Where were you when you heard the news about Kennedy?
This is the question people a little older than me can answer easily. I have only vague memories of the announcement. My best friend and I were giggling when her father hushed us. He was listening to the news broadcast which said President John F. Kennedy had been shot.
That was 1963. The family suffered a second assassination five years later when John’s younger brother Robert was killed.
The third brother, Edward (Teddy) died today.
Advertisement
We were having breakfast when when the NZBC broadcast that John had been shot dead in Dallas. I can’t remember what we were doing when the news came through about Robert in 1968. The oldest brother, Joe, was killed when the bomber he was piloting crashed during experimental trials during WW2.
I have only vague memories of the announcement. My best friend and I were giggling when her father hushed us. He was listening to the news broadcast which said President John F. Kennedy had been shot.
You obviously remember it though – so it had an impact, it stuck
I had been living upcountry and decided to visit my parents that weekend.
When I got home my mother was standing still in the kitchen.. something I’d never seen.. and then she turned and looked at me with wide eyes and said “President Kennedy has been shot”.. and then she turned away with one of her Irish looks and muttered something about “The bastards”.
JC
Andrei – good point. What I meant was that although I remember, I was too young to understand its significance.
JC: My Dad, of distinct Irish-Catholic descent, once he got over the shock, said pretty much the same thing as your mother. ‘The bastards.’ In later years I was never able to get out of him who he meant. At the time I thought he meant the Russians, because of the Lee Harvey Oswald connection.
I remember that it was a bright and sunny morning, in deepest, darkest Pahiatua.
I was at secondary school in North London, in my early teens and rehearsing for the shcool play when the announcement came