It's a "what were you doing, and where" meme... I have taken the liberty of putting the events in chronological order, for the sake of "neatness" !
1. President Kennedy's Assassination - 22 November 1963Ummmm... I wasn't even thought of. My maternal grandmother was pretty upset by it: she liked Kennedy, despite him being American (she was German (Prussian, actually), but she hated the Russians far more than she hated Americans) and despite him declaring that he was a doughnut in Berlin...
2. England's World Cup Semi Final v Germany - 4 July 1990
I was alive for this one. However, not being a footie fan, I have no idea where I was.
3. Margaret Thatcher's resignation - 22 November 1990I'm not entirely sure... I have a hazy recollection of hearing it at my mother's house (I'd visited overnight) and then discussing it at lunchtime in the staff canteen at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, having a coffee. It's a little hazy - I was running rats in mazes for hours on end, and that does things to your brain...
4. Princess Diana's death - 31 August 1997I heard this on the radio (which I'd had on all night, as is my usual custom) as I woke up. I remember switching on the TV because I was sure there was some sort of mistake, that I must have imagined that it happened. And then, when I'd woken up properly, I rang to tell another friend, because we were going to go to the Science Museum later that day, and I thought the news might affect traffic around Buckingham Palace. The Science Museum trip was a bit of preparatory research before I started my teacher training the following week.
5. Attack on the twin towers - 11 September 2001My second school-related memory. I was in an after-school meeting, along with some other new staff in the school. Another teacher stuck his head in through the classroom door to tell us the news of the first plane crash. And then we heard about the second one...
6. The election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to the papacy - 19 April 2005
Heheheheheh... a really great memory. I've blogged about it already HERE, but I was in the Parish Hall, making a cup of tea, with a pile of marking set out on a table as I prepared to watch satellite TV coverage.
Ok, for no other reason than sheer curiosity, I'm going to tag Karen, the Caveman, Adrienne, Hilary and Fr. Owl.
Diana's death only reminds me of Blessed Mother Teresa's death which occurred just before hers.
ReplyDeleteCool meme!!!!
ReplyDeleteHope you don't mind is I play.
ReplyDelete1. Third grade classroom. Our teacher came in the room crying and told us the president had been shot.
2. I haven't the foggiest idea. Who won what? (Sorry - LOL)
3. Not sure. Sorry.
4. Home. Heard about it on the news. It was most memorable because we had just returned from WYD in Paris two weeks before and had walked by that bridge.
5. Home, getting ready to take my Dad for an endoscope. Funny how that was etched into my memory.
6. Sitting in the car getting ready to sing at a rest home. Hoping they would announce the name before I had to go inside.
Thanks. That was fun.
1) three years before I was born
ReplyDelete2) Don't care about football.
3) before I knew anything about politics.
4) Frederick Maryland. I'd spent a month driving with a friend across the country in a quest for we knew not what. I just knew I was glad to have been leaving Vancouver, and I was semi-consciously in search of a new, and more religiously serious life. Our car had broken down on the off ramp after a trip to Baltimore. The off ramp was, as it happened, the entrance to Frederick where my eponymous aunt lived, whom I had not seen for 20 years. She put us up for a week. It was the last time I was in a room with anyone who shared my DNA until I moved to Britain ten years later.
5) Halifax. I had given the first half of a two-day seminar on pro-life advocacy and apologetics at a parish. I had not been sure I had done very well so, for possibly the first time in my life, I did not have the radio on in the morning. Since I was concentrating on my talk, I had not even checked the morning news. The first I heard of it, was when I got a call from the Nova Scotia pro-life leader I worked with who asked me, "have you heard the news today?" No. "Well, turn on your radio. Someone has just bombed the Pentagon". A few minutes later, the news came that a plane had smashed into the other tower. I shut everything down and walked downtown to where a few of my friends worked in the Halifax chancery office. All the chancery staff were huddled in an office watching the screen. The streets were empty.
6) At home with John Muggeridge and my friend Jennifer. I was working that day, while keeping the Vatican webcam in a corner of my screen. I was in the middle of a discussion of a story with my editor when he suddenly messengered me, "WHITE SMOKE!!!". I ran through the house ringing the dinner bell yelling "white smoke white smoke". We all converged in the TV tower on the top floor of the house and watched. When the anouncement came, we call whooped and cheered.
I later went to see my Fr. Sp. Dir. who greeted me with a huge grin and said, "Come down yet?"
I think I didn't stop smiling for three days.
Cool meme. done
ReplyDeleteI know you didn't tag me, but I thought I'd play. Like you, I wasn't thought of at the time of the first one - my mum was just 20! - and most of the others I can't remember.
ReplyDeleteSeptember 11th - I was nightshift. I woke up in the afternoon, and kiltered downstairs still half asleep. For some reason I put on the news, and saw what was happening. I was already working for the Police by then, so there were some additional implications. But also for me(!): I was leaving for American six days later. (That journey was hard!!)
Benedict XVI: I was on duty, in the Force Communications Centre. The big screen was on in the mess hall, and the channel was - as always - the News. Despite being an Anglican I was tickled pink, after (despite being an Anglican) being gutted about John Paul II's passing.
I thought this looked like fun to do - hope that's OK?
ReplyDelete1. President Kennedy's death. Upstairs in my bedroom doing my violin practice. My Father came up to tell me and my Mother was cross with him for disturbing my practice - I expect I was less than willing to get started. I also remember that day had been school speech day and I had been frozen stiff in just a blouse [no jumpers or blazers allowed on that day] and that a neighbour's husband had been killed at work.
2. England v Germany football. I don't remember the game in 1990, but I do remember the World Cup Final in 1966. I was with a church youth club going on holiday to Watchet in Somerset and we were changing trains at Taunton. We all stood on the platform round a small radio listening to the final moments - the driver flatly refused to drive the train until the game was over! On the return journey I dropped my teddy bear down the 'gap' on the platform and had to write a begging letter to get him back. He is still with me.
3. Margaret Thatcher's resignation. Has she gone then? Seriously, can't remember.
4. Princess Diana's death. In bed fast asleep. The phone rang and my husband brought it to me. My sister, hysterically sobbing, "she's dead, she's dead!" Those are words you don't want to hear from a family member without a name attached. I needed several strong cups of tea to get over the shock. [My sister is a big fan of the royal family. She is also often less than compos mentis. I don't necessarily mean to associate those two sttatements.]
5. The attack on the Twin Towers. In school at the end of the day. Was walking across the hall after dismissing the children and the caretaker asked me if I'd heard the news. [He had a TV in his cupboard with the brooms and things.] I remember that the idea of an attack on the Pentagon worried me more and I was convinced that the Americans would go mad and bomb everything in sight and start a major war. I decided to go to the Staff Room and make a cup of tea before the water and electricity were cut off.
6. The election of Benedict XVI. At home, glued to the TV, praying for that very result! At the crucial moment the phone rang - my brother, to tell me to turn on the TV as the result was about to be announced!
Where was I when:
ReplyDeleteKennedy was assasinated? I was in the 7th grade in Catholic school, and the nun who was the principal came into our classroom to tell us that he had been shot. A while later, she came back to tell us that he had died. The nuns were crying. For an assignment, we were all made to write a poem about President Kennedy and his assasination.
I don't remember the world cup.
I was a military wife stationed in England when Margaret Thatcher resigned.
I was living in North Dakota when my husband was in Bible College when we heard Sunday morning in church that she had died in the car accident. I watched the funeral, and cried hysterically.
We were picking up our mail from the post office when neighbors told us that one of the Trade Towers in N.Y.C. had been hit. We quickly drove home and watched (on TV) the other tower get hit and the Pentagon get hit. "We've been attacked!" my husband cried. Then the plane went down in Pennsylvania.
We are originally from the N.Y.C. area. I remember when they built the Trade Towers in 1962. Everybody thought they were ugly, but we got used to them. Now the skyline seems naked without them.