Essay Forteen, Age 17, 1963 JFK assassinated, junior year of high school, the moon landing

John F. Kennedy assassination: In Dallas, Texas, United States President John F. Kennedy is assassinated, Texas Governor John B. Connally is seriously wounded, and Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson becomes the 36th President. All television coverage for the next three days is devoted to the assassination, its aftermath, the procession of the horsedrawn casket to the Capitol Rotunda, and the funeral of President Kennedy. Stores and businesses shut down for the entire weekend and Monday, in tribute. I was a senior in high school, at Westbury High in Houston, Texas. That year our class had been shown films of the moon landing, and of the modern conveniences that were now going to make our futures one in which we might only have to work for three days each week instead of the five or more. My head was filled with the excitement of the years that lay ahead. The killing of Kennedy erased all of that. If he could be killed in that way, just as Martin Luther King had been killed, something must be terribly wrong. Everything I had been led to believe about our country must be false.