JFK Assassination

The announcement of the death of our 35th president came loud and clear over the loud speaker in my second-grade classroom where I was teaching. The date was Nov. 22, 1963. The sad news came as a great shock! The seven and eight year olds sitting in front of me couldn’t really comprehend what they heard! Most of them knew that our country had a president, but only a few understood what assassination was. The principal went on to announce that the school day was to continue as usual and that there was to be a memorial service for President JFK in the school auditorium the next day. I talked to the children briefly about the terrible event that had happened, and then went back to covering my planned lessons for the day. The news was over-whelming! In my readings about the assassination I have discovered some little-known facts. This was the fourth presidential assassination in a nation that was less than 200 years old. In Washington, dignitaries from more than 100 countries arrived for Kennedy’s funeral. At the time, it was the largest gathering of its kind on U.S. soil. The first two letters that Lyndon Johnson wrote as President were to Caroline and John Jr.