Change was all around as we began our freshman year of high school in September of 1963.

We reported for classes as usual at Pittston High, but it wasn’t Pittston High anymore. It was Pittston Area. And the football team that won its opening game wasn’t the Panthers, it was the Patriots. They had taken the field not in Pittston’s traditional red and white, but in the school’s new colors: red, white and blue. Yes, like the flag.

Our classrooms had something new, too. They were equipped with the latest technology, a speaker mounted on the front wall of each room. It was an intercom system, we were told, and we got to experience its capabilities right off the bat. On Monday morning following that football win Friday night, a booming voice echoed throughout the building over those new speakers.

“My name is Tom Kelly,” the voice began. “I’m your new principal. Let’s congratulate the Patriots on that big win over Old Forge. I’m going to count to three and I want to hear a cheer that will raise the roof on this building.” These may not be Mr. Kelly’s exact words, but his enthusiasm was contagious, and when he hit three, we all let out a roar. I’ve often said that was the actual moment the Pittston Area School District was born.

We had no way of knowing it at the time, but the biggest change — one that would change all of us forever — was about three months away. It, too, would come into our lives via that intercom system.

It was the middle of the afternoon on a Friday and I was sitting right in front of Mrs. Boyle’s desk. Everything involved alphabetic order in those days and with the name Ackerman I always found myself in the front row. Not a good thing, as I remember. Mrs. Boyle was our homeroom teacher. We were there for a study hall as the day wound down.

I recall a look of confusion on everyone’s face, including Mrs. Boyle’s, as the new intercom speakers suddenly came to life, startling everyone. It sounded like a news report. Was this the radio we were listening to?

There was no introduction, no Mr. Kelly telling us what was going on. Just the radio, filling the room with sound. It seemed a news report. But with all the static it was hard to decipher. Did he just say, “President Kennedy?” Wait. Did he say he’d been shot? President Kennedy had been shot? We leaned forward, as if getting a bit closer to the speaker would make it easier to hear.

We grew silent. Not a word was spoken. Not even a whisper. We were together and yet somehow alone, each lost in a private, personal experience.

That’s how on Nov. 22, 1963, 62 years ago from yesterday, a group of innocent 14-year-olds tried to come to grips with the notion that if the president of the United States could be assassinated, was anyone truly safe?

The last bit of my own innocence, I suppose, was evident in the first thought I had. “I wonder,” I said to myself, “if they’ll cancel the dance tomorrow night.”

Oh, they cancelled the dance, all right. They cancelled everything.

There were only three television networks in those days, NBC, ABC and CBS, and all three suspended their regular programming for four straight days. Instead, they provided non-stop live coverage of every event following the assassination. Networks weren’t equipped for such coverage, but they figured it out and figured it out on the fly.

Years later, WARM Radio personality Harry West told me about his experience that day. “Rip and read” is a term radio deejays used for reporting the news between songs. The news came through on a teletype apparatus and the deejay literally ripped off the sheet of paper and read it over the air. “As I was reading that John F. Kennedy was dead,” Harry said, “I was thinking, ‘If this is some sort of hoax, my career is over.’”

It was no hoax, of course — oh, that it were — and Harry recalled the deejays saying they couldn’t keep playing rock ‘n’ roll. He dashed to a record store in Scranton and came back with classic music albums, the most somber stuff he could find.

There was an air of gloom in my home but not many tears. I didn’t have to go far to find them, though. My grandmother was a Catholic of Irish descent. Need I say more?

I watched the funeral procession at her house and when little John John, in his short pants and powder blue coat, saluted, she couldn’t contain her grief. She lived another nine years, the soul of President Kennedy in her prayers every morning.

Ed Ackerman writes The Optimist every Sunday.