50 years since JFK assassination and my 4th-grade track awakening
Wow! I thought. I’m fast!
I also was a key member of the zone dodgeball team that beat the Centralia sixth-graders, owing to my quickness and jumping ability. That upset goes down in history alongside the Miracle Mets and Billy Mills.
I eventually ran track at Kraemer Intermediate School, Valencia High School, Harry A. Burke Sr. High School and KU (and for nearly 20 years as a geezer trackster).
I didn’t know much about JFK. (In fact, in 1960 I voted for Nixon in a first-grade straw poll, taking a cue from my dad but not the overwhelming hands-up from my Democratic classmates in Oak Park, Michigan.)
But somehow I feel JFK and I were running mates of a sort. His brother Bobby became the inspiration for my son’s name. A half-century later, I’m still testing my speed — and thinking of a great man.
What did JFK mean to you, and what are your memories of Nov. 22, 1963?
3 Responses
Jeff Davison - November 22, 2013
JFK was loved no doubt.
In 6 th grade I was the second fastest in elementary school.
Just one school competed. I think we ran a 40 or 50 yard
dash. Street clothes and standing start. We were given no
instruction how to stand or how to run. I forget if it was
grass or black top. Who knows why I even remember
that much of the story. Probably felt more like recess
than a competition.
Rob Jerome - November 22, 2013
I remember being in 7th grade and hearing the announcement of the assassination on the school PA system and seeing my teacher collapse against the blackboard.
Decades later I was at a function in NYC attended by Jacqueline Onassis only a few years before her own death. Somehow I still saw her as Jackie in the pink dress and pillbox hat on that terrible day in Dallas.
David and Linda - November 23, 2013
I was in San Diego and heard it over the radio. I didn’t have a tv at the time but a neighbor friend did, so she invited me over to watch her black and white tv for the entire time from the first news through the funeral in Washington. I was shocked that this had happened. At the time of Kennedy’s inauguration I was teaching 5th grade in Arizona and brought a tv into the classroom so my students could watch Kennedy’s address. I wonder if my former students ever remembered any of that famous address.
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