This is the kind of day that requires one to cough up a memory. It used to be that you could ask anyone that you met, “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” And you would get an answer. It was the most common cultural milestone.
Now, however, it is rarer and rarer — 40 years, and a whole generation has grown up since the milestone.
But where was I? I was in second grade, sitting at my tiny desk in Mrs. Halvordsen’s room. Suddenly, somebody’s mother (I don’t know whose) burst through the door and said, “The president’s been shot!”
The girl behind me started to cry — not at the (possible) loss of the president, but from fear that the killer would travel all the way from Dallas to Cincinnati and kill us too.
She has her master’s degree now. Still lives with her mother, though.
The rest of my related memories involve television — especially watching Mrs. Kennedy with her children at the funeral parade, and little John-John doing his salute.
white pebble 