Where Were You?

    This Sunday marks the 46^th year since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, in downtown Dallas. It was a day that marked the end of the mostly tranquil American lifestyle of the post-Korean War.

    If you are a Baby Boomer, it is one of those days, along with Sept. 11, 2001, that will always be remembered.

    I was a 16-year-old junior on the Friday afternoon and was sitting in English class having just returned from lunch break when someone in the hallway said that President Kennedy had been shot.

    As my classmates murmured about the report, Mrs. Abbey, our English teacher, who did not believe what she had heard, said, “This is nothing to joke about.”

    About 15 minutes later, our principal, H.C. Morehead, announced over the school’s intercom that the president had been shot and killed. There was a complete silence in the room.

    Minutes later, word came quietly that classes were to be dismissed, all extracurricular activities (including our football game that evening against our traditional rival Austin High) would be cancelled and students were to go home.

    As the events unfolded over the weekend, with the killing of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald by nightclub owner Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas Police Department, young teen-age Americans began to lose their innocence.

    Where were you when this all happened?

    By the way, I think Oswald was a lone gunman who had been hired by the mob to kill Kennedy because JFK had been messing around with Marilyn Monroe.