I was in 8th grade.
Mr. Sellier—my homeroom teacher, a diminutive, horn-rimmed glassed, Spanish teacher—told us this: “The President’s been shot.” When I walked out of the school (having been dismissed early) I saw the flag at half-mast. The President was dead.
I’ll never forget that flag.
I was new to my northern NJ town and I was slated to go on my very first sleep-over! It was exciting…so exciting I went. JFK or not. At Patty B’s house we gathered, around a 12″ black and white TV in the kitchen. Her mom, a blue-eyed redheaded deep South mom, served dinner. I remember the yellow Jello with pineapple. It was novel. It was great.
She suggested I call home. These were uncertain times.
My mother was glad beyond measure. Where was I exactly? She’d let me go (no exact address, no phone number) thinking all would be well. What else would she have thought? That the worst that could happen would? She drove over and picked me up. I went home.
We went to our church (the largest nave in town) for the town-wide memorial service. I remember my mother’s nails digging into my arm as we sang. There must have been 1200+ people there. Scared almost to death. Where was the future? What did it look like? What did this mean? Why?
“Oh God Our Help In Ages Past, Our hope for years to come. Our Shelter from the Stormy Blasts. And Our Eternal Home.”
While 9/11 may be the great divide for many, this death, the death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is my “where were you?” defining moment. It was grief unadorned. It was fear.
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