“Where Were You When You Heard JFK Was Assassinated?”

Fifty years ago today our world stopped spinning, if only for a heartbeat.

The news of President Kennedy's death swept across our pre-CNN nation like a lightening bolt.  A slow lighting bolt to be sure, but it was an unforgettable shock wave. Walter Cronkite broke into a soap opera on television to give the "official word" of the tragedy unfolding in Dallas.  "Uncle Walter" remained steely and professional as he told the stunned nation that our young president had been shot while riding in a motorcade.

Factories stopped, schools let out, people gathered around strangers' car radios, churches and synagogues started to slowly fill up, streets emptied.

I was 13 years old at the time. And I was a presidential nut.  They would probably call me a geek in today's parlance.  I loved the history of our presidents and in fact had little statues of them all lining my book shelf in my bedroom.  Including one of John F. Kennedy.  We got the awful word at school and we walked home.  Our young heads swimming with unknowns:  Who killed him?  Was this the end of the world?  Are the Russians on their way?  Sounds trite, but those were real thoughts crowding the minds of 13-year olds everywhere.

When I got to my home at 69 West Main Street in Sidney I walked in to total silence, except for the sound of "Uncle Walter" on the television set.  I came down the long hallway and turned in to our living room.

My Dad was in one chair with his bloody meat coat on.  I had never seen him home in the afternoon before.  He was butchering steaks and chops down at our market when my Mom called him to come home.  He never changed out of his butcher's coat.  He was crying.

My Mom was standing in the back of the room.  Unlike June Cleaver and Donna Reed this wife and mother of 8 was not dressed in pearls and high heels.  She was in slacks and a print blouse and her hair was in some sort of net holding some sort of hair rollers. She was crying.

There were three men whom I had never seen before sitting at the edge of the room in workman's clothes.  My parents were having new kitchen cabinets put into our house that morning and these three workers, in overalls and ball caps, were there when Mom's soap opera was jarringly interrupted.  They came into the room to watch.  I never knew their names.  They were also had tears in their eyes..

The president was dead and everybody was crying.  I was in shock.  I ran upstairs and came back down with my little statue of President Kennedy and put it on top of the television set.  I sat down in front of the TV set and stayed there for three days.  I slept on the couch.  I watched it all, from the Zapruder film to Oswald's live murder by Jack Ruby to the riderless horse in the funeral procession.

Yes, time stopped on November 22, 1963 at 1:30 p.m.  If only for a heartbeat.

I still have that little statue of President Kennedy.

Where were you when you heard that our president was killed fifty years ago today?

This is what my mother saw at 1:40 pm on 11-22-1963 while watching her soap opera. Note that there is only audio and no visual initially.  That is because, unbelievably, in those days television cameras actually need time to warm up before going on the air!

Take a look.