A Missoula baby boomer flashback - Where I was when JFK was shot - November 22, 1963

It's been decades ago since that fateful day in America's history, the day, November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was shot. 

This tragic event happened in the middle of the day. Missoula's school children have varying stories on their experience of what happened to them. 

Here is mine. I was in third grade in 1963. As we lived in the married student housing we attended Lewis and Clark School. Back then, the married student housing was actually long rectangular buildings called "the strips" with names of counties for the streets, such as Gallatin or Fergus, etc.

My third grade teacher going through grade school in Missoula was Mrs. Ulrigg. She was a nice teacher, a little plumb with her dark hair braided and pulled up.

Our class was out on the playground, either for the lunch break or for recess. I was playing near the back door, perhaps jump roping, a favorite activity.

A tall woman, at least I remember her being tall, opened the back door and yelled out, "The president has been shot, the president has been shot."  Children, back then and perhaps now, knew who there president is, so we knew that it was President Kennedy that was shot. 

We all came in and sat at our desks and talked about the tragic news. I've heard from some Missoula baby boomers that some classes came in and watched the news on a TV set up in their rooms.

Note: I may have written about this topic in a past post - if so - I don't think it will hurt to repeat a memory of this important historical time in our nation's history. This event did make quite an impression on me and most of Missoula's children as well as the rest of the nation.