Late 1963 was a time far removed from what we know today. On one hand it was a more innocent time. On the other, it was a time of extreme worry about being annihilated from some leader having one vodka too many. On this date in 1963 I was a third grader. Little did I know how different my life would be over the coming three days and the following year. Our school consisted of 7 classrooms and a couple janitor closets used as the offices, carved out of a very old junior high school. A musty monument of steel, asbestos floor tiles, and granite; to the turn of the century. It was somewhere around 2 pm EST when the intercom came on. Yes this sounded just like the intercom in Peanuts. To this day I think the teachers and administration speak code. Much like the Apache and Sioux Nations code talkers from WWII. It sounds muffled to kids but the teachers know what is being said. Our teacher left the room, returning visibly shaken.
We were told to leave the room. Now usually when it was an emergency test, a siren would ring then we would go to the mezzanine level overlooking the gym We would bend over, stick our head in our ass, and hope we did not see a bright flash of light or an earth shattering kaboom. No, this time we went into the commons area. Where a TV set was set up. This was a 19inch black and white TV. Television in 1963 was not what it is today, at best it would be considered a toddler. There were no 24 hour news channels; it would be almost 20 years before the boom in cable TV. There was no streaming live video, Al Gore had not invented the internet yet (that’s a joke son, a joke). In our town of 75,000 people we had one TV station. It was a NBC affiliate so every night we watch Chet Huntley and David Brinkley give the news (usually smoking as they did) for all of 15 minutes. That and the Today Show was all the news NBC had at the time. If TV was a toddler then TV news was an infant.
So we sat there, cross legged on the floor, wondering what was going on. A couple teachers were sobbing. Except for that, it was an eerie silence. There was no sound coming from the Jr High areas. No class change bells were ringing. The Principal turned the TV on. After a short period time a talking head came on. To this day I don’t know who it was. But they were confirming that “…at approximately 12:30 pm CST today, President Kennedy was shot in Dallas.” I was only 9 years old at the time with no idea the impact this would have over the rest of my life. But I knew this was a horrible event. The rest of the time sitting on floor is a haze. Various people on TV blabbing away. The reported chaos as the reporters scrambled to get information. Remote live TV reporting was pretty much a newborn.
We sat there waiting for our buses. Yes I was bussed to a school for segregation purposes. You couldn’t have maybe 35 white kids going to an all-black school, even in Northwest Ohio, in 1963. The neighborhood kids were released early. But our bus driver, a hellfire and brimstone Baptist preacher, was also in the Guard. So he went to the Armory. With the school bus. So we sat. Watching the reports on TV. Some conflicting. Some flat out wrong. Our Principal told us they were trying to reach our parents to see if someone could pick us up. Again 1963. Most of us who had phones were on party lines. I got to sit cross legged on the floor, waiting for someone to get me, when it was announced that the acting press secretary would make an announcement. That announcement was John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, was dead.
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