On learning about the Kennedy assassination in Barrow, Anaktuvuk Pass and Eureka, CA

It is often said that anyone who was alive and conscious at the time and still is remembers just where they were when Kennedy was assassinated. So, as we watched this show about the car he was killed in, I asked how Pat and Beverly learned of his assassination. Beverly had been at elementary school here in Barrow and had just walked home. There were no school buses here then and Barrow was a much smaller town than it is now. Television came in on a two-week delay so there was no live news, but there was radio. Beverly entered The house and found her mother sitting by the radio, crying. When Beverly learned the reason, she began to cry, too. They had no electricity where Pat lived in AKP, but they did have a battery-powered radio and he learned from it the same manner.

I was a student at Jacobs Junior high school in Eureka, California. I stepped outside of one wing to go to another for my next class. As I approached the door to the other, two girls stepped out and both were weeping. My first thought was, "Look at those silly girls! What silly thing are they crying about?" And then they told me. I told Pat and Beverly how I sat with my family in front of the TV and wept all the way through the procession and funeral. Beverly said she sat by the radio with her family and they wept all the way through it, too.

Text added at 10:48 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 56 and counting.

Comments

[Little Sister]

I remember. Laying on the floor and staring at the TV. I understood the import of the moment. But then, as ever still, I meet the death of someone significant to me with a certain numbness and detachment that I don't quite understand. Ron, Mom, Dad.

Greg and I watched a PBS show, probably the one you reference in this entry this week. Greg started crying. His father had died a few months earlier.
It all came back to him when he saw the flag-draped coffin being pulled by horses.

A sad, sad day in our history.