I was in utero as well (but a different one than JD).
ClarkKent_DC > JD DeLuzioNovember 28, 2025 at 9:05pm
JD Deluzio said:
I might allow this about JFK (though his wife, certainly, couldn't trust him), but it's difficult to take this dialogue seriously with any subsequent American president (even those for whom I hold admiration), and for some, impossible.
I have a lot in common with Commander Benson's memories. I’m a little older and was in the tenth grade at the time. My parents were also staunch Republicans. In my case I slowly became a Democrat as I got older. On the day, I was in my English class and it was the end of class. Before going on to my next classroom I approached the teacher’s desk with a question. Another teacher got to her first. He said “the President’s been shot.” I can still hear her voice: “Our President??” I immediately forgot my question. When I got to my next classroom, the teacher and the class were absorbed in the news. I don’t remember if we were sent home early. My mother hadn’t worked since she was a legal secretary in England and was having a lot of trouble getting a job. I had obtained my Social Security card* and was working as a teacher’s assistant. President Kennedy’s death was less of a shock to me because my father had suddenly died two months earlier.
*Back then you didn’t get a social security number as an infant. My mother must have gotten hers around the same time.
The only deaths that I remember hitting me was Elvis in 1977 because of how it affected my mother and John Lennon in 1980 because that summer I had "discovered" the Beatles.
My grandfather died when I was four and there were no deaths in my family (in the US) during my childhood/teen/young adult years.
I remember MLK and RFK. My mother was a staunch Republican, and wasn't very sympathetic, but thought it was bad (for Republicans). I remember John Lennon, and my sister crying on the phone.
The Baron > Captain ComicsNovember 22, 2025 at 9:48pm
I was just shy of five months old when JFK was shot. I came from that rarity of rarities, a Boston Irish-American Catholic family that were not big Kennedy boostere. I have no memory of RFK. I remember Howard Cosell announcing Lennon's death on Monday Night Football.
The big event that I remember shocking everyone was the Challenger blowing up. I remember getting into South Station that evening and hearing a newsvendor chanting in a deep, sonorous voice, "Shuttle is destroyed, crew is dead!"
I was walking into work at a newspaper when Challenger happened. I don't know what the normal world did with that. We just got to work. It was a job.
JD DeLuzio > Captain ComicsNovember 23, 2025 at 7:51am
I know there were discussions at home surrounding the MLK and RFK assassinations.
I was in third-year university when the Challenger happened. I don't recall my schedule that day, but for some reason, I was at home and found out right away.
And my wife and I visited NYC in August, 2001. I phoned her from work when I heard the news on 9-11 and she spent the day on the phone trying to reach friends of ours, who then lived in Forest Hills. He was home. She had to walk back from Manhattan, which isn't the worst thing that could have happened to her, but it was late in the day before anyone knew she was safe. I kept thinking that, when we were in New York, we debated whether to go up the Empire State Building or the World Trade Center. I suggested that we should do the Empire State, because it had more history and, anyway, "the World Trade Center's still going to be there the next time." So that comment has stayed with me.
I was walking into work at a newspaper when Challenger happened. I don't know what the normal world did with that. We just got to work. It was a job.
You had your own reasons for editing this comment, Cap, but I rather liked the original post, in which you detailed a bit more of the "roll up your sleeves" attitudes that such an event brought to you and others at your newspaper. It opened my eyes to something, one of those things which one knows if he stops to think about it, but he never really does.
Those calamities which strike our national sensibilities---J.F.K., M.L.K., R.F.K., the fire in the Apollo One capsule, the Challenger explosion, 9-11---fill us with shock and disbelief. For most of us, our regular daily routine stops, or at least, pauses, while we gather around the television set for details and commisserate over the horror and tragedy. I remember distinctly how ordinary life seemed to suspend for five days that November in 1963, as one unthinkable event piled on another: Kennedy's assassination; the hunt for his killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Oswald's murder of Officer Tippitt; Oswald's killing by Jack Ruby, live on camera; and finally, the funeral of a sitting President. But I couldn't tell you anything else I did for those five days.
The same holds true for each of those disasters I mentioned. (I remember during the 1960's, it was so bad that every time my TV show was interrupted with the announcement "Special Bulletin", I would think, "Oh, God, now what?")
I said it was true for most of us. Your post, Cap, brought to home that for newsmen like yourself, it was just the opposite.
Where most of America had the luxury of putting our lives on hold, it was fellows like you whose workload just ramped up. Journalists of all media were suddenly thrust into twenty-four-hour work days as they laboured to sort out the details, determine fact from word-of-mouth assumption, burn up shoe leather and telephone lines, to get to us, the folks who were glued to their television sets, radios, and newspapers, the truth of what just happened as quickly and accurately as possible. There are some personal and corporate motivations for this, of course, but overwhelmingly, the people reporting the news see it as their duty to the public.
Then there are the efforts of the people behind the by-lines; the editors, the typesetters, the guys who work the presses, the TV producers and cameramen. They work ceaselessly too at times like that.
Perhaps, Cap, you deleted your description of events from your post because you felt it sounded too work-a-day, and thus insensitive. I took it as just the opposite. I saw it as a bunch of trained professionals leaping into action when they're needed most. If it sounded too routine, that's because, in a way, it was. Just like firemen attacking a fire, policemen charging into gunfire, military people surging into battle---they're responding instinctively to their years of training and experience. It is just business---because it has to be. Otherwise, the job doesn't get done. Of course, they, and you, feel the same shock and disbelief, but they shelve it for later. In the iiving moment, it's total professionalism that's needed.
The Internet has made it all too easy for anyone with a desktop computer and a keyboard to publicly disseminate "the news", with no accountability, standards, or ethics. That hurts the profession of journalism by diluting the reliability the rest of us felt about the information that came out over the airwaves or in the papers about some tragic event.
I'm glad you reminded us that, while we're sitting in front of our sets, grasping for information on just why and how such a terrible thing happened and reeling over the fact of it, there are men and women in the business of news reporting who are working like mad to bring that needed info to us. That it sounds like "just business as usual" is part of the professionalism that is needed.
Believe me, Cap, I'm not usually one to praise the press. I'm often critical. But that's in response to the stray bad actors in the news business (just as there are bad actors in every profession). Sure, on infrequent occasion, "freedom of the press" goes too far. But, by God, I'm glad we have it, and that it's enacted by journalists with standards and ethics.
It was "just" a job---but we needed every one of you.
Replies
I was in utero at the time, but my parents, though Canadian, thought highly of Kennedy, and I learned about the assassination quite early on.
I was in utero as well (but a different one than JD).
JD Deluzio said:
I think this works with President Carter.
I have a lot in common with Commander Benson's memories. I’m a little older and was in the tenth grade at the time. My parents were also staunch Republicans. In my case I slowly became a Democrat as I got older. On the day, I was in my English class and it was the end of class. Before going on to my next classroom I approached the teacher’s desk with a question. Another teacher got to her first. He said “the President’s been shot.” I can still hear her voice: “Our President??” I immediately forgot my question. When I got to my next classroom, the teacher and the class were absorbed in the news. I don’t remember if we were sent home early. My mother hadn’t worked since she was a legal secretary in England and was having a lot of trouble getting a job. I had obtained my Social Security card* and was working as a teacher’s assistant. President Kennedy’s death was less of a shock to me because my father had suddenly died two months earlier.
*Back then you didn’t get a social security number as an infant. My mother must have gotten hers around the same time.
The only deaths that I remember hitting me was Elvis in 1977 because of how it affected my mother and John Lennon in 1980 because that summer I had "discovered" the Beatles.
My grandfather died when I was four and there were no deaths in my family (in the US) during my childhood/teen/young adult years.
I remember MLK and RFK. My mother was a staunch Republican, and wasn't very sympathetic, but thought it was bad (for Republicans). I remember John Lennon, and my sister crying on the phone.
I was just shy of five months old when JFK was shot. I came from that rarity of rarities, a Boston Irish-American Catholic family that were not big Kennedy boostere. I have no memory of RFK. I remember Howard Cosell announcing Lennon's death on Monday Night Football.
The big event that I remember shocking everyone was the Challenger blowing up. I remember getting into South Station that evening and hearing a newsvendor chanting in a deep, sonorous voice, "Shuttle is destroyed, crew is dead!"
And of course, 9/11.
I was walking into work at a newspaper when Challenger happened. I don't know what the normal world did with that. We just got to work. It was a job.
I know there were discussions at home surrounding the MLK and RFK assassinations.
I was in third-year university when the Challenger happened. I don't recall my schedule that day, but for some reason, I was at home and found out right away.
And my wife and I visited NYC in August, 2001. I phoned her from work when I heard the news on 9-11 and she spent the day on the phone trying to reach friends of ours, who then lived in Forest Hills. He was home. She had to walk back from Manhattan, which isn't the worst thing that could have happened to her, but it was late in the day before anyone knew she was safe. I kept thinking that, when we were in New York, we debated whether to go up the Empire State Building or the World Trade Center. I suggested that we should do the Empire State, because it had more history and, anyway, "the World Trade Center's still going to be there the next time." So that comment has stayed with me.
I was walking into work at a newspaper when Challenger happened. I don't know what the normal world did with that. We just got to work. It was a job.
You had your own reasons for editing this comment, Cap, but I rather liked the original post, in which you detailed a bit more of the "roll up your sleeves" attitudes that such an event brought to you and others at your newspaper. It opened my eyes to something, one of those things which one knows if he stops to think about it, but he never really does.
Those calamities which strike our national sensibilities---J.F.K., M.L.K., R.F.K., the fire in the Apollo One capsule, the Challenger explosion, 9-11---fill us with shock and disbelief. For most of us, our regular daily routine stops, or at least, pauses, while we gather around the television set for details and commisserate over the horror and tragedy. I remember distinctly how ordinary life seemed to suspend for five days that November in 1963, as one unthinkable event piled on another: Kennedy's assassination; the hunt for his killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Oswald's murder of Officer Tippitt; Oswald's killing by Jack Ruby, live on camera; and finally, the funeral of a sitting President. But I couldn't tell you anything else I did for those five days.
The same holds true for each of those disasters I mentioned. (I remember during the 1960's, it was so bad that every time my TV show was interrupted with the announcement "Special Bulletin", I would think, "Oh, God, now what?")
I said it was true for most of us. Your post, Cap, brought to home that for newsmen like yourself, it was just the opposite.
Where most of America had the luxury of putting our lives on hold, it was fellows like you whose workload just ramped up. Journalists of all media were suddenly thrust into twenty-four-hour work days as they laboured to sort out the details, determine fact from word-of-mouth assumption, burn up shoe leather and telephone lines, to get to us, the folks who were glued to their television sets, radios, and newspapers, the truth of what just happened as quickly and accurately as possible. There are some personal and corporate motivations for this, of course, but overwhelmingly, the people reporting the news see it as their duty to the public.
Then there are the efforts of the people behind the by-lines; the editors, the typesetters, the guys who work the presses, the TV producers and cameramen. They work ceaselessly too at times like that.
Perhaps, Cap, you deleted your description of events from your post because you felt it sounded too work-a-day, and thus insensitive. I took it as just the opposite. I saw it as a bunch of trained professionals leaping into action when they're needed most. If it sounded too routine, that's because, in a way, it was. Just like firemen attacking a fire, policemen charging into gunfire, military people surging into battle---they're responding instinctively to their years of training and experience. It is just business---because it has to be. Otherwise, the job doesn't get done. Of course, they, and you, feel the same shock and disbelief, but they shelve it for later. In the iiving moment, it's total professionalism that's needed.
The Internet has made it all too easy for anyone with a desktop computer and a keyboard to publicly disseminate "the news", with no accountability, standards, or ethics. That hurts the profession of journalism by diluting the reliability the rest of us felt about the information that came out over the airwaves or in the papers about some tragic event.
I'm glad you reminded us that, while we're sitting in front of our sets, grasping for information on just why and how such a terrible thing happened and reeling over the fact of it, there are men and women in the business of news reporting who are working like mad to bring that needed info to us. That it sounds like "just business as usual" is part of the professionalism that is needed.
Believe me, Cap, I'm not usually one to praise the press. I'm often critical. But that's in response to the stray bad actors in the news business (just as there are bad actors in every profession). Sure, on infrequent occasion, "freedom of the press" goes too far. But, by God, I'm glad we have it, and that it's enacted by journalists with standards and ethics.
It was "just" a job---but we needed every one of you.
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