Childhood’s end
It was sixty years ago today when childhood ended.
At least The Legal Genealogist‘s childhood.
There may not have been all that much remaining, that bleak day in November 1963.
I was, after all, a child who learned to curl up in a ball in an elementary school hallway, practicing what we would do when (not if) the bomb dropped.
I was a child who understood only too well the hushed tones of the adults and the shock on everyone’s face when the television showed us images of Russian missiles in Cuba.
But I stopped being a child altogether the day a gunman killed a President of the United States.
Sixty years ago today.
There isn’t a single detail of that day that isn’t still crystal clear in my memory.
I was in the eighth grade at Thomas Jefferson Junior High School in Edison, New Jersey, on Friday, the 22nd of November, 1963. Mr. Lutz was my science teacher. He was in front of the class that afternoon, when another science teacher — Mr. Thompson — came through the connecting hallway between the two lab rooms and pulled Mr. Lutz aside.
He came back in, and his face was ashen.
He didn’t say anything to us.
He didn’t have to.
We didn’t know what it was, but we all knew something was terribly wrong.
He tried to pick back up with the lesson, but a few minutes later the room intercom buzzed. Mr. Lutz picked up the receiver and stepped out into the hallway. When he came back in, his face was a color I’d never seen before. And his hands were shaking. He told us to sit quietly, and he stepped back into the connecting hallway.
We only had a few minutes until the end of that class period. We sat there, not knowing what was wrong.
Then the principal’s voice came over the school-wide announcement system. We were told that the President had been shot, and that we were to change to our next class… in silence. There was to be no talking.
We gathered up our things and quietly moved to the next classroom. It wasn’t in complete silence, no. I remember whispering to classmates, asking whether there would be war — since we couldn’t imagine that a President could be shot on our soil by anything less than an act of war. I remember someone wondering in a whisper if the President would live. I remember teachers trying to hush even those whispers.
We sat in our next classroom for a short time, again in silence, before the announcement came again: “The President,” our principal said, “is dead.” And we were dismissed, early, to go home.
Home. Where all of us sat mesmerized for days in front of the television, watching events play out that were unimaginable only hours earlier.
The death of a President.
The swearing in of his successor.
The suspect gunned down in the police station.
The state funeral.
The burial at Arlington Cemetery.
The end of Camelot.
And the end of childhood.
No more illusions of safety, if any were left by then.
No more illusions that adults could prevent the worst from happening, if any were left by then.
No more illusions at all.
I stopped being a child altogether that day in 1963.
Sixty years ago today.
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Sixty years ago today,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 22 Nov 2023).
Image: Austin (TX) Statesman, 22 Nov 1963, p.1; Newspapers.com
I understand completely – I, too, have very vivid memories of my eighth-grade teacher coming into the classroom visibly shaken and telling us the President had been shot. Hard to believe it’s been 60 years, though.
Similar experience here. I was in a first year Latin class, reading a passage about the White House. A student runner came to the classroom door and summoned the teacher into the hallway. She returned to the classroom in tears and told us to assemble in the gym. There, we listened to radio coverage for the rest of the school day.
thank you for sharing such a poignant story.
And I will always believe it happened on the 23rd! I was growing up in France and we only heard about it in school the next day at 8AM on the dot when we all filed into our respective classrooms. All our teachers were very somber and told us the sad news in very hush tones. It probably was too late on the 22nd for the kids to still be up and find out, even if the parents had heard of the tragic event on the radio (only a handful of people in my little village owned a TV at the time.)
Up in Vancouver BC Canada, I was 20, in University when the news came out. It seemed unreal – we huddled in small groups listening to someone’s radio, as the news went over and over the assassination. When I got home, the TV was on, and we watched the news into the late night, and the next day as well. I was so dismayed – what? they killed their president? whoever ‘they’ were… And we wondered what would happen to initiatives begun under Kennedy’s direction. Mostly we felt ‘safe’ – but so disheartened. A good leader of the United States died… in an ugly way.
You’ve put into words what I always felt about it – made my cry. Thanks for defining it in words. Although I was only 7, I remember it clearly. Yes, the end of innocence, the end of feeling safe. I remember having nightmares about my family being assasinated after that. I was glued to the TV for every bit of news. Such a very sad day for the US.
This was clearly a “shared experience” for so many of us.
I was in 3rd grade in Mrs. Freundenberg’s class at PS163 in Manhattan.
Ms. Kraznowski, my eventual 4th grade teacher, came into our classroom and told us that the President had been shot & killed. Like you, I am reminded of that moment every November 22nd.
Also similar experience. School officials let us out for recess after we knew he had been shot but before we knew he had died. Some teachers huddled around their car radios in the parking lot and I hovered around them. That’s how I learned JFK was dead. The day and weekend and funeral are seared into my memory. Just a time of profound sadness. I was eleven.
I was in the 8th grade in Chicago, and I feel as you did. I remember confusion and disbelief, and that powerful fear of the atom bomb which we had been expecting for so long. I still feel such sorrow. Yes, it was the end of my childhood and when I look back I feel I was in a constant state of anxiety for the next year. Thanks for your poignant memory.
That year the end of May, my tour of duty in the Air Force had ended and I was back home in California. Working for a law firm in San Francisco – when the news came through the office we were all disbelieving and shocked. Several of us clustered around the receptionist/telephone switchboard where there was a radio and listened as much as we could. I was glued to the TV when I got home. And I so clearly remember the tragedy, the disbelief, the images of those days.
I was in ninth grade. At the end of my lunch period, news of the assassination was being whispered down the middle school hallways, like a tragic game of “Telephone.” Two boys, whose parents’ beliefs were undoubtedly far-right, were dancing and shouting that he was dead. My next class was chorus; our music teacher confirmed the news and let us sit in discussion for the hour. I left school early when my mother picked me up to take me to a scheduled dental appointment. Neither she nor my music teacher had answers to my questions. My childhood ended the year before, during the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy’s assassination confirmed for me that the world was a dangerous place beyond the control of even the adults in my life.
Thank you for sharing. I have tried to tell a story of my life, in my family tree and in tales to my children and grandchildren, but I realize that I have never ventured to tell about this episode. I resolve to try.
I was in the high school debate coach’s car, heading to a debate tournament on that day. I had an interest in the FBI and Secret Service, so I was shocked that an assassination could be done despite the extensive precautions that were always taken (I later learned that it would have been prevented had the local FBI mentioned Oswald’s name to the Secret Service). Despite later tragedies, such as 9/11, this day was the worst tragedy for those of a certain age. I think it is because we lost our innocence as a country that day.
I would say that my innocent childhood died that day as well. I live in Australia and at the time of JFK’s death my parents had a grocery and sold newspapers. In Australia the morning papers of the next day (the death had occurred during the night Australian time) it was splashed across the front page. The realisation that an important well known influential person could be murderer was a huge shock and left me so very confused.