The PA speaker came on and someone in the school office announced, “President Kennedy has been shot.
I had not heard the PA speaker come on during my first three months back at school. I didn’t even know the school had one. The statement was far more shocking and I am writing about it to the best of my ability without any of the knowledge and experience accumulated since that day 60 years ago.
Someone wheeled a television into the classroom. I didn’t know we had those in the school either, and we began watching the television coverage. Eventually, Walter Cronkite announced the time of death. Someone announced that we were being sent home early. No one could get any work done anyway. As we stood in the school parking lot waiting for our school buses, kids cried and chattered in that way people do when they face something so unexpected and don’t know what to say. One of the girls who was crying complained about another girl who wasn’t: “Nancy said she doesn’t care. ‘I’m a Republican,’ she said.” Then, the girl burst out crying again.
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