Dare I ask where you were when you heard the news?

[marthe]

This is how Erich Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony Orchestra responded to the news of JFK's assassination. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVNKNz-lc6k WGBH, the local PBS TV station, broadcast this. Later there was a performance of the Mozart Requiem at the RC cathedral in Boston. This was also televised. I remember watching both with my father. SHB thank you for the clip of RFK's funeral and burial. This happpened the weekend I graduated from high school in June 1968. I'll always remember that train making its way from New York to Washington; how the tracks were lined with mourners the entire distance.

[Stillhomewardbound]

The journey which should have lasted four hours took eight and the burial didn't finally take place until after 10pm.

There were brake issues on the carriage bearing RFK's casket and then the terrible tragedy of a small group of mourners who were on the tracks to watch the train pass by but were struck by a freight train coming in the opposite direction.

To watch the extract of Teddy Kennedy's eulogy is heart rending, his voice breaking almost in the midst of his desolation.

On my one visit to New York many years later I awoke in my hotel room just across from the Lincoln Centre and turned on the television on which a sombre Dan Rather was intoning ' ... No clear details at this stage. Their light aircraft departed yesterday evening ... '.

I turned to my wife and said this is something serious.

That was the death of President Kennedy's son, known as John-John and his wife and sister-in-law, when they had been en route to attend a family wedding at Martha's Vineyard.

Rarely has one family been so enfolded in tragedy.

[LeMartinPecheur]

I was 9 and living with my parents in an army base in W Germany. I was tucked up in bed when parents heard the news at a drinks party they were at. Breakfast the next day was memorable though I didn't understand much - just dimly realised that something very big had happened. Of course, the next day I did pick up that JFK was a very good, as well as very important, man.

Pity that I can't believe that quite so easily these days now that it's reasonably clear that he was in the pocket of some very bad men ...

[Stanley Stewart]

Quite sobering to realise that 50 years ago, tonight, I was playing in a repertory theatre production of NoelCoward's "Hay Fever" in an ultra-modern setting with a streamlined television, prominently placed downstage, sound turned down. The thing I remember was an unexpected gasp from the audience as a ripple went through the auditorium - they were seeing probably the first footage of the assassination and, of course, we could not control the off-switch - no remote control then - but I quickly made an audible hiss to the prompt corner and it seemed an eternity before the picture faded! Not many laughs for the rest of the performance. Unfortunate and unforgettable and an apology was made during the interval.

[gradus]

I was watching Tonight when the news broke - at least that is my memory of it.

[pastoralguy]

I was only 9 months old so have no memory of the event. However, our minister had arranged to meet my parents that night to discuss my Christening but cancelled in order to open his church for those who needed guidance at that terrible time. The appointment was never re- scheduled and I remain un-Christened to this day...

Does anyone have an opinion re. Oliver Stones's film 'JFK'? I have to say it made a huge impression on me.

[Petrushka]

I was only 9 months old so have no memory of the event. However, our minister had arranged to meet my parents that night to discuss my Christening but cancelled in order to open his church for those who needed guidance at that terrible time. The appointment was never re- scheduled and I remain un-Christened to this day...

Does anyone have an opinion re. Oliver Stones's film 'JFK'? I have to say it made a huge impression on me.

I've just watched an ITV documentary originally shown on November 14 called The Day Kennedy Died and it was more gripping than any Hollywood movie. One for the archive, I think.

[jayne lee wilson]

We were on holiday near Troutbeck in the Lake District, a caravan. I told my Dad that the radio news reporter had said of Kennedy "he was also a very good friend of mine"... Dad asked me "was he a very good friend of yours too?" 7 years old, I stopped and thought... ... ... "yes", I said.

[Bax-of-Delights]

I was 16 and was studying Robert Bolt's A Man For All Seasons for A level. There was an amateur production at Coloma Convent School in Croydon and the English study group from our school had been taken along. I can't remember if the production was stopped - I'm almost sure it wasn't - but an announcement was made, I think, at the final curtain.

If JFK had lived on I suspect that very little of subsequent history would have changed in terms of Civil Rights in America and the Vietnam war.

[alycidon]

As a young man of twenty, I was in the choir room at Horfield Baptist Church, Bristol, where someone gave the news while we were waiting for the start of choir practice - it was a Friday evening.

Reading the previous posts, it is clear that the shock of someone famous dying suddenly engenders a disbelief so great that the perception is that it must be a joke. At the time of the death of Princess Di, we were running a guest house, and as people came down to breakfast I, obviously, conveyed the sad news to them. The reaction then was, he's joking - and general disbelief.

There must be something in the human psyche which causes disbelief at these events, because the mind simply doesn't want to accept that the thing has happened.

[Hornspieler]

Some very interersting information here.

I now know how old most of you are. That throws a new light on your messages.

HS

[alycidon]

Some very interersting information here.

I now know how old most of you are. That throws a new light on your messages.

HS

I don't think that any one of us is coy about our age, HS, and as you say, it does tend to justify and put into perspective some of the daft things that we write. We are amongst friends, aren't we?

[Karafan]

In my boarding school houseroom doing Prep. The house captain burst in with "An announcement I have to make: President Kennedy has been assassinated, it has just been announced on the radio". Everybody reporting in on a chat show this morning was speaking of tears, shock, and hours of frozen communication. I don't remember tears, (seem improbable here in the UK), I do the shock, though.

The tears weren't that improbable in the UK, SA. My elder brother vividly recalls people crying on the streets of Bradford during that early evening, as the news broke.