I’m sitting here tapping out my thoughts to a screen on a Friday morning. Looking out my window I can see the trees swaying in a cold and cloudy sky. It’s November 22, 2013. My mind flies back fifty years to another Friday, another November 22.  My memory is divided into the time before the JFK assassination and the time after.

I was a junior in high school, sitting at my desk in English class. We were  taking a test, and I was having a hard time concentrating. I was still high from having sung and performed with my brother in the small auditorium on the nutrition break. Many of the questions on the test had to do with the killing of Alexander Hamilton  by Aaron Burr in a duel. What a waste! I remember thinking. How strange that history can be altered by a single act, by a single bullet.

The room was quiet. I could hear the big hand of the clock click each passing minute. Our teacher, Mrs. Sales, sat at her desk as we scribbled.  She was a bespectacled woman who wore her grey hair in an old fashioned bun at the back of her head. She must have been approaching retirement age. Odd now to think that I’m probably older now than she was at the time.

Suddenly the door cracked open, letting in a beam of sunlight in which there appeared a woman’s face. The face was wearing glasses, the large ones that secretaries used to wear. I recognized her as the receptionist from the school office – a pleasant friendly person. It was odd to see her here now. She didn’t say a word, but her body language and serious demeanor conveyed to the teacher  that  she needed to speak with her immediately and quietly outside.

Mrs. Sales approached the other woman and the door closed behind her. I could see her head framed in the small window in the wooden door. It was one those windows that had chicken wire inside the glass.  I observed her as she listened. After a few seconds she gaped and placed her right hand to her breast as the color drained from her face. I knew something terrible had happened. What is the worst thing that could happen?  I wondered. An assassination of the president did flash in my mind, but I quickly convinced myself that that was a ridiculous thought.

Mrs. Sales came back into the room and for the next ten minutes she quietly paced, uttering almost inaudible sighs. When the bell had rung she told us that the President and the Governor of Texas had been shot in Dallas. The news turned some of us numb and others to shout in anger. Everyone seemed in a daze. People cried “No, oh no!”

It was the lunch hour and I wondered over to a bungalow where a radio was tuned to Walter Cronkite. When the newscaster announced that the President was dead, I put my head down into my arms on the desk and tried to stifle my sobs. Some girls broke into open wails of sorrow.

It all still seems like yesterday, and time has not eased the sting of grief and pain of that dark Friday. A single event, a single bullet changed everything. Such a loss! And the question still echoes in my mind – “Why?… Why?”