Earliest news event I remember: the Kennedy assassination. I was 3 1/2 years old. My mother, 7 months pregnant, had me and my sister with her in a department store and it was announced over the loudspeaker. Mom lost it. I learned many years later my dad was back east at a telephone switch school for his job. The school just basically shut down and sent all the students home, which was unexpected.

I learned how to read when I was six and I read *everything.* *Everything*, including the evening paper. Half a century later, the later 1960s seem really violent and unsettling, but I have to remember that I was viewing it through the lens of a six to 10 year old kid.