Change was all around as we began our freshman year of high school in September of 1963.<\/p>\n
We reported for classes as usual at Pittston High, but it wasn\u2019t Pittston High anymore. It was Pittston Area. And the football team that won its opening game wasn\u2019t the Panthers, it was the Patriots. They had taken the field not in Pittston\u2019s traditional red and white, but in the school\u2019s new colors: red, white and blue. Yes, like the flag.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name is Tom Kelly,\u201d the voice began. \u201cI\u2019m your new principal. Let\u2019s congratulate the Patriots on that big win over Old Forge. I\u2019m going to count to three and I want to hear a cheer that will raise the roof on this building.\u201d These may not be Mr. Kelly\u2019s exact words, but his enthusiasm was contagious, and when he hit three, we all let out a roar. I\u2019ve often said that was the actual moment the Pittston Area School District was born.<\/p>\n
We had no way of knowing it at the time, but the biggest change \u2014 one that would change all of us forever \u2014 was about three months away. It, too, would come into our lives via that intercom system.<\/p>\n
It was the middle of the afternoon on a Friday and I was sitting right in front of Mrs. Boyle\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
I recall a look of confusion on everyone\u2019s face, including Mrs. Boyle\u2019s, 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?<\/p>\n
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, \u201cPresident Kennedy?\u201d Wait. Did he say he\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n
The last bit of my own innocence, I suppose, was evident in the first thought I had. \u201cI wonder,\u201d I said to myself, \u201cif they\u2019ll cancel the dance tomorrow night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oh, they cancelled the dance, all right. They cancelled everything.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t equipped for such coverage, but they figured it out and figured it out on the fly.<\/p>\n
Years later, WARM Radio personality Harry West told me about his experience that day. \u201cRip and read\u201d 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. \u201cAs I was reading that John F. Kennedy was dead,\u201d Harry said, \u201cI was thinking, \u2018If this is some sort of hoax, my career is over.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
It was no hoax, of course \u2014 oh, that it were \u2014 and Harry recalled the deejays saying they couldn\u2019t keep playing rock \u2018n\u2019 roll. He dashed to a record store in Scranton and came back with classic music albums, the most somber stuff he could find.<\/p>\n
There was an air of gloom in my home but not many tears. I didn\u2019t have to go far to find them, though. My grandmother was a Catholic of Irish descent. Need I say more?<\/p>\n
I watched the funeral procession at her house and when little John John, in his short pants and powder blue coat, saluted, she couldn\u2019t contain her grief. She lived another nine years, the soul of President Kennedy in her prayers every morning.<\/p>\n
Ed Ackerman writes The Optimist every Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Change was all around as we began our freshman year of high school in September of 1963. We…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[803,1559,28,178,180,179,25220],"class_list":["post-42170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-luzerne-county","tag-opinion","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-the-optimist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}