A Day Like No Other

It was Friday. It was not a day like any other day, but it started out that way. It was November of 1963, and Jim and I had been married a little over one month. We had only met the previous summer and it was love at first sight. I was 18 that June, a freshman out of college, working as a waitress to save money for next semester. Jim was serving his second year of four in the Air Force stationed on the nearby base. As fate would have it, he and a buddy came into the restaurant one evening while I was working and our future was determined. We were married on October 14th, 1963.

On that day in November, I prepared to go to the commissary on base to do my weekly grocery shopping. I still wasn’t used to being an Air Force wife and could barely find my way around the base. I had taken Jim to work at base supply that morning so that I would have the car for my errand. The airbase was not exceedingly large but being 18 and strange to me, it was somewhat frightening. It was mainly a MAC base, military air command, with a small SAC unit, strategic air command, all fascinating to me. The MP’s were especially scary. They were at all the gates, or entrances, to the base demanding to see your identification before you were allowed in. I always felt like royalty when they waved me on.

The base was like a little city of its own. There was a hospital, bowling alley, movie theaters, gas stations, mess halls, barracks, stores called PX’s. and BX’s, and, of course, loads of hangars, planes, runways, and bunkers. The commissary was a huge grocery store frequented by all military personnel and their families because everything was discounted to them. At that time military pay was extremely meager and one had to take advantage of everything available. It didn’t look like much on the outside, just a long, green one-story block building with very few windows, but inside looked just like a regular grocery store.

I got my grocery cart and began going up and down the aisles selecting things we needed for the week ahead. Young women my age buzzed back and forth past me doing the same thing I was. I had my cart about half loaded when someone came on the loud speaker shouting out a message that brought a complete silence to the entire building. “President Kennedy has been shot!” Everyone stopped what they were doing. We all looked at each other in disbelief. None of us had ever experienced anything even close to this news.

The speaker went on to say some of the details of the shooting but everyone was in such a state of shock, we hardly comprehended what he was saying. It was several minutes before any of us spoke and then only to quietly mouth words of our utter horror and disbelief. Some just left their carts where they stood and headed for the door to find their loved ones. I was one of them. I will never forget where I was that fateful day of November 22nd, 1963. It was Friday.