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
• 
I was packing up from finals week freshman year at college when I heard the news (oh boy).
Couldn’t think of anything reasonable to do, so I took down all my rock’n’roll posters out of respect.
Sorry, Pad, but I was about a three month old fetus at the time, so my recollection of that day goes something like this:
Floating. Floating. Wishing I had cable. Floating.
“… but most of all i dreamed that i forgot the day john kennedy died …” –lou reed
I was 29 years old,(I’m 54 now and apparently the oldest poster on this board), when Lennon was killed so of course I remember it. I was working nights at a graphics company doing paste-up, (before Quark Xpress and computers), and a guy who had a radio in the dark room came out an said rather nonchalantly, “Well, I guess there won’t ever be a Beatles reunion.” My workmate’s attitude aside, it was a watershed moment. My generation was altered by the Beatles and the death of one of them meant we all no longer invulnerable.
John Kennedy: I was in 5th grade. The principal announced on the school intercom that the president has been shot. Our teacher jumped up and left the room.
Ronald Reagan: Heard about it on the radio on the way to work out.
Princess Diana: I really can’t remember where I first heard she was in an accident but I remember watching the coverage on television on a Saturday moring after the announcement of her death.
9/11: On my way to work the morning DJ announced that a plane had hit the WTC. He turned his entire show into reading whatever info he could get. He speculated that it was no accident even before the second plane hit.
I was only 6 when John Lennon died, and I really don’t remember it at all. My parent’s weren’t fans of his, so I don’t think they were upset.
I remember when Reagan was shot – I heard about it on the news, and then next day I remember telling my teacher, “Did you hear that the president got shot?” And she was a little short with me, and said, “Yes, I know,” in an annoyed tone of voice. I was only in first grade, so I didn’t really understand how serious it was.
I was in school watching the Challenger launch on TV when it exploded. I rememeber the total shock, and that night they showed it over and over again on the news. I was depressed because I was a science nerd, and I remember them saying how the shuttle program was going to be suspended. I was afraid we’d never be able to send anyone up again.
I wasn’t usually upset about celebrity deaths until Jim Henson. Like Tim Lynch above, his death hit me. It hit me so hard, it hurt. I remember telling someone how upset I was, and I remember them saying, “well then you must not have had very many bad things happen to you if you’re that upset about someone you haven’t met,” but Jim Henson was one of the few people in the entertainment world who I looked up to and respected. I would have given anything to have had the chance to meet him and tell him how much I loved his work, and I would never have that chance.
Another event I remember clearly was the Oklahoma City bombing. The morning it happened I was in my last year of college, and that day I was going to a local junior high school as an observer for my teacher education class. The whole time on the way to school I had the news on, and when I got there I didn’t want to turn the radio off. When I got into the school, the TV in the classrooms were all turned to the bombing news, and we didn’t really have class.
9-11 was strange for me. I was living in Japan teaching English at the time, so I was just getting ready for bed at almost 11 PM when my sister called me and said, “You aren’t going to believe this! A plane hit the World Trade Center!!”. We both wondered whether it was an accident, and when I turned on the TV it was already on NHK news. A minute or so later the second plane hit while I was still on the phone with my sister, and we both agreed that it probably wasn’t an accident. I had satellite radio in my apartment, so I turned on NPR and listened to the news while the images played on NHK. It was horrible, but I couldn’t look away. I was up all night. The next morning I went to the school where I was teaching, and no one knew what to say except that it was “horrible” and people were wanting to know if I knew anyone who had been involved. My mother called to let me know that my uncle, who worked in Rockefeller Center for NBC, was okay even though the island had been locked down. The Japanese newspapers had the pictures of people falling from the buildings on the front pages for the next couple of days, and it was all anyone could talk about. It was surreal, actually. My sister later called me and told me that the entire country had gone insane, and that it was a good thing I wasn’t there. I was shocked by the differences in attitudes and things when I finally did go back to the US from Japan. It was more than just culture shock.
Posted by: George Haberberger at December 9, 2005 02:57 PM
I was 29 years old,(I’m 54 now and apparently the oldest poster on this board)
Note my comment about being in high school (10th grade) when JFK was shot — born 22/10/48, i gotcha by five years…
Heck, my Rotten Kid Brother David Weber, the sf author, was 54 back in October…
(Would fixing the “Preview” functio be entirely too much to ask?)
I wasn’t born yet, but I love John Lennon as I love each and every one of the Beatles.
Peter David! Wow. You are an awesome writer. I love thee. My two favorite things about Star Trek: TNG was Q and the the relationship between Deanna and Will… you did a wonderful job. I’ve read both Imzadi and Q-Squared about three times each. I loved them that much! *Anyways* You take care. Thanks for the adventures!
1I was 17 at the time, still in high school, a budding guitar player and due to my older sister, a lifelong Beatle fan. My friends and i heard the news the next day, as to those teens the news was seldom watched and always suspect. Hard to accurately guage the fallout from that event in our lives. A complex man and certainly no saint, but we sure could use his voice right about now. December 8th still makes me feel wistful and makes me play the “what if” game. Coulda, shoulda, woulda… Chapman you fûçk.
I was in the back room of a supermarket where I worked when the news came over the radio. When I got home, I turned on the news and heard, incredulous, that John Lennon had died.
I can remember picking up my guitar right away and playing some Beatles songs for reassurance.
As for Challenger, I was filling in as the relief switchboard operator in the newsroom at The Atlantic City Press when the board all of a sudden went crazy with phone calls.
Just how badly do we need John Lennon right now in 2005? We’ve been led blindly to the war in Iraq. We’ve seem to have lost so much of the
hopes that we had for the world and the future
of mankind. We miss you, John. 🙁
Imagine. 🙂
Talk about your overblown circuses, with front-page coverage in the LA Times every single bloody day for nonths. Ick.
The OJ trial took away the entire fiction of the news outlets as “presenting news”. For example, one day I was home for a quick lunch and wanted to catch a quick news update. I turned on Headline News at the top of the hour. Of their first 12-minute segment that was supposed to be “top stories”, 7 of it was recapping the morning action at the trial.
Ed Murrow must have been weeping in his grave.
Tim Lynch: Lennon: I was a couple of months shy of 11…
Luigi Novi: Whoa, you’re only two years older than me, Tim? Hmph, for some reason I always pictured you as being older than that, and even kept that impression after I saw you on Jeopardy!. Sorry ’bout that. 🙂
Whoa, you’re only two years older than me, Tim? Hmph, for some reason I always pictured you as being older than that, and even kept that impression after I saw you on Jeopardy!. Sorry ’bout that. 🙂
I get that a lot, actually — more often than I think I’d care to. 🙂 I suspect some of it is that I went through school young (graduated college at 20), and from an early age tended to hang out with those 1-3 years older than myself. I think that’s probably made me come across as marginally older than I actually am.
But in any case … no need for apology, you young whippersnapper. 🙂
TWL
I was still living in my parents’ home. I remember feeling very sad, crying as I went to sleep, then awakening at about 11:15 with a start, right around the time he went from “shot” to “dead.” My world was devastated. As I mention on my blog, Lennon’s death combined with Reagan’s election spelled the beginning of the end for me as far as the direction of this country…
even kept that impression after I saw you on Jeopardy!
Tim, when were you on Jeopardy? How’d you do? Did Sean Connery make any rude jokes about Trebek’s mother?
Holy crap, Tim, I never realized you were a celeb. You’re in wikipedia! I thought you were just a mild mannered Physics teacher. You had a Star Trek character named after you! Wicked cool.
Jeeze, am I the only person on this board who’s just an ordinary shmuck spouting off?
JFK: -5 years old.
Lennon: I was in sixth grade and heard about it on the intercom.
Challenger: Senior year of high school.
Di: Was watching “The Pretender” when the program was pre-empted.
9/11: Was working at the airport when I was asked if I heard about what just happened.
JFK: -7 years of age and counting.
Lennon: I was at home for some reason. I think I was sick. Found out about it when my dad saw it on TV.
Challenger: Sitting in science class when the word came over the P.A. We didn’t need to be told. We were watching it.
Di: I found out about that one a bit late. A group of us were working overtime in the job I had back then and we didn’t have the TV or radio on. I drove home at about 1:00 AM to a CD and never once turned anything live on. I woke up the next morning and flipped the TV on for some breakfast entertainment and found masses of crying people on the news.
9/11: I was hired to be a police officer by the department I work for now in July of 2001. 9/11 was on the sixth day of my Academe.
“Jeeze, am I the only person on this board who’s just an ordinary shmuck spouting off?”
Nah. My only brush with being a celeb is being in long shots of TV footage of a car wreck while the newsman was saying, “….and you can see the police working in the background.” Somehow, I seem to be missing all the calls from Leno’s people to come on the show and talk about it.
***********************************************
“The OJ trial took away the entire fiction of the news outlets as “presenting news”.”
I always thought that the entire Jim and Tammy freak show did that.
Holy crap, Tim, I never realized you were a celeb. You’re in wikipedia! I thought you were just a mild mannered Physics teacher. You had a Star Trek character named after you! Wicked cool.
Oddly enough, I found out about the wikipedia entry a couple of months ago when my students found it. Oy. (They’ve since been adding to it themselves, which worries me greatly…)
As with many things that are entirely user-submitted, the entry isn’t entirely accurate; I need to get in myself one of these days and edit a few things. For one, the “Ensign Lynch” in ST:FC is not a reference to me, though that didn’t stop me from doing a major double-take when I saw the film.
Now, the enigmatic and unflappable Professor Lynch who teaches at Starfleet Academy in a certain three-named author’s novel … *that* one’s me.
TWL
It’s a good thing I don’t have an entry because I doubt that I could resist the urge to put in untrue but hard to disprove “facts” like “A 1987 operation to remove a benign brain tumor revealed the existence of a parasitic twin. The discovery of partially formed teeth and a functional retina within the brain tissue led to major advances in the field of stem cell research.” or “His 1979 plagiarism lawsuit against the makers of the film “Zontar, the Thing From Venus” was thrown out when it was pointed out that he had not yet been born when the movie was released.”
“Holy crap, Tim, I never realized you were a celeb. You’re in wikipedia! … Jeeze, am I the only person on this board who’s just an ordinary shmuck spouting off?”
Well, my name was listed in the letter column of G.I. Joe #152 under “And special thanks to the following Joes for writing in” 😉
Seriously, I am surprised that I can’t remember anything about Lennon’s death, even though I was only six at the time, as my parents were serious Beatles fans. Now, of course, I recognize them as the single most important rock group of all time; and I remember playing “Something” on the jukebox at a local bar the day George Harrison’s death was announced (not the only Harison-penned track to be played that evening) ….
I was in sixth grade for Challenger. The fourth through sixth grades at my school were housed in this supposedly hip experiment called “the open space”. A large section of the building had no interior walls; the classrooms were separated by office cubicle-ish partitions … except for two of the sixth grades, which just occupied opposite ends of one large space. (What all of this was meant to accomplish – beats me, beyond an inkling of a reference to “increasing interaction”. They built full walls in a few years later.) Anyway, sometimes they used this large double-class space to accomodate larger groups of students, to show us movies, including The Empire Strikes Back (yeah!) … or, on that day, the Challenger crash coverage.
Bill, your mention of the O.J. verdict helped comfirm for me that my own experience of that event may have been atypical, influenced by region. I was in undergrad at SUNY (State University of New York) Oswego, on the shore of Lake Ontario, in the Central New York area. The student population was mostly in-state, about equal parts from the NYC area and from Syracuse/Rochester/Buffalo … largely Buffalo Bills territory. (Well, Syracuse itself is more split between Bills and Giants – and the Eagles now have a larger following with SU grad Donavan McNabb there; I myself am a Broncos fan, of course … anyway – a lot of Bills fans.) The verdict came in – 12:45ish? Sometime in early afternoon between classes. And, in my residence hall’s hallway … it was cheered. Not a whole bunch of jumping up and down or anything – though one or two guys may’ve called out “Yeah!” – but definitely audibly pleased with the verdict. (And for the record, non of these guys were African-American, so that supposed “racial” divide wasn’t in play here.) I think over the next couple of days, I encountered a little more variety of opinion; but in general, the population at my school at that time seemed to feel that it was the correct verdict. And the idea I’ve had that that was influenced by not wanting “one of our guys” – the former superstar Bills running back – to be found guilty of murder – having a harder time believing it at all of a Bill – does seem to be supported by your FAR different experience, Bill (Mulligan). Huh.
I don’t remember when I found out John Lennon was dead, I just remember finding out and being sad. I was ten and pretty much raised on my parents’ Beatles albums.
I left high school early the day of the Challenger disaster (I was sick–or maybe faking sick) and came home to find Kathy telling me the Challenger had exploded. She’d been watching CNN, which was the only network by that point that still bothered to show shuttle launches as they were happening.
9/11 I was unemployed and had gone to the parents’ house to borrow their bandwidth so I could job hunt. In between job sites, I surfed over to the message board at duranduran.com and saw a bunch of posts about the World Trade Center. Baffled, I wondered if I’d missed something and checked the headlines on the morning paper. Then I realized that whatever it was had just happened. I went to Yahoo or something and got the full story as best we knew it up to that point. I also remember Kathy called to let us know that she was alive and well, but that traffic was absolute hëll. I watched the evening news all the way through for the first time in as many ages, and switched the set off in disgust when they closed the broadcast by repeating the footage of people leaping from the smoking windows.
Lennon: I was 15. I had heard the story on the local rock radio station that evening and remember watching the news for more details. I discussed it with a couple of friends the next morning. We were all very saddened.
Reagan: Still 15. I was in a science class when one of the aides from the prinicpal’s office came into the room to deliver some paperwork. He told our teacher that the President had been shot. We listened to the news coverage on a radio for the rest of the class.
Challenger: I was finishing some homework for an afternoon college class and had the television on so that I could see the launch. I remember seeing a small, odd fiery burst coming from the craft that caught my attention. Within just a second or two, it blew up.
9/11: My car was in the shop for some work that I thought was going to cost me a fortune ( axle replacement). I was on the phone with the mechanic who told me that it was actually something else and was going to be a lot cheaper than he originally suspected. Then, he commented on the “stuff going on in New York.” I asked around the office since I had come in a little late. News was sketchy, but most of us made our way to a breakroom where there was a small TV. We were viewing just as the first tower collapsed.
Jim Lawless
Whoa, looks like I stirred up a hornet’s nest of adulation. 🙂
I had no idea you knew Gyllenhaal, or that you now teach at my sister’s alma matter, in my state of residence, I assumed you still lived in CA.
I’m a contributor to Wikipedia, and just now, I removed some material that was not NPOV, and fixed some spelling, wording, and redunant material. I also fixed the assertion that Ensign Lynch was named after you, and added the bit about Professor Lynch from the novels, but can you tell me who authored those novels?
Also, can you provide your city and date of birth? Thanks.
I must have been about 5. I remember being in the kitchen when it was announced on the radio. I remember my mother was a bit sad about it.
Luigi- “can you tell me who authored those novels”?
Tim- “Now, the enigmatic and unflappable Professor Lynch who teaches at Starfleet Academy in a certain three-named author’s novel … *that* one’s me.”
If you haven’t connected the dots yet, please refer to the URL of this page. It’s Starfleet Academy book 1.
I was at an intel site overseas and the gang was goofing and laughing and I thought I caight something about…WTF…John Lennon was shot and killed…on the news but the noise blocked it out. The news came on again on the half hour and we all listened this time. We worked quietly for the rest of the day.
I was in Nova High School (Florida)and it was a shocker…
I remember this event vividly and Reagan getting shot by the Jodi Foster stalker…
Crazy world that we live in.
Regards:
Warren S. Jones III
Wasn’t born then, had to go to my parents.
They said “Beats us, we didn’t like the Beatles”
I was just shy of five months old. I think I was more interested in discovering the deep, dark mystery of what exactly my fingers were.
It happened at about 10:55, late for me to go to bed where I’d needed to commute from Stamford, CT into NYC. Listening to WNEW-FM (which doesn’t exist today save for call letters and place on the dial), Vinny Scalsa (splng?) announced that Lennon had been shot. The other guys in the house were in the basement and quickly changed to an NYC channel to get the confirmation.
That Sunday, during the moment of silence, we were in the basement again, looking at one another. There was no point to going to what then became Strawberry Fields, because that was a mob scene. Silence for John.
Catullus Johnson
Posted by mike weber at December 9, 2005 03:24 PM
>
Hey, it’s relief to not be the oldest guy in the group. Thanks for info.
I was in my last year of college. In those days, I had a habit of sleeping with the radio on; at around 1 or 2 am on the morning of December 9th, I awoke in the middle of a Beatles song playing (I think it was “Revolution”), and thought nothing of it as I tried to drift back to sleep, when at the end of the song the DJ said something like, “That’s another song in memory of John Lennon, who was shot seven times tonight.” It was like a punch in the stomach; the adrenaline kicked in like 50 cups of coffee, and I lay there in the dark as more Lennon songs were played and the details of the shooting, as they were known as the time, were being recounted again and again on the station throughout the early morning hours. When I went to my day job at around 6 am, I bought the early edition of the local paper and devoured the sketchy details that it provided. All through the day I just I thought what a shame, after having just released his first album in years (which I’d bought a few weeks earlier), and being ready and eager to resuscitate his career, that this should happen. I bought the Rolling Stone tribute issue when it was released shortly afterward, and I remember being haunted by the photos that Annie Lebowitz had taken just hours before his death. 9/11, as horrible as it was, didn’t affect me the way Lennon’s death did; it guess I just took it more personally, since I “knew” Lennon, but didn’t have any personal loss in the terrorists attacks.
I will forever miss John Lennon. He is an amazing person and an undying spirit. John will live on in all of us. P.S. I was also unborn and i agree that the first “major” event that i know where i was was in fact 9/11.
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