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Jolted from a carefree teenage state

Folded gum wrapper chains as long as the height of all four Beatles put together — who could build it first? That was the contest on WLS radio, and that’s what my friends and I secretly did in class every possible moment of the day during eighth grade in 1963. That was only a small part of the Beatle Mania that devoured our every waking moment, and drove our lives: boys, high school, dancing the Twist, the Monkeys, the Watusi, the Mashed Potatoes.

Then one day in school after lunch, the ancient Spanish teacher with her wiry black and silver threaded hair teased and contorted into a French twist, walked into class but didn’t say a word. Class felt oddly uncomfortable until the principal came on the PA system with an announcement. President Kennedy had been shot and might not live. That was it — no classroom TV, no media replaying the events over and over, at least not that day in school like they did on 9/11.

I don’t remember what happened the rest of that day. I only remember feeling that my life had somehow ended, that suddenly my carefree little bubble had burst, the blanket covering my eyes was yanked off and I saw the big bad world. All I had known of JFK and Jackie was that they had tragically lost a child a couple of years earlier, and that event had struck even my 11-year-old self. But now we could not go back to our carefree childhoods. Our eyes were opened to the world around us — a series of assassinations, a war no one wanted, hateful discrimination. Kennedy’s assassination was the shock wave that woke a generation and gave us courage to try to make a change in the world we found.

Gisela Carlander

Wauconda

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