Where were you when JFK was killed?

Area residents remember exactly where they were when they heard that the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, had been shot.
It was Friday, November 22, 1963 – a watershed moment in American history.
Lettie Marcantel, the new Eunice Library branch manager, said she was in her sixth-grade class at St. Maria Goretti Catholic School in Lake Arthur when the news came.
“A student,Vicky Thackson, walked in the room and she said, ‘Y’all all pray...President Kennedy has just been shot’,” said Marcantel. “We were in English class and writing and learning about nouns and verbs. And our teacher, Sister Yvonne, was teaching us and Vicky stormed into the classroom and told us to start praying.”
Another memory from a Catholic school about that fateful day was shared by Martha Jeane of Denham Springs, who was visiting Eunice over the weekend for the Main-to-Main street event in downtown. She said she was six years old at the time and in her first-grade class in Raywick, Ky.
“I remember when President Kennedy got killed and we were in school,” Jeane said. “And if you went to the water fountain to get water, the nuns would tell you not to drink the water. I don’t know why. Besides the nuns telling me, ‘don’t drink the water’, it wouldn’t have fazed me.”
Alma Reed, local author and resident historian, was a teenager. Reed said that she epitomized her mother’s saying that “teenagers never think past their skin” on the day that JFK was murdered in Dallas.
“I got very upset that they picked that day to shoot the President because I had a date for the LSU game (the LSU freshman team was scheduled to play the Tulane freshman team that day),” said Reed. “And the game was cancelled and I was really upset. And now, I’m kind of embarrassed that I felt that way. I was very upset that it didn’t fit my time schedule as a teenager.”
Richard Deshotels said that when Kennedy was assassinated he a sophomore at Mamou High and was in the gym during the lunch hour.
“The phone rang in the gym office, on the girls side, and for some reason I went in and answered it,” said Deshotels. “ It was our teacher, Cliff ‘Tee Mac’ McCauley. He instructed me to find teacher Denny Guillory and inform him that President Kennedy had been assassinated. I walked out the office and shared the news with a few classmates who laughed in my face because I was not the type of person people believed anything from back then. I started smiling because no one would believe me and when Denny Guillory walked up and I broke the news to him, I was still smiling. He lifted me up and threw me up against the gym wall asking me if I thought that was funny. I’m 65-years-old and still think about that stupid moment of mine and the horrible loss of JFK.”
Jackie Choate, director of the Opelousas-Eunice Public Library, said she was in the 8th grade Science class at Elton High School. She said that she remembered that “everybody in the school was shocked” as the students awaited the Thanksgiving holiday break from school.
Choate said that she vividly remembered watching the murder of the Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged shooter of the President, on live television.
“It was the last day of school and everything after that for the weekend-plus days was on television,” said Choate. “And naturally, you got to see him shoot Oswald on TV and the whole thing.”
Surrounded by Dallas Police Department officials, Oswald was shot by a Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby before a rolling NBC news camera on Sunday, November 24, 1963 as was being escorted to a court appearance.
It was the first televised murder in history.
Jeanne Hebert, who has been in Eunice since 1960, said that she was in Eunice when Kennedy was shot.
“I was in 8th grade in my home-room class,”she said. “Mr. Paul Mayeaux was my teacher. And we we’re all kind of stunned. Then they let school out early. And we all went home and just started watching TV, you know. And just a day or two later, we saw Lee Harvey Oswald get shot on TV live. That was really a strange thing too. It was like when Ruby reached through there and shot Oswald, it was like I remembered my dad and I sat there and we said, ‘Did that just happen?’ and ‘ Was that real?’ Because we were watching it.”
Sunny Guillory describes the day of the assassination as “unbelieveable”.
“I was in school, in the 8th grade at the old school on 9th Street and it was chaos when we heard that the President had been shot,” said Guillory. “Everybody was crying and just couldn’t believe it. It was the first time that something like that had ever happened in our lifetime. It was crazy.”

“ I was in Mrs. Horton’s 3rd Grade classroom at Eunice Elementary. Will never forget it.” -Donna Lambert Holmes

“I was in the fifth grade at St. Francis Elementary. I remember everyone crying after the announcement over the PA system.”
-Dee Dee Lyles

“I was in a Sophomore Civics class at EHS...we were all in shock. We were called to assembly for a formal announcement and the school was out the day of funeral. Watched it all on TV with a broken heart...little ‘John,John’ saluting his Father’s casket...etched forever in my brain.”
-Dale Wooten Spears

“I was 200 miles above the Arctic Circle, boarding an airplane to fly South to Anchorage. I’m a St Ed’s Graduate 1960, and at the time an enlisted man in the USAF just finishing a one year tour at Cape Lisburne Alaska.”
-Philip Bourgeois

“I was in the cafeteria line when I heard. I was in fifth grade and it was my birthday. After we listened all the rest of the school day. We went home to my birthday party and we continued to watch the news.”
-Diana Bertrand