JFK Assassinated 61 Years Ago — Memories and Thoughts? – westsiderag.com
This story was originally published on November 22, 2023.
By Robert Tannenhauser
It was 61 years ago today that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States was assassinated. Everyone who is old enough remembers to this day where they were and what they felt.
It was my sophomore year at Syracuse University, and I was at the library (for the first and last time) studying, or trying to, when we were jolted by the announcement: “The President has been shot.” Trying to process the information I rushed to join my friends and we sat glued to the TV as the updates came in. The blurring cascade of events: JFK dead, Oswald arrested, Oswald killed, Jack Ruby arrested, Johnson sworn in, and the reality that optimism for the future was gone. Little did I realize that the decade of assassinations was in its early stages, first Medgar Evers, then JFK, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, and then Robert F, Kennedy, which I watched live while studying for a law school exam. It was a difficult decade, but in retrospect it does not seem as troubling to me as the current level of discord, hatred, extremism, and inability to compromise, or to simply agree to disagree in a civil manner, that we are experiencing now.
Send us your memories and thoughts in the comments. If you are too young to have experienced it, what have you learned, heard, and thought about JFK and the assassination?
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