Originally Posted by Don3218
I remember very little; I was in first grade and we were sent home. I knew that the president had been assassinated, but I didn't know who he was or what that meant. My mother, through her tears, told me. I also remember seeing non-stop coverage on our B/W TV that seemed to last forever. I somehow knew that this was monumental news, but I didn't have anything in my life to compare it to, so I never really understood until much later how important this was.
Me too, Don. I was a kindergartener then; my entire family went around the house crying for what seemed like days, and there was, of course, the continuous TV coverage in grainy black and white. I remember asking "When is the 'Mickey Mouse Club' (then in syndication) coming back on? Where are my cartoons?" I also remember the funeral procession, the riderless horse, the playing of the funeral march, and then John-John (who was even littler than I) saluting his father's casket.
That was when I sort of 'got it'......that little boy had lost his daddy.
Barely a week later, however, four of my sister's closest friends were killed in a car accident---one of them had been a teacher's aide for my class---and THAT affected me far more directly. I remember feeling like the world was coming to an end because I'd never seen my sister so out of control emotionally; she literally cried until she threw up. I tried to comfort her, but she just pushed me away and told me to leave her alone; I didn't know, until many years later, that
she had missed being killed in the same wreck because our parents decided to go out that night and left her to babysit me.
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