This cryptic message received from a friend:
Who remembers where you were 46 years ago today?
My reply:
Probably anyone who was 10 years or older on that dark day.
I remember that our junior class at University High School boarded buses and headed for Ala Moana Park for a scheduled class picnic.
The news started trickling in and by the time we got off the bus, word had spread that Kennedy had been assassinated. I remember that a group of us just wandered away from the rest of the class, smoked a couple of cigarettes, and let the depression and anger about the state of the world we were entering roll over us.
I don’t have any clear recollection of the rest of that day, except that it began several days during which television proved its worth in providing news coverage.
And so it goes.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
And in those days, tapes of “live” TV had to be flown in for delayed broadcast – no satellite TV in those days – so it was late night before any of the network coverage was available to viewers in Hawaii.
I was in a “Criminal Behavior” sociology class in George Hall at UH Manoa – it took the university a couple of class periods beyond that to decide to cancel school for the remainder of the day.
I wasn’t alive, I have all the network news footage on tape, which I’ve never sat down to watch yet. It’s wall to wall hours of coverage even the Guiding Light soap opera that was cut is included. On a local note, if you turned the dial to Channel 4, the late Bob Sevey covered a good chunk of those events with very little or no updated video since as Manke noted this was in the pre-satellite era. The KHVH staff had to wing it with photos from the newspaper, somber music to accompany it during breaks and whatever information they could get from the wires which is amazing when I think of how much they had to adlib, yet still stay on the air continuously and inform the viewers what was happening back in Texas. John Kernell might have been doing the news for KONA at the time. I can’t recall offhand who covered the news for KGMB, quite possibly Peter Burns, who on a national level would cover the events of MLK’s death on radio.
Replying to my own post, wish I could go back and edit something. I wanted to clarify when I say “photos from the newspaper” I’m referring to past photos that had run on JFK they would use as well as any film they might have had at the time.
I was working for Iolani School at that time. When the awful news came, my only thought was that the flag at the center of campus had to come to half staff immediately. I raced to the flag pole and found that three students were already lowering the flag. All four of us were weeping. It remains the worst day of my life.
Our mother had the best seat on Oahu. She was supposed to be on a tour of Schofield, and when the news first came in their group was in one of the major military briefing centers on the island. She said at the time that it was like a large auditorium with maps and telephones and whatever other technology was available to effective transmit critical information. The group apparently stayed for some time, just listening to the information being given to the military personnel around them.
I, on the other had, was at the University Student Health Center in Boulder, Colorado, having managed to badly sprain a knee, wrist, and ankle while attempting to ski. It clearly wasn’t my sport! Colorado time is only an hour behind Texas, so all our afternoon classes were cancelled. The radio news was piped through the Med Center PA system so that everyone in the building knew what was happening. Back at the sorority house, everyone was glued to either the TV or a radio; we stayed that way all weekend.
I was in a high school Latin class when the news came over the PA system. I put my head down on my desk and wept.
OK, here’s my story: I was in first grade when our principal, Mr. Reidl, came over the loudspeaker and said “this is something you should hear” Strangely, the next thing to come on was a beer ad, and we laughed. That was followed by the news and it got very quiet. We tried to continue the day but after news he had died, we were sent home.
I was 7 and remember it like yesterday. We had just finished our second grade Thanksgiving play and I was the last to leave the classroom. Behind a wall of cubbies, the teachers didn’t realize I was there as they began to commiserate over the news. When I got to the parking lot, throngs of station wagon-driving mothers clutched each other as they sobbed. It was the first in a sadly formative series of such events for me, that would include MLK’s assassination on my parents’ wedding anniversary in ’68, followed two months later by Bobby.
I was in the second grade when Mrs. Chang came in with a shocked expression on her face to tell us that Kennedy had been assassinated by a man named Oswald.