Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F Kennedy. Everyone from that time can say where they were when they heard the horrible news. So this is a day for remembering.
This picture was taken 50 years ago by a fellow student and boy from the neighborhood, Peter Mon Wai who was an amateur photographer. I remember this day too. I was a junior at Davis high school in Yakima. While waiting at the bus stop on a school morning, he asked permission to take a picture. He did a good job. There was no digital help and post photography processing to fix things up like now. I think I see an aura of adolescent attitude or maybe it was just the sun in my eyes.
As I remember that morning in 2nd period French class, the overhead intercom speaker suddenly came on with its scratchy start and then - 'the president has been shot'. In the classroom there was a group gasp and our teacher's face drained of color. But the speaker message was disjointed with starts and stops and then just as quickly as the speaker had come on it was turned off. We sat silently for a moment and then someone suggested that the message was somehow about our school play maybe..... The drama club was in the production of "The Mouse that Roared" (see
here) a .story of a tiny country that starts a war with the USA. We all grabbed on to that idea. Oh yeah, that must be what it was. There was an uneasy peace with the decision to take that meaning from what we had heard and we continued on with class. I wonder what our teacher was thinking. She was an older lady (at least to our teenage view) who had been in the underground in France during WWII where she met her husband to be. She had seen some things and I doubt if she brushed off that message as easily as her young class was ready to do.
Then on to 3rd period which was typing class. Everyone busily clanking away on the manual typewriters when we got the message. President Kennedy, our handsome and popular president was shot and is dead. The sound of silence when all the typing stopped. But in the real world there are Neanderthals lurking who laughed and said things about how it was a good thing. We were dismissed from school. I was glad to get away from the jerks.
Stunned, shocked, sad my best friend Sandra and I drooped while we walked home, talking quietly trying to process what we had heard, The rest of the weekend was spent with family watching the television, glued to the unfolding events, the tragic details and heartbreaking pictures. My mother appreciated TV and the way it allowed her to see the world. She never expected to see what happened two days later. I had left the living room and the TV coverage for just a few minutes. When I came back in, mom says she had just watched Oswald being shot on television. What! I couldn't believe her at first. Was the world going crazy? Eventually life came around to normal again but we never forgot.
