I remember as clear as day what happened on hearing about JFK.
I was in Inverness, ten years old lying on our lounge room floor watching the TV and the news came on. Must have been around 6pm or 7pm in the evening. My Mum and Dad were getting ready to go out to a dinner and dance ( Dad in black tie and my Mum in full length evening dress - that was a pretty common way of dressing in Inverness in those days for events at the Caledonian Ballroom etc. etc.)
There was a dramatic introduction stating that President Kennedy had been killed by an assassin's bullet. I immediately ran through to my parents bedroom to tell them that President Kennedy had been shot dead. My Mother told me not to talk nonsense and refused to believe me.
I insisted that they come through and listen to the news themselves if they didn't believe me. They did and I have never seen such fear in my Father's and Mother's faces as on that night. They had both lived through the second world war and both had parents who had lived through the first world war. There immediate talk turned to the threat of another war. Given Kennedy's assassination happened not long after the Cuban Missile crisis you can understand why they reacted that way.
The next morning my parents told me that the dancing part of the Dinner and Dance was cancelled out of respect for President Kennedy. People just had the dinner instead and then talked endlessly about the assassination and the prospects of war before going home early.
I also remember my mother telling me that President Kennedy was an extremely popular President amongst the British people at the time and that this was a very, very bad day for the world and we all needed to pray for peace.
Very, very heavy times indeed.