JFK and 22nd Nov

[DracoM]

Today anniversary of - and IIRC it was a Tuesday too - JFK assassination.

Any thoughts?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

couple of years ago went to Dealey Plaza and spooked myself at how intensely it came flooding back .... and how much smaller the place is than the memory from film and tv footage implied it was

it was a Friday

12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC) on Friday, November 22, 1963

wicki

[DracoM]

Yep, smallness of the place struck me too. AND how good the marksman must have been to get a shot in along that sweep.

I remember my brother standing outside the front door as I came in and smiling with disbelief as I came through the garden gate, so much so that I thought he was winding me up.

[PatrickOD]

Yes, it was a Friday. I was in Dublin that day, and along with half of O'Connell Street I watched the unbelievable news unfolding through a TV shop window on multiple screens. JFK was a saint in Ireland at that time.

[teamsaint]

its always a lone nutter....according to the authorities !!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It was definitely a Friday. I was at boarding school, and at the end of "prep" a boy in our form rushed in, very excited, shouting "President Kennedy's dead". I'm ashamed to say, he thought it was funny. He was from Malton, and I've been suspicious of anyone from Malton since that dark day.

[Anna]

The JFK shooting, to me, was the Oliver Stone movie, years later. 3 hours of it and now, I think, who were the Kennedys apart from Marilyn Monroe affairs and the Kennedy Curse? Should we mourn him?

[scottycelt]

We are all revealing our age here now (as if no one had previously guessed!) but at least I was not long out of short trousers at the time ..

I had arranged to visit the local library with my best friend next door and when he arrived at our house he broke the awful news so we immediately switched on our big, fat Bush TV ... needless to say we then never went near the library ...

Friday evening it must have been, as I don't recall ever visiting that library on a school weekday earlier.

[Lateralthinking1]

It was definitely a Friday. I remember thinking "I am eleven months old and this is my 49th Friday".

[teamsaint]

We are all revealing our age here now (as if no one had previously guessed!) but at least I was not long out of short trousers at the time ..

I had arranged to visit the local library with my best friend next door and when he arrived at our house he broke the awful news so we immediately switched on our big, fat Bush TV ... needless to say we then never went near the library ...

Friday evening it must have been, as I don't recall ever visiting that library on a school weekday earlier.

I wasn't out of nappies !!
but i took a keen interest in current affairs even then !

[scottycelt]

It was definitely a Friday. I remember thinking "I am eleven months old and this is my 49th Friday".

Aren't you a bit young to be on this Forum ... ?

[Lateralthinking1]

I am very advanced for my age. Always was. After launching the IBM System/360 from my push chair on 7 April 1964, I had significant but comparatively minor roles in the space programme and the Woodstock festival. Since then regrettably nothing much has happened. I admit to boredom more than anything else. It crushes creativity.

Incidentally, I always felt that his brother was the greater loss.

[Mandryka]

The JFK shooting, to me, was the Oliver Stone movie, years later. 3 hours of it and now, I think, who were the Kennedys apart from Marilyn Monroe affairs and the Kennedy Curse? Should we mourn him?

He was a seriously flawed man with a great PR machine behind him; and lots and lots of dollars.

I wasn't around at the time, but from what I've subsequently read, the world was probably the most frightening it had been post-1945 when Kennedy was in charge of the U.S. Don't believe me? Cold War at its most extreme, Bay Of Pigs, the beginnings of the Vietnam war and the Cuban Missile Crisis, during which several people committed suicide, so certain were they that the world was headed for nuclear war.

Can't help but think what the world might now be like if he'd survived to stand in '64? There is the very real possibility that he might have lost (even against Goldwater), unless Daddy bought him another election.

[Lateralthinking1]

I have always found LBJ to be a more interesting person. Obnoxious and corrupt for sure. Awful in foreign affairs. It would though be difficult to find someone other than him who has come halfway near to matching FDR in domestic policy. He wouldn't have been in with a chance had the shooting of JFK not happened.

[Mary Chambers]

I still have the programme for the performance I was at that night - Marguerite and Armand with Fonteyn and Nureyev at the Royal Opera House. It says 'Friday, 22nd November 1963' on the front. A boy we knew said in the interval that someone had told him Kennedy had been shot. We thought he must have been joking, but the boy said he didn't think he was. At the end of the interval (I think) Frederick Ashton came in front of the curtain and announced that Kennedy had been killed, and requested no applause for the next ballet, Macmillan's The Invitation. There was a shriek of shock from the audience. We then stood in silence for one minute. (I wrote all this down in pencil on the programme at the time.)

It was Benjamin Britten's fiftieth birthday, and there was a celebratory concert performance of Gloriana at the Royal Festival Hall, with Pears and Sylvia Fisher. The people there (of which I might easily have been one) also heard the news in the interval, but it was kept from Britten for as long as possible to avoid spoiling the party.

PS I was 23.