November 22, 1963: A Day Remembered

President Kennedy (Photo credit by NASA.).

I'm sure that all who were around on November 22, 1963, and were old enough, will remember exactly where they were when they heard the awful news that our young president had been killed.

My husband and I were living in Hillsborough, NC with our 8 month old son, Michael, and I was teaching science and math at Orange Junior High School which was directly across from our house, and my husband was in graduate school at Duke.

 I had an accelerated group of eighth graders in class that afternoon when a student knocked on the door of my classroom.  She told me the principal said to tell everyone the President had been killed.  For just a second or two, I thought President? What President?   Then it dawned on me that she was talking about President Kennedy.  I went back into the classroom and told my eighth grade students.

School was dismissed, and I hurried home to my young baby, and soon my husband returned.  It seems that we did nothing but watch television for days during the coverage of the assassination--except we were at church when Oswald was killed.  But soon reruns of that were all over the newscasts. 

It was a sad time, and I have often wondered how different our country might be if Kennedy had lived.