Life Changes

 Life Changes

              by Judy

“The President has been shot….”  There was total silence in the room. I was in my high school chemistry class. I had loaned a pencil to the boy with whom I shared a lab table when the announcement came over the loud speaker. Soon the bell rang, and dazed, we students moved through the halls on our way to our next classes. Gradually we began to talk. How? Why? He couldn’t die, could he?

There was a second announcement. John F. Kennedy was dead, and once again the classrooms were filled with stunned silence.  All students were asked to bow their heads, and a school official, maybe the principal, prayed. A third announcement stated all the busses were in line, ready for students to board. School dismissed early that November day.

My parents had gone to town and were in a Montgomery Ward’s store when they heard other customers talk of a shooting and saw crowds gathered in the television department. After they learned of the President’s death, they went home and turned on our black and white set. Our family watched it continually until after the funeral.

Almost everyone alive that day knows exactly where they were and what they were doing the day the President was shot.  What we don’t know is what life in America would have been like if John F. Kennedy had lived. I don’t know whether I got my pencil back from my friend either.