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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Time froze - JFK moments
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
One morning in the late 80s I woke up after a nightmare of being trapped in the London Underground in a tunnel that was filling up with smoke and fire. As the fire reached me the pain of it was so intense that it actually woke me up. I went off to work and remarked on the dream to my manager, who gave me a funny look. Hadn't I heard the news, she inquired. No, I said, I don't have a TV or radio, and I haven't seen the papers. She told me that that that night, fire had broken out in the Underground at King's Cross station in London, with tragic loss of life.
My boyfriend (I was about 17) was working in St Pancras train ticket office that night when the fire happened and witnessed the scenes in the aftermath ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
Posts: 2831 | From: Trumpington | Registered: Jan 2008
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
I remember the Live Aid concert as it was on my 16th birthday and I had just got out of hospital and could watch what I wanted on TV (quite a prize as I was the youngest of 8 and never got to choose). I watched it all day.
I clearly remember the Baltic Exchange bombing by the IRA in 1992 as I lived in a nurses' residence about 20 mins walk away (St Helen's opposite it, which was very badly damaged, became my church later). There was a loud boom, the windows of the room shook and it left a sudden stillness in the air. I had never heard a bomb before but I knew clearly what it was. I also later heard the Bishopsgate bomb, Holborn, London Bridge and Canary Wharf bomb. There was an army checkpoint through the City for years.
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
Posts: 2831 | From: Trumpington | Registered: Jan 2008
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ArachnidinElmet
Shipmate
# 17346
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stejjie:
... I was 11 when Thatcher resigned. Our English teacher announced it in class to great cheers, which we were promptly told off for! I don't know if it's because she was a Thatcherite or just because we were being too rowdy...
I had much the same experience, down to the cheering, although without being told off. I was a couple of years older during PE when the teacher came to the changing room and told us.
Hillsborough was a strange one as I was away on a school trip to North Yorkshire that weekend. There were no TVs or radios, so we didn't find out until we were taken to church in Whitby on the Sunday and found out during the sermon.
One of the events that affected me personally the most was the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria. The news coverage had implied there was a chance of him and his colleagues having their sentences commuted (not even vaguely true as it turned out) and I prayed that night as hard as I ever have, finding out the next day that they had been hanged. It started off my nearly 20 year membership of Amnesty International.
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'If a pleasant, straight-forward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres' - Kafka
Posts: 1887 | From: the rhubarb triangle | Registered: Sep 2012
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
On 11 June 1978, 12 school boys and a teacher drowned on a canoe trip on Lake Timiskaming with St John's School of Ontario. I was graduated, working in a program for disabled people, we were taking a wheelchair group to sleep over night in army bell tents on a hot evening. I had taken a half-ton truck on an errand, and heard it on the radio. I recall everything about it and can see the radio and the view of the lake where I stopped to listen and feel ill. The conversation with another staff is burned into my mind as if I hear my voice from someone else.
The second one is also 1978, 18 November. The Jonestown, Guyana suicide of nearly 1000 people, and then the report of the USA officials who had been shot immediately proceeding this, some of whom we knew. I was in Canada, but my parents were living in Georgetown, and then when the phone rang from Ottawa reporting that they were all right, but also reporting about people we knew from the USA embassy who's been shot. It was a bad year.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
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Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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JoannaP
Shipmate
# 4493
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Posted
I am not sure why this has stuck in my mind, but I vividly remember hearing that Terry Waite had been released; I have no idea when it was, but I do know where I was. I was doing the washing up, listening to a little radio hanging from the hook on the towel rack thingy.
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"Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow." R. H. Tawney (quoted by Isaiah Berlin)
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin
Posts: 1877 | From: England | Registered: May 2003
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Deputy Verger
Shipmate
# 15876
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Posted
I remember JFK and MLK but I was so young that I only recently realised that they were actually five years apart. They’re a kind of composite memory, and I thought they happened very close together. Mostly I remember how upset the grownups were. Teachers cried.
I remember the moon landing, which was cool. And I remember the shuttle explosion – I was working in Australia (totally different timezone) and what stands out for me is that by lunchtime there were already jokes about it. (What does NASA stand for? Need another seven astronauts.) Sorry, don’t flame me, but that was by way of expressing the vividness of the memory – normally I have a poor recall of jokes.
On the 8th of December 1980 I was on early duty in the office in Soho (London). I picked up the phone to a colleague saying “John is dead”, to which I replied “John who?” because we didn’t have a colleague called John. But for the rest of the morning it was me saying “John is dead”.
The day Diana died I was working a publicity event, which involved picking up some VIPs at the airport early in the morning. I was in a rented car which had a radio, interrupted by the news bulletin. So I was again the news-bearer. I was surprised how affected I was.
Music can also do it. Dark Side of the Moon takes me back to a specific room, as do Get Back and Hey Jude and Pinball Wizard and many more songs of that era, but on a more political note, Ricky don’t lose that number takes me back to Watergate and Evel Knievel jumping the Snake River Canyon.
Posts: 475 | From: London | Registered: Sep 2010
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
I remember the day the Falklands War broke out. There was a parents evening at school that night, and I was one of the prefects on duty.
A group of about 12 of us, all 17 or 18, final year at school, in our school uniforms, were in the common room discussing whether there might be conscription, and whether this affected our going to University that autumn.
Also, the engagement of Charles and Diana. After years of school teachers drumming the exams-first-then-romance mantra into us, suddenly the newspapers were full of stories about how not bothering with an education and getting engaged at 19 was a splendid idea for a girl. I was 17 at the time, and it was the topic of the day at school. I recall several of our teachers eye-rolling at it all - our home ec teacher was particularly scathing.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
I remember Princess Anne's wedding. I was at a convent school in Dublin at the time, and the nuns very kindly brought the convent's television set in on a trolley into the gym and let us off lessons so that we could sit and watch it.
Diana's wedding was pretty much eclipsed by That Dress which was the main subject of discussion in our sixth-form common room for a short while. Half of us insisted it was a great innovative design statement, the other half insisted equally strongly it was a disgrace and it should have been ironed before she put it on. Or better still, worn something completely different instead.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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squidgetsmum
Apprentice
# 17708
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Posted
The death of Diana - I'd just woken up and my mum (serious Diana fan) came rushing in to tell me. My 11 year old brain was a little bemused, to say the least.
9/11 - I found out in choir practice. We'd just been on a US tour a month before, so it was particularly striking. I can remember the piece, which had been written for the choir - "when every hand joins every hand and together works in unity, that's when we'll be free". Musical dross for a fairly talented group, but never sung with more power than that night.
7/7 - Working in a special school, and as we were very close to Edgware Road, not being allowed to leave, whilst several of the kids panicked about their nearest and dearest, and we tried to work out what the hell to do with a bunch of kids relying on medication if we were kept in for much longer...
Posts: 13 | Registered: May 2013
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Wesley J
Silly Shipmate
# 6075
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Posted
I remember the first moon landing! It was on my summer holidays with my uncle and aunt and cousins, at their home, as I often was in summer. My aunt and uncle woke me up in the middle of the night, to have me sit in front of the black-and-white telly. I think I watched for a few minutes in disinterest before I was allowed to go back to bed. It is to their credit that they thought I really had to see this extraordinary thing, and so I can now say I did, though I was rather annoyed back then. It was in the middle of the night, after all!
9/11 - a very strange day, I found. I'd just had one of my horseriding lessons, and was feeling quite knackered. On the tram back to the station, I overheard two men briefly talking to each other about a plane having crashed into some highrise building, but I don't think they said where that was (perhaps they did say America). They may have added 'This could mean war.' I didn't pay much attention, believing it to be a small propeller plane. On the train back, there was this utterly weird silence - I still don't know to this day whether public transport in the afternoon then was always so calm, or whether everyone was already deep in thought about what had happened. At home I turned on the radio, or perhaps the BBC News website on my old Windows 95, 75Mhz Pentium computer on dial-up ( ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) ), where it was all over the news, and which then made me switch on the TV. I think I even rang one of my neighbour's doorbells to tell them what happened. They may already have known. I then called one of my friends in the US, who was very very angry and in tears, as was I, and we talked for a few minutes. The rest of the evening and long into the night was spent by watching the telly, with all the developments coming in. ![[Waterworks]](graemlins/bawling.gif) ![[Votive]](graemlins/votive.gif)
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Be it as it may: Wesley J will stay. --- Euthanasia, that sounds good. An alpine neutral neighbourhood. Then back to Britain, all dressed in wood. Things were gonna get worse. (John Cooper Clarke)
Posts: 7354 | From: The Isles of Silly | Registered: May 2004
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Huia
Shipmate
# 3473
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Posted
The loss of flight TE901 to Antartica in 1979. This was the first and I think only time an Air NZ commercial plane had crashed with all aboard being killed. Then later the judge, Sir Peter Mahon challenging evidence given by the airline at the hearing and describing it as "an orchestrated litany of lies."
Huia
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Charity gives food from the table, Justice gives a place at the table.
Posts: 10382 | From: Te Wai Pounamu | Registered: Oct 2002
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Barnabas Aus
Shipmate
# 15869
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Posted
My first memory of an event such as this is the Queen's visit to Australia in 1954. My grandmother was returning from a coach trip interstate, and I recall gazing in wonder through the car window at the illuminations in the Sydney CBD as we went to meet her. I was only three years old at the time. Since then, of course, I share in the memories of many of the other notable occurrences referred to upthread.
Posts: 375 | From: Hunter Valley NSW | Registered: Sep 2010
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Paul.
Shipmate
# 37
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Posted
I heard about Challenger on the way to see a friend as a student. I saw the pictures on TV sets in show windows.
9/11 I was in the office and it was the first such event I heard of through the internet. I remember constantly refreshing the news websites and watching those postage stamp size videos. I distinctly remember being disgusted by a colleague who made a remark about how they'd hit the second tower - she was prone to inappropriate remarks and I thought it was a bad joke.
I remember Diana's death. I remember the sermon our pastor gave which he prefaced with some remarks about her - that was a week later I think. I can't remember much of what he said but the phrase, "she was beautiful in a way women admired more than men" sticks in my memory. I was in London for the week following the funeral for a training course and to get from my hotel to place it was held I walked through Hyde Park and got the tube from Notting Hill. The tributes and flowers where still there but in contrast to the descriptions given on the TV I found the atmosphere creepy and not moving. But maybe that was just me.
Last summer was my first experience of hearing about the death of a friend via Facebook, that was very odd.
Posts: 3689 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2004
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ChaliceGirl
Shipmate
# 13656
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Posted
Diana's death- It was around midnight for us in the States, and Brian Williams from NBC news said, "Princess Diana is dead." I remember thinking, "Whaat? how can that be??"
I also watched her funeral.
9/11 is a day I'll never forget- I was at work, alone in my office, listening to the radio and accessing the web. I normally like being alone but on that day it was very eerie and I felt very scared.
Challenger- I was in high school and someone mentioned it in class and that's all we talked about the rest of the day.
[ 02. February 2015, 20:31: Message edited by: ChaliceGirl ]
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The Episcopal Church Welcomed Me.
"Welcome home." ++Katharine Jefferts Schori to me on 29Mar2009.
My KJS fansite & chicksinpointyhats
Posts: 710 | From: Philadelphia, PA, USA | Registered: Apr 2008
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
I watched the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings live. When Hill began testifying about Thomas' interest in a particular adult film-star, I immediately suspected that she was talking about a guy whose name(among other attributes) had been well-known among my junior high cohorts a decade earlier.
And, sure enough, when the senator asked her the actor's name, it was him. (click with discretion)
[ 03. February 2015, 12:50: Message edited by: Stetson ]
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Hilda of Whitby
Shipmate
# 7341
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Posted
JFK. We were living in Houston, Texas at the time. My dad was on a business trip to Dallas. I was 7 at the time. It was a school day.
There was an announcement over the intercom at school. Teachers were crying. We were allowed to go home early. It was very surreal and frightening--I got it in my head that somehow Dad would get killed because he was in Dallas.
I'll never forget it.
A commemorative book was issued in 2013 by the publishers of Life Magazine for the 50th anniversary of the assassination. Aside from text and pictures, it included a separate full-size reproduction of the issue of Life Magazine that came out right after the assassination. I bought the book. My parents kept that issue of Life magazine for decades.
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"Born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad."
Posts: 412 | From: Nickel City | Registered: Jun 2004
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
It seems to me that everyone, even those of us who had no connection with New York, has a World Trade Centre story.
Mine is that we had been in New York in July 2001, and had bought booklets of tickets for various tourist attractions, including the WTC. We hadn't used them all, and still had tickets for the WTC, the Museum of Modern Art and something else which I've forgotten. When I went back to work (in Belfast), a colleague said that he and his girlfriend were going to New York in September. I gave him our left-over tickets, wished him bon voyage and promptly forgot about it.
On the day following the attacks, I suddenly remembered about it and wondered if (a) he was still in New York; and (b) he was all right. He phoned the office a couple of days later, and I immediately asked him where he'd been on the Tuesday morning ...
They'd been on their way to use the WTC tickets, but missed the bus, so they got the next one. On the way there the driver got a message about the first plane, and said that they'd go to the Empire State Building instead. Then the driver got a message saying the whole of Manhattan was closing, and they had to abandon their trip and go back to the terminus. On the way back, they saw the first tower collapse.
Just as well they missed that first bus ... ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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nickel
Shipmate
# 8363
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Posted
Wesley J, I was 9 years old and disgruntled to be woken up in the middle of a good night's sleep to watch the moon landing. "Can't I just watch the re-run?"
First-listens to music are necessarily more personal, I guess. Some of my most vivid involve David Bowie. I was 13 aimlessly tuning the dial of the Zenith radio (G730 model, great sound) all the way to the left, and heard the whole "Diamond Dogs" intro & song! Amazing for 1974, when all I had known was middle of the road, middle of the dial pop stations. I never bothered with mainstream music or channels again.
Posts: 547 | From: Virginia USA | Registered: Aug 2004
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Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
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Posted
I was helping out at an archaeological dig in Hereford when we got the news about the Twin Towers. At first, we were imagining a small light aircraft, and nobody thought much of it. The Hereford lads doing the heavy labouring were totally uninterested anyway, on the grounds that anything that happened in the States wasn't going to affect their day-to-day life.
Then my mother-in-law rang up, and said "What does 'Breaking News' mean?" She had switched on the TV to watch an old film, and every channel had the footage of the plane going into the tower, and she had no idea that this was something that was really happening.
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Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
Posts: 3710 | From: Hay-on-Wye, town of books | Registered: Aug 2003
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Piglet:
It seems to me that everyone, even those of us who had no connection with New York, has a World Trade Centre story.
Apart from being ill at the time, I had originally agreed with a friend that we'd spend a few days in New York in September. However, we couldn't agree on what to see and do. His priority was Grand Central Station, the subway, Penn Station, and looking at as many American trains as he could find.
He wasn't particularly interested in anything else, and if I was going to cross the Atlantic I wasn't going to spend my holiday hanging round railway stations thank you very much. So the plan fell through and indeed the friendship with it. But 11 September would have been the day we arrived.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Stumbling Pilgrim
Shipmate
# 7637
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tree Bee:
Hearing about the disaster at Aberfan made a big impression on me because the victims were children only a little younger than me. I remember sitting cross legged on the floor at school assembly while the head teacher talked to us about it and launched an appeal.
Oh my, yes - probably the first thing that affected me that way, and for the same reason (I was only six when JFK died, I knew it was important but didn't really register just how important). Doing the maths I must have been nine, and as we were saying a prayer at the end of the school day (that seems weird, but I'm sure that's what we were doing) the teacher, who IIRC was Welsh, asked if we had heard about the school in Wales that had been buried. We said we hadn't, feeling a bit ![[Confused]](confused.gif) , and left. My mum met me outside as always, and as usual on a Friday we went up to the local high street to meet my dad to go shopping. He didn't make his usual fuss of me, or even say hello, just unfolded the evening paper to show us that famous, horrible picture of the top of the school appearing to float on a black sea. I think that was what made the initial impression on me - I don't think I'd ever seen my dad affected like that by anything before.
9/11 - I was at a placement as part of my university course (yes, I was a very mature student), and OH was out at a meeting, both of us having learned during the morning that we had no water at home due to a burst main. We coincidentally arrived home at the same time at lunchtime, and put on local radio, something we hardly ever did, to find out when it was likely to be fixed, only to discover that nobody was remotely interested in our burst water main. After spending a few minutes trying to work out what on earth we were listening to, we turned on the TV a few minutes after second impact. I don't know if it was BBC or CNN news, we flipped between the two, but I remember a reporter called Aaron somethingorother perched on a roof with all the chaos going on behind him. My placement was at a centre from which several Christian community ventures were run, and the next day the normal lunchtime prayer meeting was replaced with a service of prayer and meditation. One of the organisers was a builder who was working nearby, and he came in his hi-vis jacket and hard hat. He got up to speak about and pray for the rescue workers, but I don't remember what he said, only what he did - he placed his hard hat on the altar, took off the hi-vis jacket and draped it over the altar cross. One of the most powerful visual messages I've ever seen in a church, and it taught me a lot about the power of actions as well as words.
[ 06. February 2015, 21:07: Message edited by: Stumbling Pilgrim ]
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Stumbling in the Master's footsteps as best I can.
Posts: 492 | From: England | Registered: Jun 2004
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Athrawes
Ship's parrot
# 9594
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Posted
I have been thinking of this a bit. I remember 9/11 as horrific, but it didn't have an emotional impact on me at the time. I think it was because it was so far away.
However, I can remember two other disasters which had a profound impact, even though I wasn't that old at the time. The first was the destruction of Darwin in 1974. I was 6 at the time, and we were living in Townsville. I can remember the footage, late on Boxing Day, I think (it may even have been Christmas Day,) of an ABC reporter driving along a ruined street in a white car, with the windscreen wipers going, as he described (in a very calm voice which I now recognise as extreme shock) what had happened the night before, to his house, and his neighbours. The footage is part of this documentary although they didn't use the voice over. It's about 2 minutes in.
The other one was a reporter in the Adelaide Hills during the Ash Wednesday bushfires, standing outside his home and describing his feelings as it burnt down.
[fixed link]
[ 07. February 2015, 13:31: Message edited by: jedijudy ]
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Explaining why is going to need a moment, since along the way we must take in the Ancient Greeks, the study of birds, witchcraft, 19thC Vaudeville and the history of baseball. Michael Quinion.
Posts: 2966 | From: somewhere with a book shop | Registered: Jun 2005
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
Not a specific date, but I remember listening to the news on the *wireless* in about 1940, when they broadcast the sound of an air raid over London with sirens and bombs.
Wedding of the present Queen and Prince Philip; no TV then but we were allowed to sit up and listen to the broadcast. I was at boarding school – was it the whole school in the hall, wrapped up in our rugs, or just senior classes???
The first moon landing, not the moment of hearing the news but the atmosphere in the school where I was teaching.
Princess Diana's death I heard on the car radio on my way from church to lunch at the house where some of us were gathering for lunch.
As for 9/11 – I was to have a bowel X-ray next day, had been taking meds to clear out the gut so I was sleeping on the La-Z-boy in the living room in case I had to rush to the bathroom. The phone rang and it was my daughter in Australia, who just said 'Mum, turn on the TV'
Tangent: A psychology lecturer reported that when JFK was killed he got his Psych 101 class to write down exactly where and how they heard of it. The next year he had Psych 102 do the same. Those who were in both classes in many cases remembered it quite differently the second time.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Zappa
Ship's Wake
# 8433
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Posted
shameless name drop
quote:
Originally posted by JoannaP:
I am not sure why this has stuck in my mind, but I vividly remember hearing that Terry Waite had been released; I have no idea when it was, but I do know where I was. I was doing the washing up, listening to a little radio hanging from the hook on the towel rack thingy.
I was talking to him just before Christmas! (But I too remember rejoicing at his release ... I had met him some years earlier and had stuttered shamefully dwindling prayers through many months).
/shameless name drop
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shameless self promotion - because I think it's worth it
and mayhap this too: http://broken-moments.blogspot.co.nz/
Posts: 18917 | From: "Central" is all they call it | Registered: Sep 2004
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Celtic Knotweed
Shipmate
# 13008
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Posted
I remember Thatcher resigning - we'd been listening to the radio in the 6th form common room, and I'd gone up to the library to get some work done as I had a free period. One of my friends came up and told me "she's gone". I can still remember which study bay I was in.
On 9/11 I was in work. At first we thought it was just another light plane, like the one which had flown into a skyscraper a few weeks before, then we heard about the second plane... The company's London office was evacuated as it was in the Canary Wharf building, and our department (in the Basingstoke office), spent most of the day wandering over to the one net-connected machine to check the ABC news website (the BBC site wasn't responding, so the computer user went for Oz on the grounds that there were fewer people awake and using the site!). A friend of mine had been over there on business and considering coming back via NY. I didn't dare email/text him, just waited and hoped, till I got a message on 13/9/01 that he was OK.
Most of the other sharp location memories I have are music - first time I heard several groups live; first opera I went to; but also the first panto I went to (with tickets in the stalls as they were a gift to the family from a friend!), where although I can't remember most of the action, I do remember the grand finale, and being able to see what the decorations at the side of the stage were for the first time (if we bought tickets it was always seats in the circle, which is too far away from these panels to see them clearly)
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My little sister is riding 100k round London at night to raise money for cancer research donations here if you feel so inclined.
Posts: 664 | From: between keyboard and chair | Registered: Sep 2007
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Zappa
Ship's Wake
# 8433
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Posted
Mine, as I recall ...
- 24 or maybe 25 January 1965, Death of Churchill. I was on the veranda of our home in Takoradi, Ghana, listening to my parents ooh-ing and ah-ing as the BBC World Service related news that to me was meaningless.
- April 10, 1968. Wahine storm: a cyclone smashed NZ, sinking a ferry and killing 53 passengers and one other person. I was home alone in Raumati, near Wellington, cowering beneath blankets as the house was buffeted and trees galore snapped and crashed to the ground on our bush block. As the day went on and my mother got home news reports came filtering through on the transistor radio ... bad, bad, bad. My father got home through the debris several hours later and we began a clean up of the property that wasn't complete when he died sic years later.
- August 31, 1974. Actually I remember the 30th, when a band named Ebony won the NZ Music award for ‘group of the year’ with a spoof song "Big Norm", and they thanked the PM and hoped he'd get better. IIRC he died the next day - but not before he had telegrammed the band to congratulate them. I was in the same room in which I cowered from the Wahine storm
- August 16, 1977 ... I was at boarding school in Wanganui, one of the last days of term in my final lackadaisical year, when I walked into my study and turned the radio just as they interrupted the programme to announce that "the King is dead." I cared little for his music but that moment was deep gravitas.
- September 28, 1978. I was out in the big wide world, living solo in the north of NZ, and someone told me that pope had died. "I knew that a month ago", I said. Nope: vale JP 1. I didn't know much about religion or popes though so it didn't really matter.
Strangely I don't recall the death of John Lennon, late in 1980. I had just finished uni for the year and was by memory working in a painting gang ... - March 30, 1981 ... "The bastard missed": I was in the middle of a pedestrian crossing when these words from an avant garde poet friend heralded the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. I was anti-Reagan, but that was too rough, I felt.
- January 28, 1986 ... Challenger. Yup. I was on a summer placement for my theological school, walking down an inner urban street in Fitzroy Melbourne. I walked passed a TV shop ... ten or so screens showing the same ghastly wiggly line of smoke...
- 31 August 1997 , driving home form church in Adelaide, my radio on. The news came on ... "Dianna, the Princess of Wales, has been injured in a car crash in Paris." Minutes later the chilling update came through ... as I arrived home my 13 year old daughter met me at the door, white as a sheet. "Di's died" she said, and wasn't even trying to be funny. I sat the rest of that day glued to the TV, grieving, because something representing the death of a generation's pretence of innocence had died in a Paris tunnel (and because, God, she was sexy).
- September 11 2001 ... I crossed the road form our rectory in country NSW, to buy milk. A newspaper billboard printed the night before said "bombing in New York" but I though it was just another IRA type small but tragic event trans-located across the Atlantic. As I bought the milk I noticed the television in the shopkeepers' lounge, visible through an open door. A plane banked steeply, and crashed. I will never forget that moment.
And songs?
- Dan Hill's "Sometimes when we touch" ... I had the radio on in an old Morris 1000, driving near NZ's Tauranga on a hot summer's day, with an ex girlfriend, wishing she wasn't ex, and this song came on.
- Roy Goodman's "Miserere" rendition ... I hadn't heard it before, not being a classical buff, but one day I was walking past a classical music shop in Adelaide's Rundle Mall, and time stood still ...
- Jewell's "Foolish Games" ... also in Adelaide, driving home down a major arterial (Port Rd), radio on ... I hauled down a side road and stopped and listened ...
- Arvo Pärt's "Spiegel in Spiegel", driving home on a Brisbane ring road motorway ... I pulled off the road, pretended my car had broken down (flashers on) ... and listened ...
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shameless self promotion - because I think it's worth it
and mayhap this too: http://broken-moments.blogspot.co.nz/
Posts: 18917 | From: "Central" is all they call it | Registered: Sep 2004
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Jante
Shipmate
# 9163
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Posted
The investiture of Prince Charles- first time I remember school showing us a TV programme.
The safe return OF Apollo 13- I was at a friends birthday party and over tea we had the news on so her granddad could see what happened.
Lockerbie- I was babysitting and horrified at what I saw on the TV
Death of Diana- I was getting ready for church and omitted to tell my husband who was going to take a service in another town- he heard it on the car radio
9/11- clearing up my classroom a cleaner came in to tell me she'd heard it on the radio. Put the car radio on as soon as I got into the car and the TV as soon as I got home. My children were not happy I wanted the news on all night!
Strikes me the TV has a lot to answer in how I remember these events so vividly
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My blog http://vicarfactorycalling.blogspot.com/
Posts: 535 | From: deepest derbyshire | Registered: Mar 2005
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MSHB
Shipmate
# 9228
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Posted
My earliest memory of public events was seeing big scary tabloid headlines screaming about the brink of WAR! The year was 1961. Cuba, I believe, though I didn't understand what was happening at the time - just something scary.
I remember being told at breakfast one day about the death of Marilyn Monroe - though it was probably more significant to my parents than to me (she was a celebrity for grown-ups, not so interesting to a child).
JFK I remember very well - and not long before that I remember hearing about the death of Jackie K's newborn son.
And Pope John.
From then on it would have been the usual stream of major public events others here have noted.
I found out about the Twin Towers in 2001 when I went to the local train station and all the people seemed rather subdued and sombre. Then I noticed the front page of the morning papers completely taken up with a picture of something disastrous. So I got all the details soon enough after that.
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MSHB: Member of the Shire Hobbit Brigade
Posts: 1522 | From: Dharawal Country | Registered: Mar 2005
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Signaller
Shipmate
# 17495
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Posted
HMS Sheffield: The nine o'clock news started, and went straight over to ol' stone-face from the MoD. Up to that moment the whole Falklands thing had seemed bit of a lark to us cosy suburbanites, who were too young for WW2, or Korea, or Suez.
The realisation that a Royal Navy ship could actually be destroyed- in the 1980s- changed a lot for me.
Posts: 113 | From: Metroland | Registered: Jan 2013
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Jante--
Re TV and memories: I think a lot of that is due to repetition.
9/11, for instance: they kept showing the impacts and collapses over and over again, here in the US. Not just immediately, but over a long stretch of time. IMHO, it retraumatized viewers. I found that I either had to get my news from the radio, or turn on music during TV broadcasts. Has helped me with lots of other bad-news coverage, too.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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crunt
Shipmate
# 1321
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Posted
The somber aftermath of 9/11 is something I remember, too. I can't remember actually hearing the news (though it would have been on the early morning radio news), but I vividly remember the quiet train ride into work.
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QUIZ: Bible
QUIZ: world religions
LTL Discussion
languagespider.com
Posts: 269 | From: Up country in the middle of Malaysia | Registered: Sep 2001
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
9/11, for instance: they kept showing the impacts and collapses over and over again. . . . IMHO, it retraumatized viewers. I found that I either had to get my news from the radio, or turn on music during TV broadcasts.
I couldn't watch it for months afterward on TV -- had to change the channel immediately. Still can't. Nor could I walk within seeing distance of Ground Zero for the longest time.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
MSHB wrote:
quote:
JFK I remember very well - and not long before that I remember hearing about the death of Jackie K's newborn son.
Hm. I don't think I had ever heard about that. Thanks.
As for Diana, I guess I'll just come right out and say that I was with a group of jaded hipsters who treated the announcement of her death as funny. I can't remember if I joined in the general mockery, but I didn't put up any objections.
Sorry if that's in questionable taste, but then, this is a forum where people take bets on which celebrity will die next(NTTAWWT). The crowd I was hanging out with at that time basically regarded Lady Di the way that many people today regard Kim Kardashian.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
I spent most of 9/11 here on the ship. Someone started a thread, and we all shared whatever news and information we had, plus talking about how we felt.
It was a big help in dealing with things.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
I'd been lurking, too, without joining, until 9/11.
[ 13. February 2015, 08:47: Message edited by: Golden Key ]
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
I spent most of 9/11 here on the ship. Someone started a thread, and we all shared whatever news and information we had, plus talking about how we felt.
It was a big help in dealing with things.
Moo
Just for reference/interest, the thread's here.
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
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