Twenty five years ago, I was at home in my apartment in Queens with then-wife Myra. We were watching the TV news and were stunned when they announced that John Lennon had been shot. At the time, that was all we knew: He’d been shot. That was appalling enough. The notion that the gunshot was fatal was almost too much to contemplate. Then, almost immediately thereafter, they gave an update stating that Lennon had passed away.
It’s just one of those moments in life–like when JFK was shot or when the Challenger blew up–where you remember exactly where you were when you heard the news.
PAD
• 
Um…I was unborn by four years. And for Challenger I was two years old. Not to make all of you seem like old fogies, but I think it’s interesting that the first “where were you when you heard” moment I can explicitly and specifically remember is 9/11. I know there were a lot of big moments in the nineties, but nothing sticks in my mind that way.
Um…I was unborn by four years. And for Challenger I was two years old. Not to make all of you seem like old fogies, but I think it’s interesting that the first “where were you when you heard” moment I can explicitly and specifically remember is 9/11. I know there were a lot of big moments in the nineties, but nothing sticks in my mind that way.
I was two, so no memory for me either. I think the first thing I can recall like that would be when Kurt Cobain shot himself. I was old enough to have remembered Challenger, but just … don’t … for some reason.
25 years ago, I was being born. Years before I knew who the Beatles were, my dad was already accusing me of having killed John Lennon.
I was in college in a dorm room with then girlfriend and friends. The music was loud and we were having some pointless argument (don’t remember… it was pointless). Then we hear someone shouting that someone had been shot…funny, we thought it was Reagan who’d just been elected…we were a little off… We turned down the music and heard it was Lennon. Like you PAD we thought he was just “shot”, not dead. By the time we turned on the TV, we heard he died. We played Beatles/Lennon tunes all night. Nobody argued.
BTX
I was attending Drexel University and was studying for a mid-term exam, in one of the lounges of the dorm where I lived, when I heard someone run out of his room to tell some of his friends that John Lennon was shot! Apparently, he was watching TV when he heard it.
I was watching the evening news when I’d heard about Challenger and I was 3 1/2 years old when I saw Kennedy’s funeral procession on TV, one of my first memories! I suppose some images never leave you mentally unscathed, even when you’re a small child.
I was seven, don’t really remember, I wasn’t glued to the tv until 3:30 pm or sat. morning.
Math Class, Haviland (built by FDR, actually the first FDR High) Middle school, 7th grade, back row, back to the window, woman teacher, i think 3rd from the right in that back row. One of the teacher in my school had tried to be that teacher in space program.
Some how I was home Sept 11 2001, as where the upstairs guys who where also in construction. My vcr was jammed, (for real by a rental) that was unbelievable news coverage. I had watched some show turned on tech TV news, (now G4TV) in the background they had some building smoking and burning. I was like is that a game? Then I turn to NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, MTV, and about 30 other channels.
Let’s us not for Nascar #3, I remember the crash, I felt robed that day.
I was five weeks old.
My mom was devastated. I didn’t know learn about Lennon until I was in elementary school.
Now I’m devastated, too. What an unbelievable loss, in such a tragic way, of such a kind soul. 🙁
“So this is Christmas. And what have you done? Another year over. And a new one just begun. And so this is Christmas. I hope you’ve had fun. The near and the dear ones, the old and the young.”
🙁
I was 6. I don’t remember it. This sparked a conversation with my wife over the “events” of our lives that we remeber.
Reagan Shot – This I remember. The day before my birthday. i was still unclear on the concept of guns really hurting people (Having watched tons of old Lone Ranger and Cisco kid reruns)so I was excited (we were a family of democrats who were not too excited about Carter losing). that was when I got my first lesson in the reality of gun violence. Happy birthday kid.
Challenger – I was at school. The teachers said something about it. IT wasn’t until much later that I saw the tv footage.
Jack Kirby. College. Junior year. Man. talk about shock. i had been out of the country and out of touch with the western world. I oipened up mu copy of Wizard and read about his death. I cried. I tried to explain it to my girlfriend. She didn’t get it. I sat around all afternoon reading old comics.
9/11 I was at home. The problem was, my wife (remember the girlfriend from last paragraph?) was in San Diego. No one knew what was going on. All we wanted was to be close to each other.
But what about the god times? I remeber where I was when the US beat the soviets in 1980 (I was a big hockey fan as a kid). I remember when the women’s US gymnastics team won the gold medal with Keri Strug sticking her landing with a bum leg. I remember playing in the ash after Mt. St. Helens erupted.
It’s not just the bad things that stick in our minds. I think it is the finality of it. There will always be more gymnastics. There will always be more hockey. Hëll, Mt. St. Helens is STILL active. But another Kirby? Another Lennon? that is what makes us cherish the good times and remember exactly where we were when rwe realized they were over.
I went to a small college, Simon’s Rock Early College (later renamed Simon’s Rock of Bard), and with all of the things people were doing, listening to the radio was rarely one of them. So I was the one who learned first and told the campus about Lennon being shot, and even though I was less Beatles-aware than I would later become, for some reason that moment shook me hard.
(My tendency to listen to the radio also made me the one to tell the campus when Reagan was shot.)
Sophmore year in college, I had turned on the radio and was happy to hear one of my all time favorite cuts of music, the entire second side medley from Abbey Road. Right as it ended with “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” the DJ came on and said “John Lennon, killed today by gunshot wound.”
I’d never before gone from happiness to despair in so brief a moment.
I was 8, and I have no memory of that day at all. Oddly enough, I have some vague recollection of Elvis’ death, even though that was three years earlier, when I was five.
I was just beginning a three-year unemployed period and didn’t know about the tragedy until I got up the next morning and saw it in the newspaper. I remember being very angry that the 50,000-watt giant we had in the area (WOWO, which has now become a talk-radio station) did NOT have wall-to-wall Lennon coverage because “a lot of people didn’t agree with his politics.” WOWO was so conservative, it wouldn’t play the “when I think back to all the crap I learned in high school” line from “Kodachrome” by Paul Simon.
For that matter, in my elementary school, they didn’t let us out when JFK was assassinated. About five minutes before we went home (3 pm EST), someone came into the room and told us. I got home thinking I’d have something to tell my family, only to find everyone was already there and knew about it.
Challenger, I heard about at work at CBG, shortly after it happened. Don and Maggie’s son, Stephen, had stayed home from school that day due to illness and saw the first bulletin, and then called his parents. Soon after, they put the radio on over the PA system, the first time they’d ever done that.
Princess Diana, I caught the first bulletins.
9-11 and Columbia, I found out about when I got up from bed those mornings. (I usually stayed in bed until about 10:30 at that time.)
By the way, not to change the subject too greatly, but I have a theory that the first great shared trauma for many baby boomers was not JFK, but learning that TV’s Superman, George Reeves, had apparently shot himself. I have one friend, who, though he was only five, remembers crying that entire day.
Lennon: 9 years old, in my family’s radio room. Oddly, even though I do remember it happening, I don’t believe I understood the significance of it at the time. Even more oddly, I distinctly recall that it was on the same radio, in the same room, that I first learned of the existence of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Reagan: came home from school and saw the news on TV. Again, I had little understanding of the significance of it and largely remember being ticked off that this news thing was probably going to mean The Incredible Hulk would get pre-empted that night. Grief, I was an annoying little brat.
Challenger: in high school, sitting in the library, reading, waiting the day out after finishing an exam. I was informed by a teacher.
9/11: one month over 30 years old; woke up late, yawned, stretched, and turned on the TV to check the weather, just in time to see the second Tower go down. I remember cycling through every single channel on my cable provider just in case, because obviously this couldn’t *really* be happening and if I could find one channel that wasn’t showing footage of it then that would mean I’d caught them at the joke…
Well, I was pushing nine months old at the time, so I couldn’t really comment, and besides, my dad’s a Stones guy.
9/11 hit me pretty hard, because at first all I heard was “plane crash” and I dismissed it as no big deal. I still kind of hate myself for that. The enormity didn’t kick in until the towers started falling. My dad picked me up from work for lunch and we listened to the radio coverage and I was crying my eyes out. Later that week, I happened to be in Chicago, and approaching the city and seeing the Sears Tower, I imagined it gone and destroyed, and I was so angry…
I tried to give blood, but I couldn’t due to a number of things wrong with me, anemia among them. I did donate to the Red Cross, but to this day I wish I’d been able to do more.
And I know exactly where I was when Katrina hit. Oh yes.
Lennon: Only 4, wasn’t really aware of him. I don’t have any memories of Lennon being alive, and when I was old enough to discover the Beatles, he was long since dead.
Reagan: Still pretty young, somehow didn’t hear about it until years later. It’s odd, I have vague memories of Carter being President, but my earliest recollections of Reagan being shot are of learning about it as recent history, not as it happened.
Challenger: In school, at or coming back from recess, classmate said, “Did you hear the shuttle blew up?” Saw the footage at home. My mom was in the habit of videotaping shuttle launches. Two years later, she took me and my brother out of school to go watch Discovery land at Edwards Air Force Base — the first shuttle landing since Challenger.
Diana: Oddly, this one doesn’t stick in my mind. I think I caught the news on TV.
9/11: Clock radio woke me up. Instead of music, a voice was saying that all air traffic was shut down nationwide. Then-fiancee and I both woke up instantly, exchanging “WTF” glances and listening to the report as we got ready for work. The rest of the day I was glued to the Internet or talking with co-workers. I work with engineers, so I remember we were discussing just what could have caused the towers to collapse the way they did. Watched footage on the TV at the restaurant where I went for lunch. For some reason I don’t think we actually turned the TV on at home. Maybe we just didn’t want to see any more.
Columbia: Wife came back from choir practice, “Do you know how many states it was?” “Huh?” “The shuttle.” Spent the next hour reading various news sites online before we left to visit friends we’d already arranged to meet. Again, for some reason we never turned on the TV.
Driving home from high school, in the yellow ford pickup truck we had. I can picture the piece of the road, I was on when it came over the radio.
Lennon’s death was a double-whammy for me; i had just gotten home from my grandfather’s viewing at the funeral home and was trying to compose an obituary/memorial fanzine for him for the next SFPA mailing, when i looked up and saw a single line “Just in” advisory on our cable system’s primitive news teletype crawl…
Challenger, i was standing in line trying to get my Unemployment Insurance straightened out.
JFK was an announcement over the school PA (rural SC high school). One of the larger jerks in my class cheered aloud.
25 years ago I was most likely eating Cheerios, pooping my shorts, and saying the only two words I knew, “momma” and “dadda.”
I was eleven at the time of Lennon’s death.
Challenger. January 1986. I was in – coincidentally enough – my aerospace and engineering class. A sudden stop in class procedure, as the television was rolled out and turned on, revealed tragedy. I remember all I could say was just a simple, whispered “No…”
JFK was before my time, but I’ve spent enough time seeing tourists visit “The Spot” downtown.
Losing Columbia was even worse. The sonic boom that rocked my house was the sound of several lives being taken before their time.
There is something about driving around Dallas, seeing those electronic bulletin boards that normally notify drivers of traffic issues, requesting that “anyone that finds pieces of the Shuttle Columbia, please contact the authorities.”
http://www.newseum.org/frontpages/columbia/020203pages/TX_DMN.htm
RLR
JFK:
I was just over a year old.
Lennon:
Monday Night Football was on and I heard Howard Cosel announce the shooting and later death.
Reagan Shot:
I was on a college class tour of a major TV station and was in their Master Control room as the special report hit. My first taste of “Breaking News”.
Challenger:
I was on jury duty that day. At the lunch break, the judge told us we could watch some TV because something happened to the shuttle.
9/11:
I woke up early that day for some reason. Flipped on Good Morning America and saw Diane and Charlie talking about an “accident” at the World Trade Center. Then I saw the 2nd plane hit the building live in the background behind them. Then got to spend the rest of the week watching it over and over again at work.
I was 12 years old, sitting in my bedroom listening to Kiss on my record player when through the blare of the headphones I was wearing I caught something on my TV saying something about someone being shot. I stopped the album and watched, shocked and lost by what I was hearing.
This was the first hero of mine that died. Elvis didn’t affect me much at all; I was 9 and not really a huge fan of his work. There was something about Lennon, though. I loved the Beatles, I loved his solo work and I loved his ‘middle index to the wrongdoers of the establishment’ attitude, although I certainly couldn’t have put it in those words back then.
It still hurts every year.
As for the Challenger, I was in basic training at Fort Knox, KY and caught some sort of virus. I showed up at the base’s med center with a temp over 103 and was sitting in the lobby waiting to be seen. As I saw what was on the TV, I thought to myself, “wait until I tell the other guys what *I* got to see today”.
How right I was.
I came back to Echo 13-4 in a fog. Nobody believed me when I first told them what I saw. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself.
* * *
9/11 was another story. It was my second day of working the phones at SBC, and I was royally getting yelled at by some business owner who was having problems. There was a TV in the training room, which was quite unusual, but they said there was some incredible news on earlier about a plane that may have accidentally crashed into one of the towers.
Anyway, I will still getting verbally accosted when the second one hit. The line went dead quiet, and then the man said, “I’m going to have to call you back”, and hung up.
I was told that on the residential side of the business the grid was overloaded the rest of the day, but I didn’t get another call for over 3 hours.
Later that day, another happy customer called to say he wished it was my company that had a plane flown into its building. He was greeted by law enforcement officials later at his house. Strange how statements like that are taken much more seriously in times of crisis.
That one continued to suck long after the worst of the trauma of that fateful day was over in the midwest. We were actually quarantined in our building three times over the next month due to receiving envelopes filled with white powder during the anthrax scare.
I don’t remember anything about John Lennon either, which is strange as I was 8 at the time.
I do remember the Challenger disaster though, was a keen science fan at the time.
My earliest memory of a pop star going was when i heard about Freddie Mercury having AIDS and that he’d died of it as well. As a HUGE fan of Queen I was devastated by this news and I remember exactly where i was at the time.
Maybe not quite the same as Lennon being shot, I know, but still hit me hard.
Reagan: I was 9, but I don’t remember the instant upon which I learned about it; I’d imagine that I was probably in school. I do, however, remember the all-day coverage, I remember the onscreen graphic diagrams of the human heart that they were using to explain the operation to remove the bullet, etc. I remember that my sister, a bit over two years older than me, wrote a letter of support to Reagan, and how cool it was when she got a response. (This was before it was pointed out to me that it was a form letter rubber stamped for everyone who sent a letter to him.)
Challenger God, it’s probably one of the most vivid memories from childhood. It was lunchtime, and as I and my friends normally did, we went to the corner store, since we eighth graders were allowed to leave the school premises during the lunch hour. I walked in, and a student, IIRC, was watching the TV along with the storeowner. They told me the shuttle blew. I didn’t understand. “What, you mean it caught on fire, or something?” “No,” he said, “it blew up.” I just couldn’t comprehend at first that such a thing could happen. This was NASA. The geniuses. The guys who put men in space and on the moon. They were beyond these sort of catastrophes. We were beyond this. We were the technologically mighty United States. It just didn’t happen. I was hard for me to comprehend that such things could happen in this day and age. I remember the preponderance of newspapers in the classroom the next day, and how Jorge Gonzalez, who sat to my left in the front of the classroom, was reading it, speculating that it was the solid fuel that caused it. I remember wondering about Reagan calling the astronauts “heroes,” when he didn’t do this with all other astronauts who take the same risk. (Naturally, I don’t feel that way today.)
9/11 The towers had both collapses by the time I had woken up (I usually work at night, and often sleep in). When I first heard on the radio about a plane crashing into one of the towers, I figured, similary to Queen Anthai mentioned above, that it was some small, single-engine plane that accidentally crashed into one of the towers. These things happen after all, since one crashed into the Empire State Building decades ago. But at some point, I don’t remember what it was, I began to absorb the talk on the TV that it was two planes, not one, and something about the towers collapsing. I went outside to my front yard, and walked up the hill leading up to the street. I walked up to the gate, and looked west. A thick column of sky to my right was brown with smoke.
I decided to take a closer look. I always carry my walkman with me, but the TV function couldn’t get any TV stations (my walkman picks up the audio from Channels 2-13). Instead, the TV signals were coming through on the radio stations, which I found weird. I bought a disposable camera, and walked to Palisade Ave., at the western edge of Union City, where I live, which overlooks Hoboken (which sits lower, right on the edge of the water). I took photos from the terrace of the Union City Boxing Club, which was filled with spectators. (That little garden now has a monument created from a piece of the wreckage.) I snapped some shots from across the river. I then walked down the viaduct to Hoboken, and walked along the still-under-construction Frank Sinatra Drive. I walked out onto this dock or ledge where I assume a building was about to be built, and snapped some more. I remember looking at the unyielding column of smoke and wondering where the towers were, thinking that I should be able to see them peeking out from behind that smoke, right? It was because with all this talk about the towers “collapsing,” I thought they meant that part of them collapsed, or something. In retrospect, it recalled my disbelief at the Challenger “exploding.”
My mom and aunt, who work in the Fashion District, was naturaly OK, since the Fashion District is right near Times Square, and not the Towers, but since NYC was locked down, she had to spend the night with a friend. My brother-in-law Sal, however, was not so lucky. He worked on the 97th floor of one of the Towers, and by some miracle, he set his alarm clock incorrectly, and overslept that day, and was in Hoboken when the first crash occured. He lost all but about a dozen of his employees.
The other uncomfortable feeling I had that week stemmed from the fact that the hijackers took off from Newark, NJ, not too far from where I live, and I remember that the 1993 bombers were trackd to Jersey City, right next door to Union City were I live. I was later discovered that some of the hijackers were headquartered in the Manhattan Building, which is here in Union City, and some others in Wayne, NJ, where two of my cousins live with their families. The idea that those fûçkërš were within walking distance of my house made me feel violated and angry. The next day, there was a bomb scare just a block from my house, but I believe it turned out to be a false alarm.
The account I wrote on that day is at the Political Musings boards at http://www.nitcentral.com, at: http://64.33.77.146/discus/messages/2310/25845.html?FridayJuly0820050820pm#POST142160.
Lennon: I was a couple of months shy of 11, so you’d think I’d have a clear memory of it — but I don’t really have much of one. I certainly didn’t realize the enormity of it until significantly later in life — college, mostly.
Reagan being shot: this one I do remember, which seems odd since it was only a few months later. I was already enough of a weird trivia geek that I knew about the alleged “zero factor” killing off presidents, so when I heard at school that he’d been shot I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “boy, that was fast.”
Challenger: hëll yes. I’d just come home from a final exam my senior year in HS, and my brother (home sick from school) said that I’d better come in and see something. I think my world changed in a very real way that day.
In terms of celebrity deaths, I think the first one to really have a huge impact on me was fifteen years ago. My apartmentmate (Mike Shappe, who a couple of you here might remember) came home and asked if I’d heard the bad news. Figuring he was referring to the OTHER death of the day, I said, “Sammy Davis Jr.? Yeah, it’s a shame.” He just said. “No. Jim Henson.” I don’t remember much about the next day or so.
Diana: I think Lisa mentioned it to me when I got out of the shower that morning, but that one didn’t have much of an impact on me.
9/11: I’d just dropped Lisa off at the airport in San Jose; she was due to fly to LA for a conference. On my way into school I’d heard that “a small plane” had flown into one of the towers, but then I got to school and didn’t think all that much about it. Half an hour later I saw another teacher who said there was a lot more going on. The rest of the day is a blur. (But needless to say, Lisa never got to her conference.)
Columbia: I got a call from my mother-in-law saying that Columbia was overdue for landing and nobody knew why. I sat in front of the television for several hours after that. (Lisa was in Melbourne for another conference and wouldn’t be back for another week or so. That was lousy; I really wanted someone to commiserate with.) I also remember more or less bringing my classes to a screeching halt that Monday to talk about it — I figured that people would want to and that my class (physics) was one of the most obvious places. (My HS physics teacher had done the same thing with Challenger, so I felt somehow that I was closing a circle there.)
TWL
John Lennon? I hardly remember it. I have never connected “serious” music with much of anything. I was aware of his status as a Beatle, and that he was beginning to get his life together after a long period of spinning his wheels. But I still wasn’t going to buy his album. It was irrelevant to my life.
I did find it ironic that a person who, for the most part, floated above the dirty, violent, dangerous world we mortals inhabit was actually touched by that world. His “floating” above our reality was partially from drugs, partially from his wealth, and partially from that British sense of bemusement at the world that his bandmates shared. Then, the world was made all too real to him, and he probably didn’t have the time for it to register in his consciousness.
As for the Challenger, I was working at my TV job during the noon news. I was all prepared for afternoon production work, once the news was under way. I believe our station was the only one in Orlando that had bothered to broadcast the launch live – the other stations thinking that shuttle coverage was “no good for ratings.” I watched the launch live. I saw the explosion. I couldn’t react to it. It was all too sudden. It was all too impossible.
Then, instead of ending the news, we took the network’s special report and stayed with it the rest of the day. The horror of what happened finally sunk in. (It took a long time for the pro reporters, too, who couldn’t seem to believe that absolutely everyone on board was killed.)
I was 12 when John Lennon was murdered.
The first I remember hearing about it was in assembly at school in England, during a prayer. The head of house suddenly veared off from the usual list of things we should be thankful for, and started talking in downbeat tones about John Lennon being shot and killed that morning, to which he added “by David Chapman”. Not only was this inaccurate but it also happens to be my name. My head snapped up at this news and I opened my eyes and saw that everyone else in the hall still had their heads bowed. I think I expected them all to be looking at me. I felt myself getting hot, partly from the knowledge that Lennon was dead, partly from the thought that for the rest of my life I imagined people saying to me “Hey, isn’t that the same name as the guy who…”
It didn’t happen. Plus there was a guy in another class who was actually called ‘Mark Chapman’.
I always felt a bit sorry for him.
I was all of 4 when Lennon was shot, and don’t have any memory of Reagan, either.
While I don’t remember exactly where I was when I heard about Challenger, but I remember watching the footage and feeling like I’d been punched in the gut. It’s one of the few memories (vague though it is) that can still have an impact on me today.
On 9/11, I was having a bite to eat after work and before bowling. I was sitting in a little family run diner near the front counter when somebody came in and told a friend that a plane had crashed into the WTC. As others have said, I thought it was a small plane, mentally shrugged and finished my breakfast. When I arrived at the bowling alley, they had the news on one of the screens, and everybody was entranced. I managed to sleepwalk through three games and felt hollow for a good day afterward. I’m not sure when it occurred to me that THIS was going to be my generation’s “Where were you?” moment.
With the Columbia, I was still in bed, and turned on the TV to try and find something to watch. I didn’t feel the shock or denial of Challenger, just a dull sadness.
I don’t really seem to imprint the deaths of individuals, just the big tragedies…
-Rex Hondo-
I was five when Lennon died so I can’t say I recall the day, but I do recall being in sixth grade when the Challenger exploded. When I was a senior in high school, I heard that a local man named Marc Nathan had worn black when he was a senior at Franklin the day John was shot.
Marc Nathan is a very nice man. At the time I was a senior, he had just retired from being the Oriole Bird. He also runs the local independant comics store outside of Baltimore. He’s the organizer with his wife for Comicon here, and he’s close with Frank Cho of Liberty Meadows fame. Scott Kurtz of PvP has posted some very nice comments about how welcome Marc and his wife Bonnie had made them feel when they come into town. Marc has kept his small store within a mile of it same location for about the past 20 years since I first met him, and he’s also employed the same guy for the same stretch of time. I also recall I got a special sneak preview to see Disney’s Aladdin because of Marc.
John Lennon was a kind, gentle caring man who wanted everyone to feel loved and to enjoy peace. When I think of him, I think of Marc Nathan as well. John, your legacy is alive in men like Marc.
I was six. I was probably sleeping or watching cartoons.
I was in school watching the Challenger launch on TV when that happened.
There must’ve been millions of kids watching that launch because of that teacher.
Way to go, NASA, mess with an entire generation of kids all at once.
I was nine, and don’t really have a clear memory of it. Music wasn’t a big deal to my parents (which is amazing when you consider how important it is to me), so I probably heard about it the next day since I would have been in bed during Monday Night Football.
I do remember Reagan’s shooting, because I was home from school for some reason, and it was on the radio. Don’t know why that stands out more.
I thought Cobain’s death was going to be my generation’s JFK assasination until 9/11 happened. I do have a very clear memory of this – I was in the car with a few friends headed to an underground music shop when the reports started to come over the radio that something was going on. I was not a Cobain fan – in fact, I made something of a show of NOT being a fan (I’ve since changed my tune and now redognize his immense talent), and was inappropriately bemused by the whole thing. I think I even said that I thought it would be funny if he had killed himself. We got to the shop and I ran into an acquaintance there who hosted a local alternative music video program, and through some contact he had, he’d confirmed that Cobain was dead before the media started officially reporting it. I immediately regretted my callousness. It’s not something I am proud of, but it does stand out.
Diana was the first one I ever learned about online. My then-fiancee and I had gone out to see “Spawn” in the theater (it had been out for a while and we were finally getting around to it). We came home and I signed onto AOL, and there it was on the welcome page. We were stunned.
9/11 was an insane experience. It was my second day on my new job at the local newspaper. I didn’t make a habit of turning on the TV in the morning, and the radio in the car was broken, so I first heard it from a coworker as I was walking up the steps to the office. She told me two plance has hit the WTC. I thought it was an accident, and I was astonished that air traffic hadn’t been rerouted after the first one — I was also imagining that we were talking about small planes and not huge jets. I went in and learned the enormity of what was going on. The day was a trial by fire for me as I was thrown into the deep end of the newspaper pool, and it ended up makingme look very good, but of course, I’d trade that in an instant for the day not to have happened.
I remember when John was shot….and the Challeger……imagine…
While I was too young to remember either Lennon or the fatal shooting, a tear always forms when Forest Gump starts talking about it.
I was on the schoolbus the next morning. My parents didn’t watch MNF, and I went to bed before the late news came on (long before the days of 10 PM news on Fox.) Actually, I think my dad was out of town, so the rest of the family went to bed blissfully unaware of what happened.
I usually rode to school half asleep. However, Ed “Flash” Farens, one half of WMMS’s Jeff & Flash (back before morning zoo shows became lame pipelines for vapid, overplayed pop and stale bathroom humor), led the news at the top of the hour with John Lennon’s death.
Most of us weren’t into the Beatles at the time, but it still cast a pall over the school for days afterward. The budding metalheads took it particularly hard as it came on the heels of John Bonham’s death. They actually took this harder because John sort of laid some of the groundwork, both musically and philosophically, of who we were at the time.
I was in the library at school, and some older kid I didn’t know said something to the effect of, “you know Lennon’s dead” or “Lennon’s been killed”. Something like that. I thought he was being a wise ášš about _Lenin_, so basically blew him off.
I don’t remember when I learned it was _John Lennon_. Maybe before school got out, maybe on the bus, or when I got home and saw the paper.
It may even be that the kid told me he meant John Lennon.
Rick
Lennon: 11 years old when it happened, didn’t learn about it until many years later when I read Catcher in the Rye in high school.
Reagan: my older brother mentioned it to me.
Lady Di: I forget where I was
Jerry Garcia: I was at work. A co-worker told me Andy Garcia had died. I had no idea who this was. When I got in the car to go home, the radio station was playing Casey Jones.
Challenger: I was 17, and in a hospital recovering from GBS. The TV was on almost constantly in my room, and that image kept getting replayed over and over and over.
I heard about Reagan’s shooting in the worst possible way–some kids at college were listening to the radio and high fiving each other and when I asked them what had happened they told me that he had been killed. The sheer awfullness of their actions didn’t feel any better to me when I found out he was still alive. At least one person wrote a letter to the school paper defending the celbrations–not the campus far left’s finest hour.
The Challenger–I was in grad school, walked into the lab and one of my friends asked me if I’d heard the news. We ran down to the student lounge and watched the video. I remember thinking that one of the booster rockets was the actual shuttle and hoping that they might have been able to land it. I also worked at night as a telemarketer and after spending 3 hours cold calling people and talking about the shuttle, as opposed to the financial planning services I was being paid for I decided to quit. It was just too much (Doing Mexican Donkey Pørņ is less demeaning than being a telemarketer).
Princess Di– my wife and I were visiting friends in Eerie PA and heard the news right before we went over to see them. Cast a downer on what is usually a great time.
9/11 I was speaking to a group of at risk teens about a new program we were planning for afterschool. The principal came on the speakers and told us about the attack. The kids and I raced for the computers and tried to get info off the web, which was crashing left and right. A woman down the hall with a radio told us about the pentagon attack and we got bits of (incorrect) information about other attacks on the White House and Camp David. Later I watched the Towers fall on a TV we set up in the class.
One other event nobody has mentioned–when the OJ Simpson verdict came in they telecast it on the close circuit TV system at the school where I did my student teaching. Deathly quiet for the 10 minutes or so it took to get to the verdict, then sheer pandemonium. Actually, people seemed angrier after this one than they were for 9/11, at least at first. Of course, 9/11 produced mostly shock, I was too numb to be angry, though that came soon enough.
Lennon – Remember it vaguely.
Reagan – I, too, was home from school that day (the start of a pattern), and they interrupted Scooby-Doo to tell us the President had been shot.
Chernobyl – home from school. Caught the blame for it the next day.
Challenger – ditto.
Cobain – heard it in the car just before I shut it off to go into a store. Never a big fan of his mumbling vocal style, but all I could think of was the line “I don’t have a gun.”
Diana – just got back to a hotel after my friends’ wedding reception and turned on the TV to the news reports.
September 11 – driving into work, late, and heard the news report of the first plane. Also thought it was a small one. Didn’t have a radio at my desk that worked, so I tried getting updates online, but all of the servers were jammed. Finally made it to a small political page that was able to update.
But the one the really stuck with me was the moment I heard that Brandon Lee had died on the set of The Crow. I was at my friend’s house, getting ready to leave to go work on a school project, and his Dad had the news on – Tragedy Strikes Movie Set” with Brandon Lee’s picture. All I could fathom during the commercial break was that someone had been hurt during the filming of The Crow – extra, stuntman. During the commercial, I explained all about the film and Brandon to my friend’s parents. I just knew this was going to be his breakout role. Then the report came back on. My knees went weak and I had to sit down.
-Joe
Not being any kind of Beatles fan, I have no clear memory of the event. I just know it happened.
However I clearly remember the moment when I first heard John Belushi had died. My mom was driving me to school (High School, that is) and my best friend and I could not believe it. We thought it was a hoax, that it was some kind of mistake.
Let’s see:
JFK: I wasn’t born yet.
Lennon: Elementary school. I remember hearing it on the radio.
Reagan: Junior High. It was announced during class.
Challenger: High School. Heard about it during lunch.
9/11: I working in my office. An architect called and told me about it.
25 years ago… I was younger. A few years to go before opening my business. I was working at a record store. Lennon’s latest had been released and we had an open copy for in-store play. I remember listening to the entire record album thinking I wanted a copy for myself. Before the close of the day Monday, I purchased my copy.
It was very eerie listening to the album again when I got home from the record store that night, and then hearing he was shot. I still get a very odd feeling everytime I hear any tune from that album, with the main tract being my favorite, “Starting Over.”
Lennon: I have no recollection of when it happened. I was 13, and not very musically inclined – so it just didn’t affect me.
Reagan: Junior High. Announced over the PA in our PE class. The system was so bad, though, we weren’t sure if he was dead or not. It was a long afternoon.
Challenger: Freshman year of college. We heard about it on break from English class. I spent most of the rest of the day at the student union watching replays.
9/11: Work. We heard “a plane” had hit. No one knew at the time it was a passenger jet, and most of us assumed it was a small craft off course. A half hour later we heard differently. Someone had a 13″ TV under their desk and over 30 people crowded around it we watched coverage for an hour.
Columbia: Home on Saturday morning. We didn’t hear the explosions like many in our area (D/FW). Ironically, I found out about it from Google News. I just about dropped the laptop to get the TV on.
I remember staying up late and having the TV on, even though it was a school night. I had the channel on ABC channel 7, when a special report come on interupted a program. When a reporter announced that a man identified as John Lennon had been shot. From what I can remember, I was stunned and had a strange feeling. The next morning, while getting ready for school. I heard further news that John Lennon had died. I just remembered feeling sad and like a part of history had ended.
Lennon: I was twelve. When I got to school that morning, my homeroom teacher was sitting at her desk, weeping. “They killed him,” she said.
Reagan: I remember it, but it wasn’t one of those pivotal moments for me.
Challenger, OTOH…I was in my senior year of high school, in Psych class. It was one of the only rooms in that part of the building that was wired for cable, and our physics teacher came running in and told the psych teacher to turn on the tv. It stayed on in that room for the rest of the day, and students drifted in and out to watch the coverage. We didn’t have regular classes that afternoon.
9/11: I was at work, early as usual, and my boss called on his way in to say that a plane had crashed into the WTC, that he thought terrorists were responsible, and that I should turn on the tv in the conference room. I was watching live when the second plane hit. The rest of that day is a blur, but I remember driving to Glenn and Brandy Hauman’s home in Weehawken, and Glenn and I stood at the end of his street (overlooking the Lincoln Tunnel helix) and looked at the smoke (and later, the bright spots backlighting the darkened buildings of lower Manhattan. It was also very, very quiet without air traffic (though we had the occasional loud jet fighter passing over, which kept us rather jumpy).
Oddly enough, one thing that really struck me about that day was how careful people were with each other. I had to take a very roundabout route to get to Glenn & Brandy’s place (a bomb threat had shut down Route 3), and though there was an immense amount of traffic, drivers were letting each other pass, merge, change lanes, etc. without any of the usual NYC-NJ metro area crap.
I was watching TV and on one of those news blurbs they have before TV shows they announced “One of the Beatles is dead.” But I had to wait an hour until the 11 pm news to find out which one.
25 years ago, I was 9. I remember hearing that someone had been shot…one of the Beetles, there was some discussion that maybe 2 of them were dead, and later that it was just John. I knew that was a Big Deal, but not really why.
Reagan…I don’t remember where I was. I remember seeing a lot of it on TV, but he didn’t die, and mostly it was all ok (not for the SS guys and other people that were shot).
Challenger: High School German class (second period, I think, but that’s probably wrong. Joe had been in the library when it happened, and he ran into class saying “the space shuttle blew up.” He was a class joker, so I don’t think anyone believed him at first.
9/11: sitting home unemployed, working on the computer, with the TV off…that was a rare thing for me to do at the time, work with the TV off. My girlfriend called from her work and asked me if I knew about the towers. Spent the next 36 hours watching TV. I’ll never forget the feeling I had when the first tower collapsed on live TV. At the time, I thought I had just watched 10,000 people die. You know that moment in New Hope when Alderaan blows up, and Ben staggers? That’s what it felt like.
I was 13 when Kennedy was assassinated and in junior high. I remember heading from Spanish to typing. I remember hearing the whisper being passed down the stairwell as we walked up, and the official word coming over the intercom once we reached class.
I was 30 when Lennon was assassinated. I was watching CBS News with Rolland Smith, and the last item on the broadcast was that Lennon had been shot. I was concerned, but shot does not always mean dead, and death was not my first thought. I walked from the living room to the bedroom and turned on the radio, and heard the devastating news. And a few minutes later, a friend I hadn’t spoken with in a few years called, and we spent hours reminiscing. But it was the next day that was bizarre. I worked for CBS News at the time, and people there knew I was a Beatles’ fan. They sent me home in a cab to “bring in my collection” because they were preparing a special to air that night. I brought in what I could and spent the rest of the helping assemble the show. The producer was an idiot. He saw a subheading in the New York Times that said “The Dream Is Over,” and used that for the title of the broadcast. The day was weird because as much as I was mourning on the inside, the hast of production has a high of its own that wanted to counteract the mourning. In that sense, it was one of the weirdest days of my life.
Linda Deneroff
One other event nobody has mentioned–when the OJ Simpson verdict came in they telecast it on the close circuit TV system at the school where I did my student teaching.
While I understand why this might have been an emotional moment for people, as someone who was living in LA at the time of the verdict I was mostly just happy to have the dámņëd thing over with. Talk about your overblown circuses, with front-page coverage in the LA Times every single bloody day for nonths. Ick.
I was giving a quiz the day the verdict came in, and one student asked if they could take a break from the quiz to go watch the verdict. I said no. Someone said, “but this is the trial of the century!” I said, “No — Nuremberg has a good shot at being the trial of the century. Some football star hacking up his wife — oh, excuse me, *allegedly* hacking up his wife — isn’t even close.”
Said student asked who Nuremberg was.
Ah, America, land of the shallow…
TWL