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Where were you on this day


shepp

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I was in Mrs. Grady's second-grade class at Eliza Poole Elementary in Raleigh, NC. We had just arrived in the cafeteria for a milk and sugar cookie break when she chased us down with tears in her eyes, told us to leave our snack, get our coats, and go home immediately. I walked in the house to find my mother sitting on the end of the bed, biting her nails. When I asked her what was going on she just said "Hush!"

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3 years before my time. But days like these are etched into your memory if you're alive. The challenger explosion of '85, I believe, was one of the first "where were you" moments of my generation. I was a young maintenance engineer in a downtown DC office building. Just so happen, the Chicago Tribune had their DC offices in the building, and I was watching the launch. There are other days. The "unofficial" end of Vietnam.....the day Reagan was shot....the invasion of Kuwait....the space shuttle Columbia explosion on re-entry. You all get where I'm going.

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5th grade at Shreve Island Elementary. I really didn't know what to make of it.

First JFK, then MLK. Add Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison (yes, I know they were both congenital idiots who died from drugs), and RFK to the hippie riots and Chicago riots and you've got an excellent recipe for paranoia. The feeling didn't really go away until Ronald Reagan was elected president and the Iranian hostage takers capitulated.

I hear people idealizing the '60s and '70s as some sort of idylic uptopia. If you lived through it you know that the reality was somewhat different.

Charlie

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^^^

Had a speaker cover the topic of property taxes and some of the laws California has. He had a presentation that included a bunch of newspaper articles. Reading the headlines...it was hard to tell if it was 1970's or today. Same arguments, same battles, same two party bullpoopy. 

Edited by DNP
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10th grade, walking to study hall from Social Studies, overheard a girl shout "they killed him!" Got to study hall, they had the TV on. Instead of going to classes the rest of the day, they had us stay in the room we were in and they brought TV's to every room that didn't have them, and all of us watched, listened, and prayed.

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3 years before my time. But days like these are etched into your memory if you're alive. The challenger explosion of '85, I believe, was one of the first "where were you" moments of my generation. I was a young maintenance engineer in a downtown DC office building. Just so happen, the Chicago Tribune had their DC offices in the building, and I was watching the launch. There are other days. The "unofficial" end of Vietnam.....the day Reagan was shot....the invasion of Kuwait....the space shuttle Columbia explosion on re-entry. You all get where I'm going.

that's why I asked the question, it's one of those things that burns into your brain and I was curious to hear especially somthing like this that long ago.

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I was in 8th grade, sitting in Mr.Grey's math class when it came across the loud speakers... they left the speakers on for us to follow the news, when the national anthem came on, the last guy in our class that I expected stood and turned and told the rest of the class to un@$$ their seats and show some respect...

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OK, from an officially old (but still lethal, so don't fook with him) guy.  Age 20.  At work, got the message from a customer who came in.  Followed on radio, then on TV when we got home.  Everybody listened to Cronkite, of course.  Guy was a left-winger all his life, but never let it show in his reporting.  A real pro.  Remember the grainy films of the assassination, and was watching live when Ruby shot Oswald.  Watching a guy get murdered live on television was amazing and shocking.  

A visual impression?  Everyone wore hats.  Kennedy was one of the first to go hatless.  Quite unusual at the time.  Smooth transition to the Johnson administration, at least on the surface.  Kennedy didn't like LBJ, likely drafted him as VP because his rich, NE Catholic ass needed the southern votes.  Likely never thought that center of uranus would ever become president.  LBJ was quite likely the worst result of the Kennedy assassination.  IMHO

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OK, from an officially old (but still lethal, so don't fook with him) guy.  Age 20.  At work, got the message from a customer who came in.  Followed on radio, then on TV when we got home.  Everybody listened to Cronkite, of course.  Guy was a left-winger all his life, but never let it show in his reporting.  A real pro.  Remember the grainy films of the assassination, and was watching live when Ruby shot Oswald.  Watching a guy get murdered live on television was amazing and shocking.  

A visual impression?  Everyone wore hats.  Kennedy was one of the first to go hatless.  Quite unusual at the time.  Smooth transition to the Johnson administration, at least on the surface.  Kennedy didn't like LBJ, likely drafted him as VP because his rich, NE Catholic ass needed the southern votes.  Likely never thought that azzole would ever become president.  LBJ was quite likely the worst result of the Kennedy assassination.  IMHO

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I remember four incidents that impacted the nation on this scale:

1. The JFK assasination (obviously, that's what we're talking about).

2. The space shuttle Challenger malfunction on January 28, 1986 when at 73 seconds into flight it broke apart and, ... you know the rest.

3. The space shuttle Columbia when it burned up on re-entry on February 1, 2003

4. 9/11/2001. Nuff said.

I did not watch the first incident as television sets were not then common in elementary school classrooms, but I did watch the shuttle malfunctions over and over on live TV while the news crews tried to make sense of the disaster (if that's what they were doing. They might have been whoring for the viewers like they do today). But 9/11 was special:

On 9/11/2001I was in my office getting things set up for the day, and one of the housekeeping staff said a small aircraft had stuck the WTC. So I tried the local news sites (nothing), and I tried the Dallas news sites (error 503), and the LA Times (error 503), and I knew something was up. Eventually I was able to get through to some website with video, and once again, we watched the attack happen over and over and over. I finally found a live feed, and then the second plane hit. I called my wife who was working in the same building, we went and collected the kids from their school, and went to our home in the country. I did not feel remotely safe until W announced from Barksdale AFB that he was on the job (about 2:00 PM as I recall). But we did not stand down for about a week!

Charlie

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