When I was looking for a book to read this week, I found a paperback copy of “Profiles in Courage,” for which John F. Kennedy received the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957. In 1957, Kennedy was the U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. In 1960, he was elected president, the youngest elected president and the first Roman Catholic. I read the book after Kennedy was elected president.

Finding the book reminded me that today, Nov. 22, 2015, is the 52nd anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. For many people of my age, it is etched into our memories, much like the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 was for the “greatest generation” or the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks are for today’s public.

A dozen people work in the editorial department at the OBSERVER. Just four of us, News Editor Bill Hammond, City Editor Gib Snyder, Lifestyles Assistant Vicki Notaro and I, are old enough to remember. I am the oldest of the group of four. The other eight who work in the department weren’t even born before Nov. 22, 1963. Then there is Rose Owen, the bookkeeper, the OBSERVER’s elder stateswoman who works in another department. She was an adult when she heard the news.

“The television was on and I was feeding my baby. He was born in September and this happened in November. We were glued to the television for days,” she remembered.

In 1963, I was a freshman at Dunkirk High School. I remember my friend and I walked from the new building of what was then the high school (now the middle school) to a room in the old brick section (now demolished) of the building. We were laughing and joking as we entered the classroom. It took me a little while to catch on that it was much too quiet. Beverly Sager, who usually sat behind me because Rzepkowski was before Sager alphabetically, quietly and urgently said, “Diane, be quiet!”

Laughter was replaced by a sinking feeling. The news came again over the loud speaker. Our country’s young and vigorous president had been shot and was being rushed to a hospital in Dallas, Texas. It didn’t sound good, but I silently prayed a miracle would happen and he would recover. About an hour later, the news came through that the president was dead.

Bill and Gib were in the same eighth grade class at St. Mary’s School in Dunkirk when they heard the news from the principal, Sister Beatrice. Eugene Bailen was their teacher.

Bill said, “It was unusual to have a male teacher. … He was angry and started yelling – he was an angry kind of guy anyway which was probably necessary for dealing with eighth grade boys.”

Strangely enough, Gib doesn’t remember the yelling. He remembers being confused.

“It seemed so random. There was no war,” he said.

Both remember going home and watching television for three days straight. Subsequent events were caught live. Especially vivid, even though shown on the black and white television of the time, is the image of Jack Ruby killing alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

“This (the whole time) was traumatic,” said Bill.

Vicki, the youngest of us, was in 7th grade at the time. Her memories involved confusion over when she heard the news.

“I am a year older than my sister. We expect that many of our memories of major events that occurred during our school years at Kendall Central would be similar,” she said.

Occasionally, she and her sister would discuss Nov. 22, 1963. “I heard about that on the bus,”Vicki would say.

“No,” her sister countered, “it came over the loudspeaker.”

When I asked for Vicki’s memories, she decided to solve this mystery and talked to her sister, Dawn. Dawn suggested Vicki ask her husband Bill what he recalled because he is good about remembering things like that.

When Bill called back, he started the conversation with “Dawn and I were in sixth grade…”

Vicki said, “That solved our mystery. I was in seventh grade, so would have been on the early bus for grades seven through 12 and kindergarten. Grades one through six left an hour later, closer to 3:30 p.m. We speculated that maybe the bus driver had heard it on the radio, or a kid who had rushed to the bus at the last minute had heard it in the building.

So my sister and I both carry true memories of the terrible day.”

For me it is somewhat disconcerting that there are so many events in my life that many people with whom I come in contact have no memory. I, who once aspired to teach history, am now history, rapidly becoming a relic.

Even after 52 years, Kennedy’s assassination leaves me sad. People still search for answers Conspiracy theories are still tossed out. Authors and historians speculate about how the country would be different if JFK had lived. Would he have been elected to a second term? Did the country lose its innocence that day along with its youngest elected president? All unanswerable questions; sometimes I am annoyed they are even raised.

For me, I think I began to see a dark side of the world – which was there all along. Given my age, I had to lose my naivete sometime. I regret that process started with the death of Kennedy in Dallas.