What's the first major news story you can remember living through as a child?
This is my post for the #memoirmonday prompt What's the first major news story you can remember living through as a child? hosted by @ericvancewatson
In the above photo, I am the girl in the first row first desk, I was in 3rd grade, 1963. It started as a normal school day. We had lunch and were back in class when our teacher Miss Tearney gently told us that our President had been shot, I do not remember if she said he was killed, but I think she left that for our parents to tell us. We were then told to get under our desks in the kneeling position with our heads bent down and our hands wrapped around the back of our heads.
I remember being scared. Not by doing this, we had to do this for school drills but this time it was for something that had happened, and as a child, I wondered if Russia had sent a bomb to hit us because that is why we had these drills.
I also do not remember how long we stayed like this but for me, it seemed like forever. Parents were picking up other children and they went into the hallway to talk with my teacher, they were crying.
I lived the furthest from school, you had to cross a 2 mile river over an old wooden bridge and then go 5 miles on a sand road. Because we did not have electricity I wondered if my parents had heard the news and how would they know to come to get us.
The only way to travel this road was to let some of the air out of your tires or you would be stuck.
I remember wondering if we had to stay the whole day but my Mom showed up at the school to get us, we were the last to be picked up. When we got home we could hear the generator running and Dad had the TV on watching the news, we were told to change our clothes and go outside. Later we found out President Kennedy had died.
photos are mine
I love the stories you tell of your childhood. You have very clear memories of things from way back in the day, much clearer than any of mine.
And you always have such great pictures! Who was the photographer in your family? And how on earth are they so well organized that you can find the ones you need?
You had to get under your desks?! And know that it wasn't a drill? How frightening!
I remember only sitting at my desk on that day. I believe there had been an announcement over the school PA that said JFK had been shot. I felt a shock goe through us all. I don't remember anything else about that day, or the days that followed.
Thank you, yes I can remember many things from my childhood.
I am not sure which parent took the photos, I am guessing both because I have photos of both in them. When I put them on the computer in Google Cloud, I arrange them in albums, which makes it easy to find what I am looking for. Having them there ensures they are protected if something happens to the originals.
I guess they had us get under our desks because we live so close to Cape Canaveral and they thought it would get hit by a Russian missile, that is the only reason I can think of. I do not think a desk would help much in such an attack, but it must have made them think so.
We were a small school, this was two grades in this class. I would rather have our teacher telling us the news than a PA system, which we did not have.
I was just a bit younger (second grade). No getting under our desks that time (but duck and cover drills other days). In our case, as I remember it they sent us all home early (how did they arrange busses on such a short notice?) and I found my mom in tears when I got home.
But we were in the Eastern time zone. He was shot at 12:30 in Dallas so 1:30 in our time zone and it would have been a while until us going home could have been orchestrated. Maybe the busses came at the normal time and I’m misremembering?
I am also Eastern time zone, I thought it was not long after lunch and getting out early, too. Maybe it was longer after lunch than I remember.
Have you ever looked into "flashbulb" memories?
No, I have never heard of it but I will look it up. Thank you @kryptik
@kryptik I read about it, that has to be why I remember bad things so clearly, the article even mentions President Kennedy and the space shuttle blowing up, I have one more that I can remember everything that happened I was 8 years old and saved an old man from drowning, he fell off of my Dad's dock in the inlet with the tide ebbing, I ran down the dock to get ahead of him, and climbed down a piling and stuck my leg out for him to grab (Dad always told us to never jump in if someone was in trouble, to throw something to them, they could take us under with them) I did not have anything to throw to him. I could tell everything that happened, even how he fell, what he was wearing, the chair he had to sit on, etc, and afterward diving down to get his fishing pole back, his wife yelling get his hat, it is all still so clear to me, and this was 60 years ago.
So, I'm not trying to cause any trouble with you on this but I do neuroscience research. Something very interesting with flashbulb memories is that a lot of studies find that most of them are not particularly accurate. This probably has to do with how we compress and retrieve our memories over time.
It always blows my mind to think that my most vivid memories are likely inaccurate. It's not something I feel comfortable with but the brain is a crazy place!
I do think that emotional attachment will make a memory more pronounced. Arousal and valence scores can trigger memories in different ways. I did a pilot study on this involving images. Maybe I'll pick back up on that in the future.
@kryptik, I found what you say very interesting, and do not doubt it. I can only repeat what my mind remembers, I know the circumstances are true but like I found out about President JFK's death, I thought it happened right after lunch but someone said it was much later in the day. Thank you for your input.
It's not a big deal! Actually it's a very important way to study memory.