JFK - November 22, 1963 - where were you?

“I was going to lunch in Rapid City, South Dakota. I was in college. We walked across the street to the Court House and it was on the radio, and I thought ‘Oh, no, this can’t be the same person we’ve seen on TV.’ It was just – and there was just a bunch of us college people. We were all in our freshman year and it was just, just unreal. Really unreal.”

-Marcia Morrison

“I was getting off work. I worked at the telephone office. My dad was picking me up and we heard it on the radio. And of course, we couldn’t believe that this had happened. Not to him. He was cool, he was a good president. I was getting off work. I was gonna go home for lunch and then come back to work. And when I came back to work, our switchboard was dead. I mean, people just couldn’t believe it.”

-Sue Elliott

“Lodgepole High School in the cafeteria if I remember right. I was more worried about eating! It was a shock, of course.”

-Larry Fraas

“I was working on a ranch at the Sioux Ordnance Depot out there where Cabela’s distribution center is at. I was working on a ranch that was out there – when they were still making bombs out there. I was 18, driving a tractor and pushing weeds out of the fence. I didn’t hear it [the news] till I got home. I got home about four o’clock and hear that on the radio and it’s just one of those things that kind of dumbfounds you. You don’t know what to say or do.”

-Les Sweet

“I was in my English class in high school, and I was sitting there and the teacher all of the sudden started crying. We asked ‘What happened?’ and the news came over the intercom, and we just all stood there kind of in shock realizing that somebody we’ve – as a young person, I really appreciated him as a president. He was something I knew about, you know, starting to graduate from high school, so that was my first encounter with something like that. I remember it well. I’ll never forget that.”

-Cathy Byer

“I was in college at the cafeteria and just in total disbelief, thinking ‘That can’t be happening.’”

-Vern Byer

“I was a teenager, I think I was 16, living in Fort Morgan. I was going to school then and when I was a teenager, I didn’t give that much thought to it. I mean, it was interesting. Not like it wouldn’t be today.”

-Martin Kral

“I was in grade school and I was sitting at home with my mom, so it interrupted my cartoons on TV. At that time, it didn’t mean anything. It means a lot more now.”

-John Phillips

“I was in Hawaii in the Navy. You know, just confusion. What happened? No one knew.”

-Lorin Anthony

“I was coming back from lunch, I was a third-grader at the time. I couldn’t honestly tell you what went through my mind. Probably shock that the president of the United States could actually be shot.”

-Loren Hoekema

“I was coming home from elementary school. It shocked everybody in the whole school. My mom picked me up crying.”

-Jim Daniels

“I was in Lincoln municipal airport waiting for a flight back to Sidney. Those were the days when Frontier flew into here. I guess I was more shocked than anything. The things that happen today are not a new phenomenon.”

-Gene Lienemann