Where were you on November 22, 1963?

The Class of '65 had entered their junior year that September. The year was moving along with most of us very happy that we were no longer lowly "underclassmen". We had finally arrived at an elevated station in life and we liked it. We were maturing, and we were leaving behind the feelings we had as freshman and sophomores, the vulnerabilities we felt in the early teen years, while attending a high school where everyone seemed "older".

That morning, I was sitting in Mrs. Joyce Keeler's English class on the second floor of the administration building, in a classroom overlooking the quad. My desk was in the middle of the first row by the door to the hallway. Mrs. Keeler was standing in the front of the classroom by the blackboard giving her lecture of the day, when Ralph Ammendolia came in from the office with a note for her. Ralph was a "runner" for the office that period, and we often saw him as he made his rounds delivering messages from the office. As he headed out the door, he turned to me and whispered, "The President's been shot!" Shocked at what he'd said, I exclaimed "What!" as I lifted myself out of my chair and raised my hand to get Mrs Keeler's attention. Mrs. Keeler had already noticed that Ralph and I were interrupting her lecture with our whispering, and was about to scold both of us, when I said to her, "He said the President's been shot". Looking at us with disbelief, she turned and pushed the intercom button to the office on the wall behind her. The secretary downstairs immediately came on, confirming what Ralph had told me.

I remember that we sat there in stunned silence, Ralph having gone on with his errands, Mrs. Keeler just standing silently by the blackboard at the front of the room. Suddenly a voice came on the loudspeaker system directing us all to go immediately to the boy's gym where we would be given further instructions. I remember a very quiet mass of students making their way through the quad, past the music building, past the library building and into the gym. Finding friends to sit with, we all took our places in the bleachers and looked towards the northeast end of the gym where a microphone was being set up. In my memory, it is Don Couch and Paul Reginato, our coaches who are at the microphone, but, frankly, I'm not sure. In my memory, I see Don Couch telling us that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, that he was dead, and that we were all to go home. School would be closed until further notice.

For the next three days, American families stayed glued to their television sets as commentators like Walter Cronkite talked us through the scenes on the screen before us, scenes of pain and sorrow, scenes of honor and dignity, scenes of faith and patriotism. The life and death of our beloved President Kennedy played out before us like a scripted drama, but it wasn't a drama, it was real, and although we knew that America was safe, that we were safe, we also knew that something had changed in our lives, that nothing was ever going to be the same as it had been that morning, when we happily started our school day, November 22 1963.

Submitted by Lenise Durand Wimborough