"In memory, it’s all in black and white."

Many of us who were alive on November 22, 1963, had experiences similar to Patrick Kurps:

No public event has shaken me so lastingly as the assassination of President Kennedy. I’m not speaking sentimentally, mourning the glory that was Camelot. JFK was a mediocre president, at best, and not a good man.

I had turned eleven a month before his murder. The killing taught me that everyone was vulnerable, even the most powerful and protected man in the world. I don’t mean that in the personal sense. I haven’t spent the last sixty-two years trembling with paranoia. I’m talking about history. No one is immune to its machinations. Few things last.

The way I learned of the assassination seems significant. Ron Ornsby and I were in the same sixth-grade class and had walked to our Safety Patrol post, carrying our flags and wearing Sam Browne belts. A driver stopped to tell us the president had been shot. ....

When I walked in the back door at home, I could see the silhouette of my mother crying in front of the television. For the next three days, we were forbidden to play outside and spent most of the time watching the news from Dallas and Washington, D.C. In memory, it’s all in black and white. ....

I was a high school senior that year. I was home because that was the day of my grandmother's funeral. We learned of the assassination from a television broadcast just before leaving to go to the church. We didn't know the President was dead until after my grandmother's interment. The lady who drove us to the cemetery stayed in the car, listening to the radio. When we got home, I called the school. I learned later that there had been crying in the halls and classrooms. The band from my high school had marched in JFK's inaugural parade.

Some time later, I learned that C.S. Lewis had also died on that day.

Patrick Kurp, "'But O the Heavy Change, Now Thou Art Gone'," Anecdotal Evidence, Nov. 22, 2025.