Charles Petzold

I was at school that day, in the fifth grade. It was a Friday afternoon and we were about to get report cards and go home. Suddenly a radio began playing over the public address system. The Principal had hooked a radio into the system, or perhaps just sat a small radio in front of the microphone in his office. The newscaster on the radio said that two priests had just emerged from the operating room at the hospital and told reporters that President Kennedy was dead.

A girl in my class began crying. Her family had vacationed in Washington D.C. that summer and she had seen the President in a motorcade and had waved to him.