I was six years old, a first-grade student at J.E. Prass Elementary School in Kettering, Ohio. It was a cold and cloudy day. We were out on the playground at lunchtime when a rumor raced through the kids: "Kennedy's been shot in the head! Kennedy's been shot in the head!"
Now, I would wager that half of the kids in my class had no idea who "Kennedy" was. I did, because secretly, I was in love with JFK and wanted him to be my daddy.
Teachers lined us all back up on the playground and ushered us back into the school. Then our teacher started crying and told us the President had been killed and we were getting out of school early.
This confused and upset us first-graders. We were not used to changes in the school schedule. Most of us had never really heard of anybody we "knew" dying.
I had a particularly intense relationship with JFK for a first grader. My father was a very hard man who never EVER played with his children, and the photos of JFK playing with his kids in the Oval Office and playing touch football on the lawns of Hyannisport with his brothers made me so jealous.
Why can't my father be handsome like JFK? Why can't he play with his kids? I found Washington D.C. on the map and drew a line from Kettering, Ohio to Washington DC, plotting out the route I would have to travel to visit and claim my new daddy.
They turned us out of school. They sent us home. I remember wandering slowly home wondering what would happen to Caroline and John-John.
My parents parked us in front of the TV. We watched all weekend, right through to the dark spectacle of the eternal flame on the grave in Arlington.
Do you remember? Share your memory below.
Update: Thanks to all for your vivid and moving memories of that day, which put this diary on the rec list.