Where Were You?

During my years of growing up, this reporter looks back at events, happy, or sad, that were televised or written about in newspapers during her lifetime, and very memorable.

I was living at home with my parents in 1952 who were fortunate to have a television back then. My dad was a stickler for anything new that was advertised and, of course, TVs were fairly new. Many folks in our small town dropped by our home the day that Queen Elizabeth was crowned and we all watched, in black and white, the coronation.  Just think, she is still the Queen of England!

Hubby and I were on our honeymoon in 1962 when the news of movie star Marilyn Monroe’s death made the news.  We had just become parents of twins in 1968 when the untimely death of Rev. Martin Luther King was being covered by television so one can see how I remember where I was during those times. 

Another “where were you?” happened when I was the principal’s secretary at Randolph-Henry High School in 1963. Our office received a phone call that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas.  The principal turned on all room loud speakers so everyone could hear the awful news for our nation.  Walter Cronkite, the CBS television announcer, cried when he gave the nation the news of our President’s death.  Everyone I knew watched the events of his funeral unfolding for days. We cried as we watched his wife and two children standing as the caisson rolled by. 

Moving up a few years to 1981, the world was living by their television sets to watch the gorgeous wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, a fairy-tale story with all the pomp and circumstance that went with the royal couple. The couple was followed by reporters everywhere and to the extreme.  After the couple divorced, she was tragically killed in an automobile accident with the paparazzi hot in pursuit. 

I have watched many Presidential inaugurations, news-worthy hurricanes, volcano eruptions, tornadoes, tsunamis, racial conflicts, etc. and don’t remember those exact dates or some of the circumstances. 

This week concludes with our 9-11 memory of the horrifying images of planes flying into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and those folks on the plane that crashed in the countryside. I’m sure most of us can remember where we were then. The terrifying news of the buildings collapsing, the lives lost, the people running for their lives as explosions occurred will forever be etched in my mind and the minds of those who watched in horror as these events happened. 

With our recent California fires, horrible murders, abductions, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and flooding up the east coast, I think God is telling our nation and world to wake up and get on our knees and pray for our “lost” country to be GREAT again! DO NOT FORGET 9-11…..