Everyone knows....

29 May 1917 to 22 November 1963

It was said for years afterwards that everyone knows where they were when they heard the news of the assassination of President Kennedy.

I was 14 years old. It was Saturday morning, 23 November, Sydney time when I woke. I had to prepare to play school cricket. I turned my transistor radio on as was my habit every morning and heard the unusual sound of a short wave broadcast from one of our local stations.

Nowadays with 21st Century communication we think nothing of hearing voices live from all around the world coming through crystal clear as though they were people sitting across the table. That was not the case fifty years ago. It was most unusual then to hear broadcasts directly from overseas and the short wave signal of those days meant a variable, scratchy sound with volume rising and falling like the waves of an ocean.

So the short wave broadcast immediately signalled to me an event of great significance. It took minutes to dawn on me what these strange American voices on our local radio station were saying. The President has been shot. He is dead.

It was stunning news. Our reactions unprecedented in my short lifetime to that date and matched only be subsequent shock and disbelief at the news of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and later on the attacks on the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001.

Yes, I know and have always remembered where I was when I heard that news. It still seems like only yesterday and I scarcely believe 50 years have passed.

There will probably never be a funeral quite like President Kennedy's again.

Not just the respectful pageantry;

But also Heads of State, Kings, Presidents, Emperors and the like walking in open procession completely unprotected from the mass crowds.

President De Gaulle of France and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia et al

Finally in one of the most famous of all funeral photos a young and innocent John Kennedy Junior salutes his dead father.