Do you know where you were the day Kennedy was shot?

November 22, 1963, 12:30 pm CST, I was sitting in my homeroom at Bolton HS, Alexandria, LA when JFK was assassinated. As soon as the full story was known an announcement was made and the principal sent all students and staff home for the day. Almost everyone in my age group remembers exactly where they were when they heard that Kennedy had been shot. I had just turned 17 the month before and, to me, this seemed really surreal. Our president had been killed by a sniper while he was visiting Dallas, TX. He was riding in an open convertible. FDR rode in an open convertible and he wasn’t shot. Lots of important people rode in open convertibles and they weren’t shot. I sensed that the world had gone crazy and might end any minute and I felt numb as I rode home on the school bus. I don’t remember much about that ride. I thought that if my country was not a safe place for the most guarded man in America, who had secret service around him 24/7/365, how could it be safe for me? Things like this happened in other countries but not in America. Television was filled with everything about the assassination for weeks. Every picture, report, and film was in black and white which made the blood spattered suit Jackie Kennedy wore at LBJ’s swearing in all the more graphic. I watched the funeral cortege, little John John saluting his slain father, the Zapruder film, reporters trying to piece together a timeline. We may never know what really happened, whether it was a conspiracy or a lone gunman, but November 22, 1963 was the day my generation lost its innocence. The horrific events were shattering to our collective psyche. And yes I know where I was the day Kennedy was shot.