What do you remember about Friday 22 November 1963

[LisaM]

27. I was little. I mostly remember my father's being upset.

After that he kept a photo of JFK on his desk until the day he died (I have it now, it's very aged, it was clipped out of a magazine). My dad had heard JFK speak in Ann Arbor when he announced the idea of the Peace Corps, and since my father was Irish Catholic, that added to the devastation.

After that, JFK was essentially worshipped in our house for years. We all have pictures of him still up, and my sister has a whole Kennedy section on her bookshelf. When I went to college orientation many years later in the 1970s, I took along a JFK bio for the three days.

All that is to say that it had a profound effect on our family. I don't know that our young family was ever the same; some bitterness had set in. It took me until the 1990s not to tear up on the anniversary.