The moment?
I was in the fifth grade, with that teacher my mom tangled with later on I mentioned in the other threads. We were at lunch on that Black Friday and the teachers that were monitoring the lunchroom were very quiet and was disturbed by something. My friend Eddie came up and said that the president has been shot in Dallas. The buzz around that table was of that.
We finished our lunch and went out to the playground to play. We did play as normally kids do would and were not at the time conscience of the gravity of the situation. About 15 minutes later we saw other students and teachers start to gather around the fl->-bleeped-<-ole. We all stopped playing and ran to the fl->-bleeped-<-ole to see what the todo was about. The school color guard came out and the principal told them to bring it down half way. That's when the female teachers started crying. We were sent to our classes and then to the common meeting rooms and saw the coverage on TV. We were sent home about 1 hour earlier than usual.
That weekend?
That Saturday I did not remember much except no cartoons because both TV and radio was still covering everything continously until Late that Monday. It was probably that indelible thing I saw that Sunday.
Sunday, still looking for cartoons early that morning but saw the coverage from the White House of JFK's stuff being moved out to a truck van in the rain. The rocking chair with the presidential seal and the large model of the Mercury spacecraft that John Glenn flew in to usher my interest in science, mainly the space program and astronomy to this day. The coverage of that ended with more droning from the newsmen and then abruptly changed to coverage inside of the basement of the Dallas Police Department building. The reporter droned on and then the action around the elevator increased as with the voice of the reporter. I then looked up at the TV and the police detective in the light coat was escorting Oswald out and towards the police wagon. The rest happened so quickly that I was at first oblivious of what happened.
I watched as the flurry of activity was occuring. I saw someone come toward Oswald and heard a shot and saw Oswald disappear as he fell to the ground almost taking the detective with him. I heard all kinds of stuff I remember to this day and one of them was "Son of a bitch" by someone involved in the fracas. A lot of the live audio nuances did not make it on the recordings due to the poorer quality of the recording devices back then. I found out later when one of the first glossy coffee table books of the JFK assassination came out and that a detective, not Leavelle, actually said "Jack Ruby, you son of a bitch!". Jack Ruby was well known by the DPD as the nightclub owner that gave police officers discounts and free passes to his establishment. He was well known in that building and was a familiar fixture, so he went unnoticed.
The funeral.
This was on Monday. I remember the horse drawn carriage going down to Arlington cemetary and the drummers and that same drum cadence along the way that I still remember. The 21 gun salute, the "Missing man" flyover, and the folded coffin flag given to Jackie, the new widow. The flags were held at half staff for a month afterward. The schools were closed the 3 school days leading up to Thanksgiving afterward.
Continued.
Joelene