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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