I was study hall, bored out of my mind, which was usual for me in that era of my life, sitting down near the middle on stage right, trying to make like I was studying.

When in fact, I was not at all studying, as I was drawing from memory a plan for a building I had seen over the weekend.

Then I heard the doors in back swing open with a big SLAM, as they hit the door stops of their hinges.

Sort of like something we high schoolers would do, if we could get away with it.

Of course, the sort of low level buzz of wispering in study hall....stopped.

And everybody looked back.

Looking back over my shoulder I saw Mrs Brewer, sort of discheveled looking, coming down the asile, which was strange as she was always dressed, almost like a main line socialite....nothing out of place.

She was crying and coming in and out of sobs, trying to get words out.

Then she stopped about ten rows in, and seemed to get together enough to simply say..."they shot President Kennedy."

Then she broke into more crying and sobs and leaned against the back of an asile seat.

Then we were told to go to our homerooms, and from our homerooms we were dismssed early.

I rode the trolley to 69th street and hung around a news stand at the terminal watching the extra edtions / special editions of the Philadelphia Bulletin being delivered, as more details were discovered.

I had to go to the Doctor's office to have a small cast taken off my broken finger, so I wasn't at school that morning.  My Mom said it was OK to just go home as it was already near noon.  Took the Trolley from 69th Street, and when I got home my Grandmother was watching TV and told me the President had been shot.  Just a couple of minutes later I watched Walter Cronkite make the announcement that he had died.  I had a Bulletin paper route that covered all of the old apartment buildings around Woodland Avenue near the old Waverly Theater.  The papers usually got to the branch about 3:30pm or so.  Because this was the last time the Bulletin ever "stopped the presses", we didn't get the late edition until about 6pm or so.  My most vivid memory of the day was all of the older women who lived in those apartment buildings were standing in the hall, waiting for the newspaper.  For their generation, I think seeing the news in print was more real than having seen it on TV or heard it on the radio.

Funny, I remember being in study hall but in the cafeteria.  Was everybody in study hall?