It's Saturday Night -
Time for
more Genealogy Fun!
Our mission (from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing), should you decide to accept it (cue the
Mission Impossible! music) is to:
1) What are the major news events that happened during your life that you remember where you were when you heard about them?
2) Tell us in your own blog post, or in comments to this post, or in comments on Facebook. As always, please leave a link to your work in Comments.
1) What are the major news events that happened during your life that you remember where you were when you heard about them?
2) Tell us in your own blog post, or in comments to this post, or in comments on Facebook. As always, please leave a link to your work in Comments.
When John F. Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November
1963, I was in the fourth grade at Parkmead Elementary School in Walnut Creek,
California. The principal, I think it was Mr. Sloan, announced it over the loud
speaker. We all sat there in the class in silence, not believing it. I do not believe we went home early. I do remember classmates talking
about it in the lunch line. The T.V. was on all weekend at home—I think that
was the only programming that was on. As I think back on it now, I wonder why the
principal announced it over the loud speaker instead of informing the teachers so they could tell us. I wonder what the first or second graders thought of it.
I didn’t hear about the Bobby Kennedy assassination
in June 1968 until I got to school the next day. I was in the eighth grade and
classmates were talking about it. Politics wasn't talked about much at our house and no one watched the news.
Loma Prieta Earthquake, October 1989. I was home alone
in front of the television waiting for the World Series game between the
Oakland As and the San Francisco Giants to start. It shook our house pretty
good. I grabbed my oldest child (only one born yet) who was playing on the
floor and ran outside. However, all the power poles were swaying I decided it
might be safer inside. Luckily we didn't suffer any damage. I was on leave from work, attending a teacher
certification program and missed all the excitement at BART, where I worked.
BART was the hero of the Bay Area at that time, since the Oakland-San Francisco
Bay Bridge and several area freeways had suffered major damage. BART ran
24-hour service for a few months. When I went to the school where I was
student-teaching, we had many children who were extremely anxious about the
aftershocks and one child’s parent had been stuck in an elevator in one of the
San Francisco buildings.
For the 9/11 attacks, I didn’t learn about it until I got to work. I carpooled with a co-worker and we rarely listened to the radio. When we got to work, someone had the VCR television tuned to a local station and we saw replays of the first explosion and then the second one live. It felt so surreal. At home, we couldn’t watch much about it on television as it upset our youngest daughter. Most of my news came from the car radio or the newspaper.
I have been fortunate to live a pretty danger-free life. So far,
we have been lucky to not have the big one yet, but living in California there
is always the danger of earthquakes or wildfire. I used to think living in town
kept us safe, but not anymore—not after Santa Rosa and Paradise fires.
Copyright © 2020 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.
I see you commented on Loma Prieta also. I remember that BART was shut down while they checked the tube and then started running again.
ReplyDeleteI believe they shut down after every aftershock, too, just to be sure. Then they spent lots of money earthquake retrofitting the elevated track.
DeleteI was living in CA at the time, but had forgotten the Loma Prieta EQ. Southern CA also had the big one a few months later that collapsed part of the 10 fwy. in downtown Los Angeles. That put a big crimp in visits to the Los Angeles Family History Center!
ReplyDeleteYeah, as I recalled, that freeway got rebuilt a lot faster than ours up here.
DeleteWhile I was in Canada in 1989, I remember the earthquake well because my cousin and her husband were (and still are) in SF and I was terrified something might have happened to them...fortunately they were ok.
ReplyDeleteGlad they were okay. Surprisingly there were not many deaths. It was because traffic was light and many people were home to watch the games.
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