Today is Wednesday, November 22, 2023.
If you were alive on Friday, November 22, 1963 — and were over, say, 5 years old — you understand how dramatically, and traumatically, America shifted that day.
If you weren’t, there is no way you can comprehend it.
The murder of President Kennedy was a horrific, galvanizing moment in time. It happened 60 years ago today, but I remember it like it was yesterday.
I was in 5th grade. Since September my friends and I had walked to and from school. We gathered on High Point Road, cut through the Staples High School athletic fields and parking lot, sauntered down North Avenue, walked across open farmland, and arrived at Burr Farms Elementary.
We were like the “Stand By Me” boys: talking about kid stuff, reveling in our independence, figuring out each other and the world, in a world that would soon mightily change.
Minutes before school ended that beautiful Friday, the teacher from next door burst into our room. “Kennedy got killed!” she yelled. A girl broke into spontaneous applause. Her father was a leading Republican in town.
Our teacher slapped her face.
Usually, our teacher wished us a happy weekend. That day the bell rang, and we just left. No one knew how to interpret her reaction. We’d never seen a teacher hit a student before.
Then again, we’d never heard of our president being murdered.
As my friends and I gathered for our ritual walk home, we suddenly had Something Big to talk about. For the first time in our lives, we discussed news. We had no details, but already we sensed that the world we knew would never be the same.
That vague feeling was confirmed the moment we walked down the exit road, into the Staples parking lot. School had been out for an hour, but clots of students huddled around cars, listening to radios. Girls sobbed — boys, too. Their arms were wrapped around each other, literally clinging together for support. I’d never seen one teenager cry. Now there were dozens.
At home, I turned on the television. Black-and-white images mirrored the scene at Staples a few minutes earlier. Newscasters struggled to contain their emotions; men and women interviewed in the street could not.
The president was dead. Now it was true. I saw it on TV.
Walter Cronkite on CBS, announcing the death of President Kennedy.
My best friend, Glenn, slept over that night. The television was on constantly. The longer I watched, the more devastated I became.
John F. Kennedy was the first president I knew. My father had taken me to a campaign rally in Bridgeport 3 years earlier. I could not articulate it then, but I admired JFK’s energy, was inspired by his youthfulness, and vowed to grow up and (like him) make a difference.
Now he was dead.
Bill Mauldin captured the grief of a nation.
Saturday was rainy and blustery. I watched more TV. Like most Americans, I was obsessed by this unfolding tragedy. Like them too I had no idea that the impact of that weekend would remain, seared in my brain and heart, 6 decades later.
Sunday was the first day I cried. The raw emotions of all the adults around — in the streets of Westport, and on the television screen — finally overwhelmed me. I cried for the dead president, my fallen hero; for his widow and children; for everyone else who looked so sad and vulnerable.
Then — right after noon — Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald. Once again I sat transfixed by the TV. I was stunned, and scared.
Monday was a brilliant fall day. President Kennedy was laid to rest under a crisp, cloudless sky. The unforgettably moving ceremony was watched by virtually everyone in the world with access to a television.
To my everlasting regret, I did not see it live. Glenn said we could not sit inside on a day off from school. Rather than risk being called a nerd (or whatever word we used in 1963), I chose playing touch football at Staples over watching history. I was in 5th grade. What did I know?
The coffin, at Arlington National Cemetery.
The next day we went back to school. The Staples parking lot looked exactly as it had before that fateful Friday. Our teacher never said a word about slapping the girl who cheered President Kennedy’s assassination.
Thanksgiving arrived on schedule 2 days later. At our dinner — like every other table in America — the adults tried to steer the conversation away from the awful events that had consumed us for nearly a week.
In the days and months to come — as the country slowly, painfully, pulled itself out of its collective, overwhelming grief — I devoured everything about President Kennedy I could find. I saved Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post. I ordered the Warren Commission report. Like so many others I still have it all, somewhere.
In the years that followed, my admiration for the young, slain president grew, then ebbed. But it never died. He remained my political hero: the first president I ever knew, cared about, was mesmerized by, and mourned.
When President Kennedy was killed, journalist Mary McGrory said, “We’ll never laugh again.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan — who worked for JFK — replied, “Mary, we will laugh again. But we will never be young again.”
Sixty years ago this morning, I was a young 5th grader without a care in the world.
Walking home that afternoon, I could never not care again.
I was 17 when Kennedy was assassinated. Like Dan, everyone remembers exactly what they were doing when they heard the shocking news. JFK, RFK, MLK- tough decade.
Like everyone else commenting so far, I was in school in California so we got the news just as we were entering third period. I was in High School looking forward to my art class. After hearing the news confirmed on by the Prinicpal we all just got up from our desks and walked out. I can’t even remember if we were told to do that, it just seemed as if we all stood up and silently walked out in unison. Weekend of nonstop TV watching through Sunday morning’s Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald. A weekend, and week following the aftermath, the Funeral Cortège and the salute to his father’s casket by JFK, Jr.
Well done, Dan. I forgot that President Kennedy was killed on November 22 until I opened your article…but, I’ve never forgotten the grief and flood of emotions that I (and the nation) experienced upon learning of his assassination! Your article brought back those moments in time when I learned of his death. His murder represented a permanent loss of innocence for me, and opened my eyes to how imperfect this world actually was. I was hoping that more than 50 years of “social advancement” following his death had evolved our species to a “higher plane.” However, political strife, a resurgence of antisemitism, the commonplace occurrence of school shootings leads me to believe that his death was just a forecast of the future.
I remember it well, sadly. Despite being in 3rd grade, I couldn’t help but wonder – why did Ruby kill Oswald? Over the years, I have been fascinated by the writings of Mark Lane, George Michael Evica (who also had a radio broadcast) and Jefferson Morley, to name a few. When I was on a work assignment in Dallas, I visited the 6th Floor exhibit and toured the infamous grassy knoll area with an interesting character. For those who enjoy podcasts, there’s a captivating one available now by Rob Reiner & Soledad O’brien – “Who Killed JFK?” Happy Thanksgiving, Dan & readers!
I was in the hallway at Burr Farms Elementary between classes and there were teachers crying and a general sense of confusion. We had practiced getting under our desks in the case of a nuclear attack and the Nike site was so close… but that wasn’t it and the next few weeks were consumed with the tragedy.
The following year when our World Book Encyclopedia annual addition came out with the very intense photos of the actual murder I was transfixed and have never forgotten the horror.
Your post is beautiful- bitter sweet, actually. I was in 11th grade sitting in a room behind the Staples Auditorium with Craig Matheson and a small circle of students when the news came in on the, rarely used PA system. We were truly struck
silent by the horrifying news. This was very likely the first deeply
sad news of my young life.
A few years later I happened to be walking on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, I do not remember why. When I read of Robert Kennedy’s assassination as I passed an old fashioned news stand. Once again, I was struck dumb. I had been a devoted follower of Bobby’s (not so true of his rather odd son). I still believe, deeply, that we might well have not just a different, but a better world if Bobby had lived.
Joey Kaempfer, Staples 1965
I was playing touch football as a sophomore in college in front of our dorm when a girl ran up and said “The Presidents been shot!” We went to church that afternoon to pray for the family then like many millions witnessed the following events on tv for the next few days. It was a Signal event in our young lives.
I was 17 and a senior at Holyoke High School in Holyoke,Massachusetts. it was between the 5th and 6th period when a classmate asked if the rumor of the shooting was true. nobody knew. At the beginning of the 6th period Modern European History class, the teacher confirmed that the President had been shot. That young teacher was Jack Remlin who was brought up in Westport and spoke of it often.
And all these years later, reading this article brings tears!
rob Reiner has a multi part pod cast. Reiner has spoken with and interviewed many experts Reiner concludes the murder is a conspiracy. Even Joe Biden refused to declassify information on the murder. The truth may be too uncomfortable for the USA citizens.
Heartbreak all over again and 60 years ago! This is my most vivid Westport memory by far. Towers over Compo, library, Westlake, Big Top, etc. It was a mass trauma event and changed all of us forever. Even as young as some of us were.
I remember early dismissal as a wee girl in Miss Huck’s class at Bedford Elementary. No bus service or missed bus service? and we had to walk home and we lived on Richmondville Ave at the time. Not quite 6 years old. The teachers were solemn and teary. Our Principal was stern and stoic. And I walked home some with friends, some alone as they took various directions to their houses. I felt small, and scared with just a cardigan sweater to wear and thankfully it was a warmer day. I passed my favorite places, the Merritt Superette and Coffee and Donut shoppe. I got home as my parents arrived. They both worked. And they were relieved to see me. I still don’t know what happened to my bus. My sister somehow got it. Will always remain a mystery to me.
I didn’t understand anything other than my parents in the kitchen, the tv on, and they were teary and sad and in shock. It was global mass shock. I remember loving this President and his First Lady. We were a Kennedy house. He stood for all people of all races and creeds, as did his brother Bobby. My father would talk to his students about Kennedy and some of the republican parents would strongly object. He got in trouble back in his teaching days.
But had Kennedy lived, and had his brother Bobby lived I believe our world would be vastly different now. His ideals for this country and its people could have saved us so much trouble in the right ways.
Then we were traumatized all over again by Ruby shooting Oswald on live TV! How can small children absorb that let alone our parents. My dad watched the news all night and watched both murders over and over again.
I will never forget Westport and this event. They are tied together. My connection and love for jFK played out later in my life as my best friend in NYC and roommate for many years worked for Jackie O at the publishing house we worked amfor. I met her and spoke with her many times. And in my mind, I always asked with reverence, how did you survive that violent end of your husband. How do you go on? But I never asked.
And the vast difference now in the crazy times we live in sadly, is that our strong Kennedy household regularly broke bread and were friends with staunch Republicans in Westport. Sadly, that seems impossible now.
Thank you for this Dan. Beautifully written. I remember being in PE class at Miller Junior High. They actually brought a tv into the gym. This was an all girls school and it was profound with everyone in shock and crying. I do believe everyone remembers where they were when it happened.
I guess I’m a bit older than most of you. I was a young housewife waiting for my baby to wake up from his nap. The phone rang, and it was my husband telling me that the President had been shot. I raced to the TV and watched Walter Cronkheit giving us the news of JFK’s death. I sat glued to the TV all weekend.
Reading Dan’s article brought tears to my eyes. Sixty years later, the shock and pain comes back. I often wonder what the world would be like now had he lived.
Great piece Dan! I remember it all too well. I think being made to hide under our wooden desks in the event of a nuclear attack (for extra kindling?), might have been a turning point during the Cuban missile crisis even before the assassination. Kennedy stared down the end of the world (like some sort of western hero saying “make my day”), is part of what made him mythic. There was that comedy album about the Kennedy’s too that was a runaway hit. The Kennedy’s were young and seemed to be a hopeful promise for America’s future.
We are of course the same age, and I can remember the somber bus ride home from Bedford Elementary school (now town hall), and the long weekend, Jack Ruby, the adults crying, the horse drawn funeral processional, and Jackie and the young children in black vividly.
I was developing a distrust in authority even as a fifth grader, simply because reality didn’t match what we were being told. I began suspecting that maybe authority was for authority’s benefit, and not mine. That turned out to be a healthy instinct in my case.
Thank you, Dan.
So beautifully and wonderfully expressed for us. It brings tears to my eyes. I am older than most remembering here. I was 23 years old and working in Hartford for the Girl Scouts. The staff was in a meeting at the time. When we came out of the meeting, we heard the news and we were all devastated and in shock. I was scheduled to go to a troop meeting in Hartford right after school was over. I remember driving to that group of young girls and their leaders. We were all devastated, even the 5th graders. We stood in a circle. We hugged. Many of us cried. and then we dismissed the group to go home. President Kennedy’s youth and vitality was an inspiration to my age group. So much was lost that day. I went back to Westport for the weekend and to a Television as I did not have one in my apartment in Hartford. I felt like life would never be the same again and in many ways it hasn’t. Again, Thank you Dan for your words and giving us all a chance to share.
I was working at Time Inc. I had just learned that I was pregnant. For me, it was a day of celebratory joy. Then the news announced the death of Kennedy and the entire trajectory changed. All at Time Inc. went into shock mode. And my thought was that the child I would bring into the world nine months later would grow to understand the world in such a different way from how we knew it.
My daughter, now grown, understands the impact of it all, but she, and those born after this horrific event, cannot feel it as
we who viscerally mourned our collective loss on that November Friday.
Dan, your breathtaking and bittersweet words were exquisitely expressed as you brought us back to that day that is indelibly etched into our minds forever.
Beautifully written. I worked in DC at that time and I too remember the incredible sadness we all experienced. A true horror show for the ages.
I was born the very next day. My parents were going to name me Christopher, but instead, in honor of our fallen president, they named me John.
Thank you Danny!!
Your comments, your remembrance of that terrible day still are engraved in my mind and heart as a 6th grader at Assumption School. When Mother Superior came over the intercom and announced that President Kennedy had been shot we were all stunned in disbelief. But when she announced that he had died my entire class dropped to our knees and started to pray. Those moments like your moments will live with me forever.
Thank you for your words my friend, they mean so much.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving. God Bless All of Us!!
A beautiful commentary, Dan, as always. I went to work in DC that year as a young secretary at Dept. of Labor. It was one of the most devastating days of my life. For those who were not yet born, it’s a fact of history. For many of us it was an historical moment only equaled by 9/11.
Thank you for your heart felt thoughts of this tragic day. The similarities of girl brainwashed to cheer at JFK’ murder and Republicans today who would cheer at Biden’s death is what they have become.. win at all costs. Support a sociopath and put up with congressman Santos. We must all vote to try to get back to normal.
thank you Peter.
I remember it well. I was a new mother and had one child 2 and a baby 3 weeks old. I wondered what was going to happen to the United States and if my children would be living in a free country.
It was a terrible sad time for all and a scary time wondering how it would affect the future. I still wonder what this country would be like if JFK had not been killed.
Tom Feeley
I was an Infantry Platoon Leader, 3rd Infantry Division, drinking with my buddies in the Officers Club near Wurtzburg, Germany.
The Officer of the Day strode into the bar wearing his hat “covered.” He was therefore packing a loaded .45-caliber Colt automatic (wearing a hat in an officers club, unless armed, is such an etiquette breach that the offender must buy the bar a round).
He pointed at the bartender: “Close the bar.”
He turned to us: “Red Alert.”
This lieutenant was our drinking buddy, so we thought it was a joke and started laughing.
He looked us dead on: “I’m not kidding…
THE PRESIDENT HAS BEEN SHOT! THIS BAR IS CLOSED! RED ALERT!”
At the motor pool, my four APCs (Armored Personnel Carriers) already had “Live ammo on board, SIR!” and we roared into the forest to begin our advance to pre-selected defensive positions near the East German border.
We sweated ‘till dawn awaiting the probable Russian attack; doubtful we could hold, even if we used our (then TOP SECRET) battlefield nuclear weapons…yeah, we were ready…you were safe.
I was in high school in Pennsylvania. One of the football players said, “On boy, we’ll get Monday off.” He was a good player and from that time on I never cheered for him again. Thank you for this memory. “Little Caroline” is now one of my heroines.
I obviously was not alive, but this assassination definitely had an impact on those born after; at least with my generation it did.
Mr. Kirk, Mrs. Burmeister, & Dr. Bianco we’re my teachers in middle school. They emphasized greatly that this was the most recent successful attempt to assassinate a standing president (Reagan being more recent but unsuccessful).
“A U.S. president was murdered.” Silence roared with the humming of the air vent above. It had been 38 years by the time I was fully taught it in great detail.
It was taught in such a way as if it had just occurred. The trauma but distain towards an individual existing to killing someone who zero connection to in such a cowardly but violent way. The lesson still ripples with me to the point where I am always intrigued to ask questions but follow it to this day among many other dark days in America.
Jackie watched her husband leave this earth without being able to say I love you or goodbye. He knew he was in trouble before she did—by the time she did, it was too late. She stayed with his body the entire time, still wearing her blood soaked dress even as Johnson was sworn into office on the tarmac of Air Force One with Kennedy’s body stowed.
What baffles me the most about this incident, Lee Harvey Oswald’s true motive, but Jack Ruby assassinating him—and five years later the assassination of Robert Kennedy . I do not know if declassifying the information will solve anything, but it is still mystery and unsolved in my opinion.
I was a 4th grader in Catholic elementary school. My desk was in the first row because we were seated alphabetically. Our teacher, a nun, had left the room briefly (rare) and returned looking shaken (also rare). She stood next to my desk and announced the terrible news to the class and said that we would be dismissed early. Since my sister and I walked to school each day, we walked home. How the kids who took busses got home remains a mystery to me. And I don’t know how parents learned that their kids were headed home early – there was no way to let them know back then. Once home, I watched TV as details emerged and the world reeled. Like others who have commented here, Kennedy was the first president I’d had any awareness of. Two particularly strong memories remain with me to this day – the rhythm of the drumbeats that accompanied the funeral procession, and the team of horses that pulled the president’s coffin through the streets as legions of onlookers cried. Rum, puh-puh-puh-pum, puh-puh-puh-pum, then 9 more puhs and a pum.
I must add to these comments If for no other reason than to thank you Dan for your moving recollections of that tragic day.
I was a brand new computer programmer working at Equitable Life on Sixth Avenue and living on Washington Square in a (roach-infested but sexy) apartment. When the company closed, I went back to Brooklyn to grieve with my parents.
P.S. In a year and a half, I will celebrate 50 years living in the same house in Westport.
A nicely crafted piece, Dan.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I was in 3rd grade,Hurlbutt Elementary School, Weston,that day..The one memory I’ve always had of that day: walking home from the bus stop ,to our (then) oddly empty house: I then went next door, to sit with our neighbor & her elderly mother; I then felt (some) safer with them,watching their TV,as the rest of the world, that awful day.
Perfectly written piece for a day of infamy!
And- Thanks for sharing your memories!
I was half way through med school. During a lab course a proctor came in with news that Kennedy had been shot while in Dallas. Everyone was in shock, some cried. We all waited around until it was announced the President had died. I think a little bit of everyone died that day- our innocence.
The original flag draped over JFK’s coffin during the funeral procession is on display for one day, today, at the JFK Library.
For those in the bubble, the museum is in Boston.
Boston? Is that near the Greens Farms train station?
Greens Farms? Being totally transparent, i couldn’t tell ya. Never heard of the place? Is that where faux CFO’s have their offices?
No, we are downtown. its near a river called the Saugatuck. Surely you’ve heard of that.
Saugatuck MI? Of course, lovely part of the country.
‘Internet’ CFO’s need offices?
I was on 42nd St in NYC on my way back to work in the Pan Am building. Traffic was stopped, people were out of their cars walking around talking and gesturing in disbelief, hanging out alongside cars with their radios blasting. It makes me cry to this day.
I was in 9th grade at Bedford Jr. High. I think it was in Mr. Carmody’s Social Studies Class. I remember walking home from the bus stop alone and feeling bewildered. I spent most of the weekend glued to the TV except we went to Saugatuck Cong. Church on Sunday morning. We got home and turned on the TV just as Oswald was being shot.
I have been to Dallas and the grassy knoll and the building where Oswald fired the shots.
The whole thing is a moment frozen in time.
I was in the Air Force, stationed at a gulf coast Mississippi base. I was browsing in a store when I got the news. Like everyone else, I was rooted to the spot. I had recently gone through a lockdown alert for the Cuban missile crisis and didn’t know what to expect.
In the days that followed, we heard some commentary that I recall vividly after reading about the cheering Westport child: a local grade school teacher told her students that president Kennedy had been shot, then lamented that “probably they’ll try to make a martyr of him.” Reflective of politics in the deep south of the 1960s, and perhaps of today as well.
I was in third grade at Burr Farms, and I add the measles or something like that and did not go to school that day. I was playing outside in the front yard on Morningside Lane in the middle of the day. The Catholic School on the street walked home early and told me Kennedy had been killed. I can not say I understood the uniqueness or significance of it at that very moment.
Also, was watching on TV when Oswald was shot.
A very well-articulated piece, Dan. Thank you for sharing. I am very impressed by the people who remember what class they were in at the time. I have no idea. I was at Long Lots Junior High and the news came to us over the PA system. I mostly remember spending days watching TV and Walter Cronkite’s announcement. As Bonnie said, it was a moment frozen in time. We’ll never forget.
Outstanding , Dan – thank you
Thank you for sharing this. I’m 87, so I remember it well.
Dan, Thank you for sharing. I was only 6 months old, but I was five when Robert was shot and knew I had to tell my dad that my morning cartoons were interrupted by a breaking story. I went to alert my father that JFK had been shot (in 1968). It became an often repeated family story that brought a little humor to the two tragedies.
I was 10 and in 6th grade. We were told that there was a ‘drill’ and we all filed to the basement of the old but solidly built brick school, were told to sit on the floor with our knees up, something we had practiced before called air raid drills. Why air raid drills in elementary school in 1963? Our school was in the shadow of Idlewild Airport (now JFK) and there was a fear that our area would be under nuclear attack and that this international airport would be one of the first things taken out.
For the first hour or so after the shooting announcement, while we huddled in the basement, there was total confusion about whether Johnson had been shot, as well, and who would step in next, and, were we under attack, and, would President Kennedy live. About an hour or so, maybe two hours later, when JFK’s death had finally been announced and that Johnson would be sworn in and we were not under possible nuclear attack, we were put on buses to go home. My mother met me at the bus stop, something she rarely did since it was only about a block away from our home, and she was crying. I think it was the first time I ever saw her cry.
When I hear about children today practicing ‘active shooter’ drills, I am always reminded of the fear we had as little kids about being blown up, and really feel empathy for ours kids.
I was still living in my native Denmark at that time. I was staying with my aunt in Copenhagen, we were watching TV when the first bulletin came on, the regular programming returned and then some time later (it was around 8 p.m. in Denmark) the awful news. I’ll never forget my aunt’s outburst “my God the shot him”. That weekend I went to my parents house 30 miles from Copenhagen. Saturday night I went to a small jazz club with some friends about 10 miles from my parents house. All we listened to the music and danced some we talked about the assissination, we were 18-20 years old, born at the end or WWll, this was the first of other shocking assissinations my generation experiences.
That weekend my parents, and most Danes did what the Americans did, sat glued to the TV and grieved with Jackie and the Kennedy family. My dad was a great admirer of Kennedy, he liked his wit and intterlect.
A little more than 4 years later I arrived in Westport as an au pair, and would spend the next 1 year and 9 month in Westport.
Dan: Thanks for this. I was 13, at home at the time, 5 Maple Grove Avenue,when my mother burst in the house with “Kennedy’s been shot!” Took me a minute to discern that it was not Paul Kennedy (a friend of my sister Lindy’s) who lived up Imperial Avenue near Miggs and Tracy Burroughs, but the President.
A few minutes later a kid from our the street, whose father was a local banker, BSA scout master (Troop 36), and big deal town Republican, was twirling on our rope swing and gleefully proclaiming his family’s joy that “the Republicans will have a better chance next year”.
I started the only fight I ever have in my life by punching him out, and severing forever my relationship with BSA.
I have read the various published versions of the “Warren Report” and am to this day outraged and insulted by the absurd theory of its conclusions, which are as a matter of law, false.
Lord, what fools these mortals be.
Excellent commentary! Thank you.
As a Catholic, JFK established that we we were finally fully part of the American dream.