Today marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Shortly after noon on Nov. 22, 1963, Kennedy was fatally shot by a sniper as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. He was pronounced dead at 1p.m. that afternoon; the news shocked the nation.

It’s strange to think that it has been half a century since that awful day in history.

Those who have not yet reached their 50s, luckily have never gone through the experience of receiving the news that the president of our country has been killed. However, those who were alive at the time are considered unfortunate to be counted among the ample amount of Americans who can remember exactly where they were when that devastating piece of information had arrived.

Faculty members from Staples High School recalled that day, and many got emotional as they relived the sequence of events in their head.

Social studies department secretary Fran Evan, who lived in England at the time, was looking forward to having JFK as her President. “It was the one thing that I was excited about moving to the US for, he was so highly thought of in England,” she said. “One week before I moved here, I remember I was watching television and all of a sudden a news flash came up on the screen saying that he had been shot, I ran in the kitchen to tell my mother and father that our future President had been killed; we just stared at the T.V stunned in shock.”

Grade level assistant Alice Addicks: “I vividly remember where I was, I was teaching 15 beginners in a swimming pool with a gallery of parents watching, and a mother came running in screaming that the President had been shot and all of the kids got out of the pool and started to cry,” she said, getting choked up. “It was a very emotional thing…I remember everybody having the day off and…” the emotional recollection took over before she could say any more.

Principal John Dodig: “I was 19 years old at the time and was on a bus coming back from my job at the Y, someone on the bus had started to cry and said that the President had been shot,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about it and no one had cell phones back then so I had to wait until I got home to see it on the TV and I actually cried because I thought he was something special.”

Kennedy’s lasting contribution to this country will forever be engraved in our minds, and we will always remember how he shaped this country even if it was for a short period of time.