• The Roadster Factory Recovery Fund - Friends, as you may have heard, The Roadster Factory, a respected British Car Parts business in PA, suffered a total loss in a fire on Christmas Day. Read about it, discuss or ask questions >> HERE. The Triumph Register of America is sponsoring a fund raiser to help TRF get back on their feet. If you can help, vist >> their GoFundMe page.
  • Hey there Guest!
    If you enjoy BCF and find our forum a useful resource, if you appreciate not having ads pop up all over the place and you want to ensure we can stay online - Please consider supporting with an "optional" low-cost annual subscription.
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this UGLY banner)
Tips
Tips

November 22

NutmegCT

Great Pumpkin
Gold
Offline
I was in social studies class at Paschal High School, Fort Worth, Texas. It was 1963, my sophomore year.

Around noon, the PA speaker system beeped, and our principal, Charles Berry, said he was connecting all classrooms to a local radio broadcast.

Shots had been heard as the president's motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository building in Dallas.

And from that moment, my life, and lives of millions of others, were changed forever. A man was killed; his wife was now a widow; two children lost their father.

Tom M.

JFK.jpg
 

Jim_Stevens

Jedi Warrior
Gold
Country flag
Offline
Yup, no one alive that day will ever forget. Like you, I was at school. First or second grade in Detroit.
 

Madflyer

Jedi Knight
Country flag
Offline
I was in aircraft school on that day Sacramento CA, Life as we knew it stopped. Those of us of a certain age have days that we will remember, the good, the bad, and the history of those days. It is not always what we have lost but how we lost it. Madflyer
 

PAUL161

Great Pumpkin
Silver
Country flag
Offline
Being slightly older than most here, I remember it well, I was 25 years old working a construction job in Atlantic City New Jersey. We shut the job down and went home, didn't work the following day either. It was not only sad, it was shocking to many, it brought a realization that we as Americans are vulnerable to outside forces, and when Bobby was killed, it just made matters worse. Forget it?, no you can't forget something like that, tragedy's just seem to follow the whole Kennedy family, like all the men were jinxed.
 

Basil

Administrator
Staff member
Boss
Offline
I was 9 years old - home with the flu when the news came on. 9 years later, to the day, I enlisted.
 

Popeye

Darth Vader
Silver
Country flag
Offline
same here.

I would love to hear more from folks who remembered the events; I was not even a proverbial figment in my parent's imagination in 1963.

Such an interesting time, such a crazy event. I can't think of another recent decade with so many significant (horrible) assassinations? (JFK and MLK being at the top of the list.) Significant political events, good and bad: Cuban missile crisis, Civil Rights Act, Apollo, and Vietnam come to mind. We could learn so much from history - avoid repeating mistakes, improve our future successes. Realizing that of course times change; and events change us. The 1960's was 20 years after WW2, and memories were fading and times changing. Imagine the US government asking to spend the equivalent of 17% GDP over the next 20 years to create a nationwide transport system. Today, we might not be so excited. In 1956 we got the interstate highway system.

Bring on the history!
 

Bob McElwee

Jedi Warrior
Gold
Country flag
Offline
I was stationed at Ft Hood, TX. Three things stick in my mind these many years later - 1. a young Pvt from the south said 'Good'! (we quickly let him know that was not an appropriate reaction), 2. The formation a couple of days later when we were told the Commander in Chief had been assassinated (?), 3. the reaction of a Michigan soldier when Oswald was shot -he had been glued to the TV coverage since it happened and he just went off on Texas and the Dallas police to no end.
Referencing the Cuban missile crisis, we watched the entire 1st Armored Division get shipped off to south Florida, 2nd AD was restricted to post, 4th Army personnel were not restricted to post, sticker on car said Ft Hood only and not your division, Ft Hood was an open post, 1st night, em club, 2nd night, coffee in Killeen, TX outside the post, 3rd night (weekend) off to Temple, TX to have some beer, never was questioned at all but the economy of Killeen and Temple took a hit from no GI's coming around.
 
Country flag
Offline
I didn't enter the world until 2 weeks later. I certainly came into a different world than my parents had envisioned 9 months earlier.
 
Country flag
Offline
I remember it, but being only 6 at the time the significance of it didn't register. I just knew we were out of school. The one set of images I still have in my mind is later when he was moved from the White House to the Capitol to lie in state. Having seen the video later in life not upgraded to HD standards it's amazing how little detail was actually in it.
 

Gliderman8

Great Pumpkin
Country flag
Offline
Those were indeed strange times. I was 12 years old and in junior high school. That day I happened to be in the school library and the librarian was in her office and had a radio on. I heard the news when it came over her radio; shortly after that it was announced on the school PA system.
A couple of days later I witnessed Oswald getting shot on live TV by Jack Ruby. As a 12 year old kid it was terrifying so see someone get shot (not that its any better as an adult either).
 

DrEntropy

Great Pumpkin
Platinum
Country flag
Offline
I was thirteen. The weekend before, we had begun digging the footer for my dad's two-car garage. That Friday in school we were dismissed from class, told the news and as I sat on a sidewalk curb my math teacher, Myron Petruska, came and sat down beside me. We talked of the gravity of the event and what it could mean going forward. Saturday and Sunday I was swinging a pick on the trench, periodically going into the house to see developments on TV. Sunday I heard dad shout and ran into the house to see the chaos the few seconds after Ruby had shot the assassin. Sobering time in our lives. And a brutal foreshadowing of things to come.
 
OP
NutmegCT

NutmegCT

Great Pumpkin
Gold
Offline
I would love to hear more from folks who remembered the events; I was not even a proverbial figment in my parent's imagination in 1963. ...

Bring on the history!

Agree! The history, and what we personally experienced!

:encouragement:
 

JFS

Jedi Warrior
Bronze
Country flag
Offline
I was student teaching a junior English class in Redwood Falls, MN. We were discussing Thornton Wilder's Our Town when the PA announced that President Kennedy had been shot. No warning. Just the stark announcement. I was dumbfounded. The class went completely quiet for a time that seemed much longer than it really was. We shared thoughts and questions but that was not the time to stick to the lesson plan. Without any further information, however, we did try to get back to some kind of normalcy.
 

Madflyer

Jedi Knight
Country flag
Offline
As many years have past since that day Remember walk 50. people all over California people were doing it. It would never happen today! Country first join the Army, Sugar cubes Remember. Can any one go without a cell phone for a day if the President asked you to ?? The death on John did not take us to this day we did it on our own. My job while in college min wage .50 an HR. Gas station closing at night $2.00 HR gas .35c a gal and then gas wars .29 c gal. The only thing not lost is our memory's Madflyer
 

pdplot

Yoda
Country flag
Offline
I was 30 years old on that day and was walking from my office to Goody's Restaurant (long gone) in downtown Stamford. As I was about to enter the restaurant, a man came out and told me that the President had just been shot. I sat at the counter and the whole place was numb. I only remember 5 days from history. Pearl Harbor Day, 1941- we took a ride in my dad's 1939 Pontiac and was on the floor listening to the radio The day President Roosevelt died I was in 6th grade at Springdale School; VJ Day when Japan surrendered - playing a pinball machine on our screen porch; when Kennedy was shot and 9/11 when I was going out to play golf on our local course. I don't remember VE Day - I might have been in school - I'll have to look up the date.
 
OP
NutmegCT

NutmegCT

Great Pumpkin
Gold
Offline
Paul - where were you on May 7 or 8?

Germany's surrender was rumored all over the world on May 7; officially announced on May 8. Here's the Hartford Courant on that day -

Courant V-E Day.jpg

And no matter where the troops were back then, they often found this:

kilroyw.png

(I'd almost completely forgotten Kilroy ...)
 

Popeye

Darth Vader
Silver
Country flag
Offline
Thanks everyone. It is great to hear the personal stories. History books discuss the big picture, which, of course, is important. But I am fascinated by the small details in our lives. For this reason I love historical photographs, for example. They show details beyond the smiling faces - perhaps a leaky window in the background, the ornate type of wallpaper we used to have, sweat on the brow of a worker, etc. The details that matter. When we lived in Pittsburgh two years ago, the Carnegie Museum had a Teenie Harris exhibition, showcasing African American life in the Hill District in the 1940's. I simply am fascinated by the details of the black and white photos. For example photo below: A well-dressed man, looking sharp in his crisp suit and hat, holding a camera (presumably expensive) - standing on a crumbling sidewalk with overgrown bushes in the background. It really makes you think about life in those days - when a hedge trimmer was not just a battery operated device you can buy for 9.99 at the local Sears. Why is his hat backwards? (Analogus, perhaps, to today's "cool kids" wearing baseball caps backwards??) What is he looking at in his hand? A light meter? (Not an iphone... :smile: )

teenie-harris-archive-feature.jpg


Fun. Thank you for your details on the middle of the day, November 22, 1963.
 
Top