Survey: Where were you when...

[_Jersey Girl]

Hello All,

Just a little experiment here. What do you remember about and where were you when...

1. JFK was shot?
2. 9/11 happened?
3. Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened?
4. Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland happened?

I'll go first.

[_Res Ipsa]

I was out on a run when 911 happened. I don’t recall the others.

[_Jersey Girl]

1. JFK was shot?

I was in school that day. It was announced over the PA system that JFK had been shot. I believe it was announced again that he had died. If I recall correctly, they sent us home from school early that day and we were likely off school the next day as well. I recall watching the news reports on TV. The swearing in of LBJ on AF1 and Jackie's blood stained pink suit and later, repeated film clips of LHO being shot by Jack Ruby. We watched the funeral on TV including the rider-less horse...a horse with stirrups on backwards. I recall watching Jackie Kennedy walking with the casket. Later, we saw the Max Zapruder film over and over and over again. The news reports and especially the film footage we saw is engraved in my mind.


2. 9/11 happened?

I was getting ready to go to school when JB called me to look at the TV. I saw planes hitting the Twin Towers over and over and over again. I was stunned. I was administrator/director of the program. When I went to school I told my staff not to allow parents to discuss the event inside our classrooms and to ask them to please step outside. When a parent arrived who was from NYC I remember making eye contact with her when she walked in the door--we both had tears in our eyes. At home again, I watched the repeated film footage of the planes hitting the towers. I was essentially watching my home burn and a skyline I had seen for decades forever changed. My BIL was in the city delivering medical supplies and a friend's son who worked on Wall Street wasn't heard from until the next day. That evening I noticed that all aircraft was grounded and the silence was eerie. The next day when I drove out in our town I saw US Flags placed on country fences, trees and mailboxes, nearly every single property that I passed was wearing the flag ...and I cried when I saw it, a mixture of grief and pride. Other things happened following the event having to do with children's play and children acting out the even in sequence. Parents who didn't think their children were paying attention were offered an audio recording that I made while they waited for parent/teacher conferences in October. Every parent I saw for two days during conferences commented on the presentation to the effect that they had no idea that the children were even aware of what happened.


3. Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened?

I don't know.


4. Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland happened?

I don't know.

[_Brackite]

Hello All,

Just a little experiment here. What do you remember about and where were you when...

1. JFK was shot?
2. 9/11 happened?
3. Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened?
4. Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland happened?

I'll go first.

1. The Pre-existence
2. Southern California (Heard over radio - Already up and working)
3. Southern California
4. Arizona (Found out over cell phone after work)

[_DarkHelmet]

1. No yet a twinkle in my father's eye.
2. On the bus going to work. Heard it from the lady sitting next to me. When I got to work, people were gathered around the TV in the break room watching the live coverage.
3. I believe I was at work and saw the headline on a website.
4. Saw the headline on a website.

[_MeDotOrg]

Kennedy
I was coming back from recess in the 7th Grade when I saw a bunch of girls crying. I asked why, and was told that the President had been shot and killed. I remember how upset all the teachers were. Normally teachers try to mask their emotions from their students in a crisis, but I still remember how shaken the adults were.

As 7th graders, we started coming up with our own paranoid fantasies. Our school was about a mile from the Standford Linear Accelerator, a 2½ mile long atom smasher that was then under construction. Some postulated that the Communist Chinese would use Kennedy's death as a pretext to drop an atomic bomb on the accelerator. Such was the understanding of some of the 7th Grade at that time.

The other thing that I remember was all of the television coverage of the funeral, watching it all with my mother, John-John's salute to his father (which brings tears to my eyes as I write this), and a riderless horse that symbolized the President. The horse fidgeted and walked nervously, as if he was aware that he was missing his rider.

9/11
I was unemployed at the time. I woke up and turned on my computer, and logged into Excite, which was my home page. I still remember there was an article about Elizabeth Dole running for Senate in North Carolina. There was also a text headline:

World Trade Center blown up.

I skated right past the headline. There were no pictures, and no additional description. I think part of my brain just refused to accept that the World Trader Center actually blew up. Those tiny words on my computer screen seemed unable to convey something that momentous. I remember thinking that there had possibly been a gas explosion in the building, something like that.

So I went to a discussion group at a bicycle riders at roadbikereview.com. The first 2 post were from Canadians, saying "Our thoughts and prayers our with all of you in the United States this morning." Huh? WTF?

I went back to the 'World Trade Center blown up' link, read the first few words, then turned on Television. Those tiny words on my computer monitor were now real images on my television screen. All of the schools were then closed, and I went with my best friend to pick up her girls from 1st grade. The rest of the day was surreal. In one room, the girls were watching the 'Little Mermaid 2' video. Adults would watch Disney with them in shifts, and then go back and watch the horror movie unfolding on live television. So for me it was a day where I really couldn't let the horror of what happened sink in, because I was really wanted to keep my friend's daughters away from what was happening.

Shootings

The biggest shooting story I remember was 1966, when a student named Charles Whitman, a student at the University of Texas in Austin, went on a shooting spree that culminated with a climb to the top of the tower in the center of the campus where he started picking off students below: 17 dead, 31 injured.

A lot of people my age remember Charles Whitman, because for literally years, he was the face of the gun mass murderer in the United States. That was it. Charles Whitman, bad seed. His act stood out as this horrible sore thumb. Nowadays Charles Whitman would just be another NRA "thoughts and prayers" poster boy. '

Of the modern shootings, Columbine was the one that stuck out the most at the time. Sandy Hook was its own special horror. But honestly their frequency make it like asking someone from Baghdad if they remember each car bomb. Each shooting contains within it an admission of failure to do anything about mass shootings. When a mass shooting happens it makes me thing of other mass shootings, and the fact that the United States is alone within all other modern western nations in having a serious, dysfunctional relationship with firearms.

[_EAllusion]

1. JFK was shot? - Not alive.
2. 9/11 happened? - Walking across campus after a morning genetics class.
3. Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened? - Not sure.
4. Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland happened? - In between cases at work. I don't regard this as a "where were you when?" moment, but I happen to know that.

[_EAllusion]

I watched the Challenger explode on TV in a gathered assembly in school when I was in kindergarten.

While it doesn't have the staying power of some other news events, I think this was a "where when you when?" moment for those who lived during it.

[_Dr. Shades]

Someone shot JFK??

[_EAllusion]

2. 9/11 happened? - Walking across campus after a morning genetics class.

The professor who taught that genetics class was a German immigrant married to one of the scientists who worked with Craig Venter on the private side of the human genome project. I believe 9/11 happened on a Tuesday and her next class was that following Thursday. She gave a memorable, teary speech about her love of America, land of liberty and opportunity, before the class started. It's the single most moving thing I heard about 9/11 during that time.

She was eventually removed from the US during the period of the Bush admin's crackdown on visas for foreign intellectuals teaching at American Universities that I think most people have forgotten about.