I was in first grade but home from school because I had pneumonia. Mom took me to the local clinic where we got a prescription for penicillin. We got home and Mom turned on the TV and we got the initial reports of the Kennedy assassination. I recall everyone being sad, and news coverage being on 24-7, something very rare in those days when tv stations usually signed off after the late shows ended around midnight.
The Kennedy Assassination
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
July 20, 1969
First Moon Landing
There was a neighborhood block party, at a neighbor’s with a pool, lots of great summer food and I got to stay up late to watch the landing.
The Kennedy assassination, (John’s) was mine also, although I do have a vague recollection of my parents being concerned the year before about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The moon landing.
The election of JFK. I remember sitting in front of the TV with my Mom and Dad, staunch Republicans and a bit intolerant of Catholicism, as they lamented the returns showing a much closer election than they had expected. I was sent to bed long before the result was clinched by the call of Illinois for Kennedy, but I remember my Mom being quite unhappy the next morning as I got ready for school. (First grade.) I was two months away from my seventh birthday.
I remember the Detroit riots.
I barely remember the Apollo missions of the late 1960s. The Kent State shootings happened when I was six and I only remember that being mentioned by my mom.
The Israeli Olympic hostages in 1972, Nixon’s reelection and on New Year’s Eve 1972 the sad accidental death of Roberto Clemente are the three big news stories I recall when they happened.
Apollo 1 command module fire.
I just turned 9 years old, 10 days prior to the moon landing. Our family was glued to the black and white images.
My brand new pea-soup green Sting Ray with banana seat, sat inside the garage.
On the morning of the 21st I went out to ride my new bike.
Gone. All gone. Bummer. :>(
We lived on Eastern ave. in Grand Rapids Michigan. The moom landing was a perfect night for hoodlums to steal bikes.
As far as the night before..I was mystified at the thought of a man on the moon. What a night.
Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. I was in third grade, and like most school kids we were all watching the Shuttle takeoff. It was a Catholic school, and we were in a music class taught by a nun. When the Challenger exploded I remember silence like we were all confused, and then the nun coming up to the front of the class to turn off the teacher and then leading us in prayer for the astronauts.
*turn off the TV.
the 1940 Republican Convention gallery chants, “We want Wilkie.” Later, Pearl Harbor–I was out for a Sunday drive with my Uncle and Grandmother. 1944: VJ day in Hollywood (I was 14).
I have vague memories of the Vietnam War and of the later (post-1970) moon missions, but I’d say the first news events I remeber in detail and made an effort to follow were the 1972 Olympics (including the massacre) and presidential campaign (lots of Nixon Now signs). My third grade teacher, that school year, used a lesson about telephones and a question about wiretaps to explain what this deal called “Watergate” was…
The union striking against, and failing to bring down, The Dow Chemical Company.
Man on the Moon My Canadian classmate and I had just come home from the beach with her older sister, Sun burned and tired we watched it on TV with her father and mom. We stayed up past midnight which was a bid deal.. The JFK assasination was announced over the PA system in the afternoon religion class. Many girls were sobbing and the nun tried to establish a sense of calm. I don’t think we were let out early though.
Speaking of teachers, the 3rd grade teacher I mentioned changed her name halfway through the year. She did it the old fashoioned way by getting married during Christmas break (from Miss H to Mrs. B). I googled her married name and it appears she’s alive and well in another state, and still married to the same guy, which means they just had their 50th anniversary.
I remember the Vietnam vets coming home and being shamed, scorned and called vicious names. My husband was one of them.
CAG: I too remember the Detroit riots as I had just graduated high school and got a job with Traveler’s Insurance in downtown Detroit, having to take the bus from Highland Park. The National Guard was stationed at every street corner. It was terrifying.
I remember seeing newsreels on TV of soviet tanks in Hungary during the revolt. That would be 1956. Also, I remember going to Idlewild [now JFK] Airport when my uncle came home from the Korean War.
I remember seeing newsreels on TV of soviet tanks in Hungary during the revolt. That would be 1956.
Speaking of teachers, the 3rd grade teacher I mentioned changed her name halfway through the year.
The teacher’s aide assigned to my third grade class left when she landed a term position at the Rochester Museum and Science Center, then apparently decamped to her home town in an exurb of Hartford where she remained for the next 30-odd years working where I don’t know. She married a divorcé in 1979 (< 3 months after his 1st marriage was dissolved), produced a child two years later, then sued him for divorce the year after that (being granted custody of the child; in fairness, that man was sued for divorce three times over a period of 11 years). She married another divorcé in 1986, a local businessman 11 years her senior with two children ages 17 and 20; this marriage also ended in divorce. She married a third time in 1996 to a lawyer who had sued his wife of 23 years for divorce four years earlier; he had several children as well, all college age. They are apparently still married, so evidently the strategy of chasing Jewish divorcés finally paid off for her. They’ve now retired to The Villages, Fl. Her son is a physics professor in Toronto. No clue where he came by his brains; his mother was superficially amiable, nothing more. She’s never used any of her married names, which I suppose has kept the paperwork down; her son also uses her maiden name in preference to his father’s.