My Memory of The Kennedy Assassination

Every year in November I think about the day of the John F. Kennedy assassination. I was in seventh grade, in a Catholic school, and everyone I knew loved JFK. My Dad had grown up poor in South Philadelphia, and he remembered a time when Irish Catholics were treated like second class citizens, not welcome in the upper echelons of Philadelphia society. For Kennedy to be elected President was a watershed moment, and for my father and his family it seemed almost too good to be true.
On November 22, 1963 I was in school, and at 1:30 Eastern Time when Kennedy was assassinated I was in class daydreaming in my seat near the windows at the back of the classroom. I’m not sure when the first radio reports came in, but sometime soon after that I noticed the woman who lived across the street from the school running frantically our way, waving her arms. She was an Italian woman who rarely came out of her house, but now she was running towards the school as if something terrible had happened. I didn’t say anything to anyone, but I was puzzled why she was acting that way. I saw her disappear into the side door of the school, and then she appeared in the hallway outside of my classroom. My teacher was also the Mother Superior, or principal, of the school and this woman wanted to speak with her right away.
The nun was a big woman with a red face, and her face got redder as she told us to sit quietly at our desks while she went out in the hallway to see what was the matter. She obviously didn’t like being disturbed while she was teaching, and I imagined she was going to give the Italian woman a piece of her mind.
Instead, there was some urgent, hushed conversation, a brief silence, and then a sound almost like a sob coming from the nun. She returned to the classroom looking white and shaken, and she had to take a moment to compose herself.
“President Kennedy has been assassinated,” she said, in an unsteady voice. “Mrs. Del Rio has just told me. I don’t have many details yet, but I have to make an announcement to the school. Please wait here in silence.”
As soon as she left the room, pandemonium broke out. Girls were crying, and the boys wondered loudly if the Russians had something to do with it. “We should drop the A bomb on ‘em,” one boy shouted. Behind the bravado, though, was fear. Our world had been shaken. It seemed unreal that President Kennedy could be assassinated, like the sun suddenly turning black, or the sky red. I told myself that the shooter had probably just grazed the President on the arm or the shoulder, and everything would be all right. It was inconceivable that he could die, and I didn’t allow myself to think of that.
Nobody did much work for the rest of the afternoon. The teachers were visibly shaken, and the children couldn’t focus on anything. People came and went in the hallway, and the phone in the office nearby rang constantly. The nun finally told us to get out a book and read silently in our seats.
When school ended at 3:00 I was almost bursting with the need to tell my mother what had happened. She never turned on the radio or TV during the day, and I was sure she didn’t know. By this time there were all sorts of rumors circulating among the children, mostly involving the US going to war with Russia over this.
I ran, and ran, wanting to get home as fast as possible. I was like a child with a bruise, who wants his mother to make the pain go away. Somehow I knew that everything would be all right when I got home.
As I raced up the driveway to the front door I saw my mother waiting behind the screen. Her lips were pursed, and her eyes were sad and scared at the same time.
“I just got off the phone with your father,” she said. “President Kennedy has died.”