I was in 7th grade general science class. They made an announcement on the PA system that the President had been shot. Then a few minutes later they announced he had died and dismissed school TFN. We went back after the funeral.
My father, who was a 1st Division Marine on Guadalcanal in WWII, along with several other Marine Corps League families from our town, took our family to Washington, where we watched the funeral procession. By the way, I always make note that one of the great writers of the twentieth century also died on 11/22/63. Because of the Kennedy assassination, few people note the death on C. S. Lewis (writer of The Chronicles of Narnia, etc) on that date. I also remember 77-WABC dropping music and going to full coverage. My local radio station, WALL in Middletown, NY, had no network affiliation (but did have an excellent news department) so played somber classical music with news updates until they could arrange a feed from co-owned WMCA in NYC, then carried their full coverage. As I remember, the engineers at WMCA were able to get a dial-up feed together in about two hours. I was later told that, because stuff like this was not generally done in those days, WMCA's engineers had to rapidly build a few down-and-dirty phone couplers to feed WALL and the other Strauss owned stations with program audio. WMCA couldn't do it via their on-air phone system because, obviously, it was being used heavily. Funny thing is, when I went to work for WALL in the early 70s, they still maintained a 'Disaster Music' library in the control room -- just in case. When I was managing WABN in Abingdon, VA on 9/11, I basically followed the same concept until we could get full coverage on the air. 73, Rene' Rene F. Tetro Lansdale, PA, USA W2FIL, WPXG816, WPXU288 Coordinates: 40D12'41"N 75D18'22"W Grid: FN20IF Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Moderator: www.radioveronica.us and www.dxhub.com _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: [email protected]
