Martinsville High School Alumni


		Martinsville High School - Martinsville, Virginia

Najjar's Pizza Haven - Collinsville, Virginia

Alumni Search

Search Photos by
Firstname or Lastname
use single words only

Message Boards

Select Class Year

Class Photos

Yearbook Class Photos are now Online for the Classes of:
1927 1928 1929
1930 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Click on the Year above to see them, or go to the Message Boards for those years and click
"Yearbook Photos".

To help us add senior photos for your class, Click Here

Email the Webmaster

Martinsville High School Alumni

Class of 1973	Reply \| Post Message \| Message List


45 Years Ago Today: JFK and Patrick Henry Elementary - 18

11/22/08 David Young (1973) BYoung1441@aol.com

My parents were big JFK supporters, so, consequently, I thought of him as one of my first heroes. In this day and age, when the President is on the TV addressing the nation, most people say, "yeah, big deal, what ELSE is on?" Remember the early 60s, though? A Presidential address on TV meant EVERYTHING STOPPED. Guess it was just the nature of things then, with the Cold War, anxiety left over from the Cuban Missle Crisis, etc. Like the rest of the class of '73, I was in the third grade on 11/22/63, at good ol' Patrick Henry Elementary. We came off the playground, and the normal procedure was to take a rest room break and then finish the afternoon in the classroom. This day, however, our teacher made us sit down. Mrs. Stone told us that a terrible thing had happened....President Kennedy had gone to Dallas to make a speech, and had been shot (I remember immediately having a visual image of the man actually giving a speech at a podium and suddenly collapsing mid sentence). She said that there was a radio on in the principal's office (funny, I can still remember what that radio sounded like down the hall), that we did not know yet what his condition was, we would have to wait and see, hope for the best, etc. We took our rest room break, and I was standing in the doorway of our classroom with our teacher. A first grade teacher (oddly enough, my wife Betty's first grade teacher....she was two years younger, and we did not meet until high school) walked up and simply said, "He's dead." I remember the rest of the day being sort of upside down. My dad and I had planned on going to the community center by the old high school to do some swimming in their indoor pool, and we followed through on that plan immediately after school. That big pool, and there were only three people there.....me, my dad, and the lifeguard. Swimming in dead silence with only the sound of a little bit of splashing, no conversation, just a feeling of being stunned. Went to bed that night scared....it seemed like everything was wrong. Many of you remember that my dad was the minister at Holy Trinity Lutheran, so we were always the last people to leave the church on Sundays. Consequently, two days later, my mom and I were upstairs changing out of our Sunday clothes when my dad came charging up the steps yelling "they shot Oswald! They shot Oswald!" I am the only person I know who was alive then and did not see it live. A quick side story. When I was getting my Masters at Georgia State, I had an Associate professor who was in the Army at that time, stationed in Korea. Because of the time difference, it was breakfast time over there. In the US, we had no idea, of course, that we had just ramped up to the highest possible military alert immediately after JFK had been shot (could have been an invasion, or God knows what). He said they were going through the chow line, getting their oatmeal, in FULL BATTLE GEAR, with rifles, bayonets attached and unsheathed, in their hands. They were ready to go at a second's notice. Anyone else have any memories of November 22,1963, which was 45 years ago today?