fall of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Disbelief like that you will seldom see — including at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as official Washington was awakened in the early morning hours.
3. Pan Am 103 at Lockerbie. Our job was to try to protect those people, and we were beaten……but not for long.
1. Kennedy Assassination I was sitting in class. We thought it was a sick joke at first
2. I don’t know what you call it but when the POWs came home from Vietnam. I was home alone and sat in the floor and cried and cried.
3. 9-11 I was at a new location and was late for a meeting. someone came in from across the hall and said a small plane just hit World Trade Center.
1) Moon Landing
2) Challenger explosion
3) 9/11
I certainly could have added moon landing and Challenger explosion to my list. I really tossed that one around. 9/11 had to be there. I guess the POW return sort of culminated a turbulent time for my generation. Maybe the moon landing was the high water mark. But it definitely deserves mentioning. Odd, 2 of yours involved space. Do you like the film October Sky? It is one of my very favorites!
http://press.discovery.com/us/dsc/press-releases/2009/did-mob-kill-jfk/
My mother was working in the Garrison office in New Orleans when he did his JFK investigation.
She always thought that Oswald was the only shooter and that either the Cubans or the Mob were behind it because “those were the only ones that could keep their mouths shut.” And by Cubans..she means Cubans in America that felt betrayed. She had a number of Cuban friends.
And Marcello, the mob boss is reputed to have arranged for the killing. Ruby and Oswald had ties to him. The FBI was hopeless.
Per Wiki: After Kennedy’s assassination, the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated Marcello. They came to the conclusion that Marcello was not involved in the assassination. On the other hand, they also said that they, “… did not believe Carlos Marcello was a significant organized crime figure,” and that Marcello earned his living, “… as a tomato salesman and real estate investor.”
Really? EVERYONE knew who ran the mob.
Once I was grown I thought that Oswald did not act alone or of his own accord. I hate conspiracy theories but I think we forget how limited forensics was back in those days.
I don’t know who. I never gave it that much thought. I just don’t think Lee Harvey Oswald did it all by himself nor do I think that Jack Ruby loved JFK that much.
Just in terms of a lot happening in short period of time, and to cheat a bit by clustering like events, my perception of my America was most jolted by these events, all of which happened within a couple of years of each other:
MLK/RFK killings and the riots that followed MLK’s death (I had seen him preach at National Cathedral just a couple of weeks before). All this in a span of a couple of months.
public demonstrations against Viet Nam war leading up to and including Kent State;
Moon landings. (I was on a sailboat in the middle of a long crossing looking at the moon when that occurred. We were listening to reports from the moon on a scratchy radio in the cabin. I was pretty young, but impressed with the 18th century technology of what we were doing compared with the 20th century technology of what they were doing.
@Scout
Those events were of tremendous importance. Life in the US changed at that time.
Those murders ended an era, when a good future seemed possible.
Will there ever be another leader who can stir us, especially the young among us, with a statement like JFK’s:
“Ask not what the country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
@Moon-howler
After seeing and interview with Jack Ruby’s niece on “Sunday Morning” on CBS, I can believe that he DID like JFK that much.
Her father, Jack’s brother, had told her that Jack Ruby had hinted at something
he might do.
If you have a chance, do watch the “Sunday Morning” that played today.
I am watching Sunday Morning right now. Recorded.
I am sitting here in awe…average salary was just over $4300 a year. Bread 22 cents a loaf, gas was 30 cents a gallon. The Beatles hadn’t yet landed from across the pond and the land line only had push buttons in one area. (the week before)
I haven’t gotten to the Ruby niece part yet.
I have given this three important events business some thought. (for me…no one else)
I think that the Kennedy assassination and 9/11 are the two most important things that impacted me and that all the other things are so secondary.
The Kennedy assassination ended an era. What happened for the decade afterwards was actually horrible. All those assassinations and assassination attempts: All those civil rights activists, Lee Harvey Oswald, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK, George Wallace, Gerald Ford, Watergate, Vietnam, protests, Charlie Manson. What a violent decade!
Whether people like Kennedy’s politics or not, there was something about his speech and his words that united a nation. Remember also that people back then feared nuclear war and probably with good reason.
I remember once driving east from Virginia to my parents’ home in the Midwest. I was low on gas and decided to stop in that littly itty bit of West Virginia that spikes up around Wheeling. Gas was over 30 cents a gallon. I was appalled and determined to take the risk of going on a few more miles until I reached Ohio where, because of lower state taxes, the price of gasoline was more like two bits for a gallon.
Bill Flannagan said that the assassination of Kennedy marked when the WWII generation stopped thinking of themselves as young and became old.
They went from optimistic to cynical. The Kennedys were how the depression generation wanted to see themselves.
I had never thought of that before. The assassination drew a ploughline between my generation and that of my parents. As I said, it didn’t matter if you were a Kennedy supporter or not. It was the mood of the country.
@Scout
I think it was below 40 cents for a long time.
You really took a chance, Scout. There wasn’t much civilization along that route, was there?
The CBS Kennedy Sunday Morning is really the best I have seen so far. Somehow I hear Billy Joel in the background…We Didn’t Start the Fire.
I think I now understand why the death of Ted Kennedy hit me so hard. I wasn’t a big Teddy fan. Howevaaaa….
It really sent me reeling. It was the real end of an era and the end of an era of people my parents age. The end of a dynasty.
No family has really given so much to a nation in many respects.