Reply #41: I was in junior high....

[Punkingal]

I was in basketball practice in the gym when I found out President Kennedy had been shot. We just continued to practice, because we had a big game coming up on Monday. (It was cancelled.) And it was too much to absorb, anyway. Then someone came back in the gym and said he had died. Our gym was separate from the school building, so after we dressed and walked out to go to the next class, someone was lowering the flag to half staff, and that made it so real. It was devastating, like being hit with a ton of bricks. Forty years later, I can still see the faces of my friends as we walked up that sidewalk. And the principal, a most unemotional man, came on the intercom and officially told us, and his voice broke. Sad, sad, sad. I remember it was raining that night, and that seemed so appropriate, like the skies were weeping. The whole week-end was sad, and I have a montage of pictures in my head to this day. And I am one of those people who feel that nothing has ever been the same in America since that awful day.

And I don't care that his reputation has been sullied over the years. He is still my ideal politician, because he asked us for our best, and made us believe we could achieve it.