Reactions to the JFK Assassination, North and South

Twenty-somethings on November 22, 1963, family members share their memories

Gov. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings (D-SC) presents President Kennedy with a Confederate battle flag on a visit to South Carolina in 1961 (Credit: Unknown)

My parents, Chet and Dorothy, had been married for six days when they received the news of President Kennedy’s assassination.

Dorothy, a schoolteacher in Newport News, Virginia, was stricken with a bout of pleurisy and convalescing in her parents’ home across the river in sparsely-populated Isle of Wight County. Sitting up in her parents’ four-poster bed, awake and medicated, she watched the housekeeper, Thelma, enter the room with a tray of lunch, her face grim.

As Thelma reached the bedside, she set the tray down, slid it away from her, and collapsed on her forearms as she burst into tears.

“Oh, Miss Dorothy,” she sobbed. “The president’s been shot.”