30 Years

[Mid A 15]

since John Lennon was shot.

A moment almost as iconic for many of us "of a certain age" as when JFK was shot on 22 November 1963.

Can you remember what you were doing when you heard the news about Lennon?

I had collected my wife from work and dropped her home and was driving when I heard the news. It was quite a shock.

As an aside when I heard about JFK I was stretched out onthe settee at home having been run over (fortunately only a foot injury) after school. A policeman had called to take a statement and my father was about to turn our television (acquired from my grandparents a few days earlier) off when there was a news flash saying the President of the United States had been shot and seriously injured. Shortly afterwards another news flash announced that he was dead and the word "assassinated" was added to my vocabulary.

The policeman rather lost interest in my accident for some unknown reason......

[J.R.]

I certainly recall where I was with regard to JFK.

Can't say I remember where I was when I heard about JL.

Incidently, I vividly remember hearing the news of Buddy Holly's death in a plane crash.

[mvgrogan]

I remember hearing about Mandela's release from prison!

I was walking home from the bus stop, it was pouring with rain and I has my "walkman" on listening to the news. I cried!

too young for JFK and no idea about LJ - erm.... December 80 - the christmas before I started at CH - I was probably too young to care!!

[jhopgood]

8 December 1980 was a Monday.
We were in Costa Rica, and being a Monday, I would have run on the Hash. Having run and then drunk, it is highly unlikely that I would have been capable of absorbing any important information on world events.

[LongGone]

I was walking through Central Park and heard more sirens that I could ever remember. In those days it wasn’t the best place to be at night so I got out, walked home and the news was on every channel.

[englishangel]

JFK: went to visit an elderly lady with my Dad, just after the 6 o'clock news and we told her and she cried.

JL: I was a midwife on a post-natal ward and the Labour Ward (where they had radios) called and told me, so I passed the news on. A ward full of hormonal women ..... oh dear...

Mandela: we had just moved to the US when it came on the news. I sat my son (who had just turned 4) in front of the TV and said "you are watching history, the world changes today"
I did the same thing when the Berlin Wall was coming down,
and when that student stood in front of the tank in Tiananman Square, not quite with the same result unfortunately.

he doesn't remember any of it!

[Fjgrogan]

JFK - I was in my first term at teacher training college and knocked on a friend's door on my way down to supper and she told me - absolutely stunned.
JL - don't remember at all.
Other news items that affected me - absolute shock when I heard that Brother Roger of Taize had been stabbed during prayer. We had all been to Taize and regarded him as on a par with Mother Teresa!

I remember that a spontaneous cheer went up in our household when the news broke that General Synod had approved the ordination of women - not that any of us had aspirations to the priesthood!

I was born on the day that the news broke of the surrender at the end of WWII (in Europe at least). My father always made a point of alllowing me to watch anything on television that would give me an understanding of the war that I had just missed. When I was about 8 or 9, I think, I remember being allowed/encouraged to watch a TV series called 'War in the Air', but I had to go to bed with my younger brother and sister and get up again once they were asleep. I felt much the same when my children were growing up - that it was important that they should know about the horrors of the holocaust. There is some famous quote - which currently escapes me! - about if we don't remember such horrors we are doomed to repeat them.

[NEILL THE NOTORIOUS]

I believe I have already posted the fact that L M Carey walked into the Day Room, and remarked, casually, "You needn't do any more Prep --- the War is over !"

JFK -- I was in S. Africa, no TV, so heared it on "Springbok Radio"

JL -- don't remember

Mandela --- when I was in S.A, he was not the main "Super Prisoner" on Robben Island , but Sobukwe.
My Father and I, used to sit on the Stoep and work out ways of rescuing him, given unlimited resources.
The Stoep looked straight out over Table Bay to Robben Island !

[Katharine]

JFK - it was the last day I ever wore Guide uniform. I had been in to Hertford to collect some sort of award with a couple of others and we heard the news from someone on the way back to school.

JL don't remember was in North Borneo then so almost certainly heard it on BBC World Service.

NM, we were in Brunei, it was a Sunday. We had some puppeteers visiting from UK, they had performed at the big hotel in town at lunch time and the Sultan's three youngest attended. Brunei TV news that night started with the news that these three children had watched the puppet show before going on to world news - NM released!

[fra828]

We had celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary on the day JL died, and woken late the next morning by a repair man calling to fix something and he told us the news. JFK -I was only 7, vaguely remember newsflash on tv. NM-can't remember. John McCarthy's release, ?1991: we were on holiday in Perth, Scotland staying with relatives. A weird thing happened before we heard news of the 7/7 London bombings, my daughter was getting ready for school and suddenly started screaming and crying hysterically for no apparent reason, this went on for nearly half an hour; then she stopped as suddenly as she had started. Later that morning we heard the awful news and realised it had happened at exactly the same time as our daughter was so distressed. Coincidence maybe, but it gives me an eerie feeling even now.