November 2003

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Communication
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Yes, I remember. I was in school, in Mrs. B's fifth grade classroom, on that Friday afternoon. We had just come back from recess, and the speaker of the public address system was active, broadcasting something we didn't understand.

Mrs. B. flipped the switch to turn off the broadcast, thinking it had been turned on (in the school office) by accident, and that the principal was trying to listen to the local news on his radio while having a late lunch. All we had heard was that there was a news story breaking in Texas. No details.

Another teacher stepped into the classroom and said the broadcast was important. We couldn't reactivate the speaker on our own, so Mrs. B. sent me to the office to ask that our room's switch be reactivated there.

And then we heard the terrible news. The President was dead.

Much of what I remember of the day after that point is fragmented. I was too young to understand much at all of the politics of the situation---I had turned 10 the Friday before. What I do remember was the overwhelming sadness. I remember being with friends and relatives at our house, and all of us being very somber.

I remember things about the rest of that weekend, the one that ended on Monday with the burial at Arlington. I remember the lines of people waiting to pay respects. I remember learning and falling in love with the Navy Hymn (which I still love, by the way).

I remember Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot. I remember hearing Walter Cronkite's voice on the television. I remember feeling sorry for those two little children who had lost their daddy---it had been a whole six years and two weeks since I had lost mine.

Mainly, I remember the sadness.