Seems like yesterday....
It was 39 years ago today, but I still recall it like it happened yesterday. I was in Coach Nixon's home room class, ninth grade, Midland High School. Bonnie Craddick, as she did for four years, was sitting in front of me in the row next to the wall. The old loud speaker came on with the special announcement.....President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas and was dead. Eveyone was silent, too silent. How, at 13 years of age do you react to this news. We didn't know, nor did the teachers. We went on for another half hour in this neverland of silence with some small talk, till school was dismissed for the day. It was the 22nd of November, which happened to be the day before my birthday. I will always relate the two for the rest of my life.
It was start of my teen years, and the end of my real innocence about life. I remember it was the time that Yo-Yo's were the "fad". I spent my birthday with my best friend, Ronnie [now Ron] Hunt, who by coincidence was born several hours apart from me. I remember he and I spent some time with our new birthday Duncan Yo-Yo's, but mostly I remember watching events, and the funeral, unfold on our old black and white TV. Days of it, wondering just how and why these things could happen. What a birthday.
It was 39 years ago today, but I still recall it like it happened yesterday. I was in Coach Nixon's home room class, ninth grade, Midland High School. Bonnie Craddick, as she did for four years, was sitting in front of me in the row next to the wall. The old loud speaker came on with the special announcement.....President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas and was dead. Eveyone was silent, too silent. How, at 13 years of age do you react to this news. We didn't know, nor did the teachers. We went on for another half hour in this neverland of silence with some small talk, till school was dismissed for the day. It was the 22nd of November, which happened to be the day before my birthday. I will always relate the two for the rest of my life.
It was start of my teen years, and the end of my real innocence about life. I remember it was the time that Yo-Yo's were the "fad". I spent my birthday with my best friend, Ronnie [now Ron] Hunt, who by coincidence was born several hours apart from me. I remember he and I spent some time with our new birthday Duncan Yo-Yo's, but mostly I remember watching events, and the funeral, unfold on our old black and white TV. Days of it, wondering just how and why these things could happen. What a birthday.
