Katelyn Clark- Midterm- JFK Assassination

John F. Kennedy Assassination

By: Katelyn Clark

It was a cool and sunny day in November 1963 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and Deborah Grandshaw was in gym class in the convent basement at Mount Carmel Grammar School. 

Grandshaw, 13, with beautiful long brown hair is surprised to see Mother Superior come in. She called the nun teaching gym over and they spoke privately. 

Before Deborah knew it, the entire school was walking to the church, Father Santini went up to the altar and told them they needed to pray.  They all bowed their heads and put their hands together as he spoke.

“The President has been shot,” said Father Santini. “We need to all pray for him.”

The entire church was silent, Deborah started crying. So were others in the church.

They were all scared and sad, John F. Kennedy was a Massachusetts native once, the first Catholic president, Catholic school loved him.  His photo hung in the school hallway when you walked into the lobby. 

Deborah was sent home early, along with the rest of the school.  She arrived home after walking home from school to her brother Michael, who was eight years old, and her sister Marie, three years old. 

Her mother, 34, and father, 36, are very sad, coming home from work with tear stained faces.  Michael knows enough to cry with his sister and parents.  Marie is too young to understand.

The whole world stopped, everything was standing still since the news broke JFK was shot.  Everyone was sitting around their small boxed televisions and barely breathing.

No one knows what is going to happen to the country Deborah remembers.  She knew that the vice president was going to take over, but that didn’t make her feel any better. The President of the United States was dying.

“Mother Superior called, no one is going to school today.  She says to pray for the Kennedys,” her mother told her the next day

They all huddled around the television again, days later, to watch the broadcast of the funeral. 

She couldn’t believe how sad Jacqueline Kennedy looked walking behind the horse drawn hearse.  It was almost as if it should have been a movie, but this was real life.

The family cried silently watching on television. Little John John salute his father’s coffin. Deborah imagines being in that position, looking at Michael, the two were close in age.

Two days later the country was in shock again when it was announced that Lee Harvey Oswald, who was charged with murdering the president, had been shot in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters by a man named Jack Ruby.

In the days following, people returned to work and school.  The only thing anyone was talking about was the assassination and how Oswald had also been murdered on November 24^th. 

This will change the United States, remembers Grandshaw.  She knew she had witnessed a piece of history that would be talked about forever.