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In 1963, I was spending my first year away from the schoolroom awaiting the
birth of my first child.  On November 22, in Missouri, I was just
settling in to eat my lunch while watching my favorite soap, when Walter
Cronkite broke in with the announcement that the president had been shot.

I hurried to the phone to notify the school, where my husband and my
former colleagues were teaching, of the news, and spent the rest of the
afternoon following the newscast.  Our school was closed until after the
funeral and we spent most of the next few days watching events unfold on TV,
including the swearing in of the new president, the arrival of Mrs. Kennedy
at the airport in Washington, the funeral, the arrest and the shooting
of Lee Harvey Oswald.  I don't remember anything else being on TV during
that time.  Everything just seemed to stop while the nation dealt with
the shock.

The whole thing seemed unreal and dreamlike for awhile.  We did not have
color television, and my memories are of greyness, and bare, black trees
lining the streets as the cortege moved down the street...Mrs. Kennedy in
her black veil and the horse with the boots attached backwards on the
saddle.  I remember being somewhat surprised, when I saw the photographs
in Life magazine, to realize that there was color...Mrs. Kennedy's pink
suit and John John's blue coat.

My son will be thirty-one in March. I can always remember how many years
it has been since that tragic day by his age.  It was a very sad time for
everyone, but especially for those two children who lost their father
when they were so very young.



Joyce Miller
Library Media Specialist
Warrensburg High School
Warrensburg, Missouri  64093
jmiller@services.dese.state.mo.us







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