The day JFK was shot

I was 11 years old and in the sixth grade. There was an announcement over the intercom in our classroom from the principal saying that the President had been shot in Dallas. I remember feeling stunned, sort of confused, not knowing how to feel or what to think. After a while they put a radio station on the p.a. tuned to the news, and after a short time the announcement came: Kennedy had died.

It seemed so unbelievable. I was too young to have had much experience with death, and this seemed very overwhelming. I remember tearing up out of fear and sadness, and one of my classmates coming over to me and saying it was okay, that he felt like crying too.

This was a moment I, like many who were alive then, will never forget. Looking back it seems like the beginning of the end for a certain innocence, for myself and for our nation. It seems incredibly naive to say that now, knowing what we know about politicians, including Kennedy, but that was what it felt like.

Has it really been 42 years? The chaos and turmoil of the following decades is a blur, but this day, this moment stands out. The cynicism and anger that I feel at times now was not at all a part of me then. But it was starting to take root. I could feel that something was changing in and around me. And those changes are being felt still.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Bob Dylan