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Martinsville High School Alumni
| Class of 1972 |
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| 45 Years Ago Today: JFK and Patrick Henry Elementary - 2 |
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11/22/08
David Young
(1973)
BYoung1441@aol.com
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My parents were big JFK supporters, so, consequently, I thought of him as one of my first heroes. In this day and age, when the President is on the TV addressing the nation, most people say, "yeah, big deal, what ELSE is on?" Remember the early 60s, though? A Presidential address on TV meant EVERYTHING STOPPED. Guess it was just the nature of things then, with the Cold War, anxiety left over from the Cuban Missle Crisis, etc.
Like the rest of the class of '73, I was in the third grade on 11/22/63, at good ol' Patrick Henry Elementary. We came off the playground, and the normal procedure was to take a rest room break and then finish the afternoon in the classroom. This day, however, our teacher made us sit down. Mrs. Stone told us that a terrible thing had happened....President Kennedy had gone to Dallas to make a speech, and had been shot (I remember immediately having a visual image of the man actually giving a speech at a podium and suddenly collapsing mid sentence). She said that there was a radio on in the principal's office (funny, I can still remember what that radio sounded like down the hall), that we did not know yet what his condition was, we would have to wait and see, hope for the best, etc.
We took our rest room break, and I was standing in the doorway of our classroom with our teacher. A first grade teacher (oddly enough, my wife Betty's first grade teacher....she was two years younger, and we did not meet until high school) walked up and simply said, "He's dead."
I remember the rest of the day being sort of upside down. My dad and I had planned on going to the community center by the old high school to do some swimming in their indoor pool, and we followed through on that plan immediately after school. That big pool, and there were only three people there.....me, my dad, and the lifeguard. Swimming in dead silence with only the sound of a little bit of splashing, no conversation, just a feeling of being stunned.
Went to bed that night scared....it seemed like everything was wrong.
Many of you remember that my dad was the minister at Holy Trinity Lutheran, so we were always the last people to leave the church on Sundays. Consequently, two days later, my mom and I were upstairs changing out of our Sunday clothes when my dad came charging up the steps yelling "they shot Oswald! They shot Oswald!" I am the only person I know who was alive then and did not see it live.
A quick side story. When I was getting my Masters at Georgia State, I had an Associate professor who was in the Army at that time, stationed in Korea. Because of the time difference, it was breakfast time over there. In the US, we had no idea, of course, that we had just ramped up to the highest possible military alert immediately after JFK had been shot (could have been an invasion, or God knows what). He said they were going through the chow line, getting their oatmeal, in FULL BATTLE GEAR, with rifles, bayonets attached and unsheathed, in their hands. They were ready to go at a second's notice.
Anyone else have any memories of November 22,1963, which was 45 years ago today? |
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| 12/02/08
Kathy Pitts Dorough
(1972)
kpdorough@yahoo.com
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| Re: 45 Years Ago Today: JFK and Patrick Henry Elementary |
I remember that day like it was yesterday. We had moved from western North Carolina to Chapel Hill, and I was enrolled in 4th grade at West Franklin Street Elementary (now the location of the UNC's atheletes' dorm). It was an old building, with 3 stories, with only one class per grade level. 4-6 were on the top floor, and the principal was also the a teacher. If our teacher knew anything, she hadn't told us. The day went entirely as normal, but one of my classmate's little sister had come upstairs and met her. I didn't hear the whole conversation, but I heard enough to know something bad had happened. We had no buses - everyone walked or rode home in a carpool - and I went on downstairs to meet my carpool ride, which was the father of one of my classmates. When we got in the car, he told us what had happened. My immediate reaction was, "Poor Mrs. Kennedy." That reaction surprised him - I think everyone was too stunned to think about Jackie's personal loss, and were all focused on the country's loss. I also remember it was cold and rainy - a thoroughly bleak, miserable day, and that a lot of the television programming got rearranged or canceled.
What's also ironic to me is that the children I am currently teaching were either tiny babies or not yet born when 9/11 happened. This year's sixth-graders barely remember it, and much of what they remember is their parents' reaction, and not the event itself. How quickly what we live through becomes a page in the history book!
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