On that fateful day, I was a young teacher at English High School reading Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” with my 10thgrade class. We had just read the assassination scene and went on to the funeral oration “Friends, Romans, Countrymen.”
I was trying to explain the concept of irony when our principal, Lewis Thistle, spoke over the public address system shortly after lunch time: “I regret to tell you that President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas. We know nothing more at this time.” To which I added, “Boys and girls, I guess we will never have a better example of irony than today’s class.”
Shortly thereafter, JFK’s death was confirmed. Everyone just drifted out of school in silence and tears on that chilly Friday afternoon. I got a ride to Central Square where I waited for the Myrtle Street bus home. Downtown Lynn was eerily quiet.
I then recall the enormous gathering of all Lynn’s school children and thousands of others at Manning Bowl the following Monday for a somber memorial service. Everything changed on November 22, 1963.
Helen Breen,
Lynnfield
On Nov. 22, 1963, I was a very young teacher at the Highland (now Ford) School in charge of a large class of 10-year-old fifth-graders.
All of a sudden my then-fiancé and sixth grade teacher, Robert Bailey, came running into my classroom because the only TV in the school happened to be in my classroom. He turned it on, and much to my horror the announcement came that the president, JFK, had been assassinated.
My students were terribly upset and many started sobbing uncontrollably. It was a day forever etched in my memory as I tried to console them while keeping my own emotions under control.
Ironically I was teaching at the same school on Sept. 11, 2001.
Thank goodness most of my recollections from those days at Highland/Ford School are very happy ones.
Jean Billows BaileyI was in a 10th grade history class. They told us all that there was some bad news to share. When they told us the president was shot the room became totally silent. Some of us were crying. The teacher had a TV in the room for the day and he turned it on. We watched the breaking news and then we were dismissed. It was a horrible day. I kept feeling like a war was going to happen. I don’t think I have ever really felt safe since.
Cynthia Bene
on Facebook
Was in second grade, the radio broadcast of the reports, coming from Dallas, were coming over Hood School’s public address system.
I remember going out to recess, but cannot remember if we were dismissed early, as our afternoon sessions ended at 3 p.m.
I do remember that when I got home, my parents were watching the news and I watched it with them, pretty much throughout that whole weekend. I remember being riveted to the TV and seeing Oswald being killed during live news coverage as well as the wake and funeral of the president.
I also remember being frustrated that all normal programming was cancelled as I was flipping through channels 2, 4, 5 and 7 and seeing the same flag draped coffin lying in state, in the capital rotunda and watching thousands walking past it.
Kevin Jones,
on Facebook
I moved from Lynn at age 20 to Dallas, Texas. In 1963 I was transferred to Washington, D.C. While on lunch hour on Nov. 22 I heard President Kennedy was shot. My office was a block from the White House and I watched the flag lowered to half-mast. That Friday evening a friend and I joined a few people at the rear entrance when the president’s casket was delivered from Dallas. He remained there for the next day.
On Sunday, while I was parking my car a block from Pennsylvania Avenue before viewing the horse drawn caisson and procession to the Capitol, I heard the news of Ruby shooting Oswald. When the procession passed by on the avenue, I remember thinking now-president Johnson and Mrs. Kennedy were unaware Kennedy’s assassin was killed only minutes earlier.
The line to view the President at the Capitol Rotunda was extremely long. I waited but had to leave a
