Life in a Washington, D.C. Suburb at the Time of Kennedy's Assassination - Yahoo

I grew up with a mailing address in Falls Church, Virginia, in the 1960s, but our community was actually outside the Falls Church area, closer to Bailey's Crossroads and Culmore on Lake Barcroft. Our property was perfect for a kid, with a wooded back lot that went down to a field and then a dock on the lake. I have happy memories of my five years growing up in Virginia.

My father was stationed in Washington D.C. in the 1960s which is why we lived there. It was an interesting time for my family and our nation.

I was asked to write a first-hand account of what life was like (in 300 words or less) during the time of President Kennedy's assassination, and these are my memories:

Life in a Washington, D.C. Suburb at the Time of Kennedy's Assassination

Lake Barcroft, located in Falls Church, Va., was a middle-class suburban area outside of Washington, D.C. populated by many military and government families in the 1960s. My own father, Col. Wm. A. Darden,  was stationed at the Pentagon and the Bureau of Yards and Docks, so we were heavily influenced by daily happenings in our Nation's Capitol.

  I was a young girl in pigtails attending St. Agnes School in Alexandria, Virginia on November 22, 1963.  In 1963, St. Agnes Episcopal School for Girls (now part of St. Stephen's and St. Agnes School) was a private school that primarily taught young girls in the area.

We were in class watching our teacher write on the blackboard not long after lunch, when suddenly another teacher entered the room. She walked in quietly, but there was something in her manner that drew everyone’s attention. The woman whispered something in our teacher’s ear, and then both women left the classroom together, which was unheard of. 

Our teacher came back in looking stricken. She told us she had terrible news: the president had been shot. She escorted us to another room—one with a television, and there our young eyes watched history unfold. We weren’t old enough to fully understand the gravity of the news we were watching, but we knew the President had been shot, and it wasn’t long after that we discovered he had been shot in the head. Even third and fourth graders were able to grasp the gravity of that situation. 

Around 2:00pm, Walter Cronkite announced the devastating news: President John F. Kennedy was dead. 

Up until then the world had seemed pretty safe, but after that day most of us understood that life, power, an important title and armed security were no match for an angry man with a military rifle. 

School let out early, parents came to pick us up, and we watched the city shut down as we drove home. 

Read more at: Life in a Washington, D.C. Suburb at the Time of Kennedy's Assassination - Yahoo 

Some of this story is part of a larger biographical book I’m writing about my father, William A. Darden, Jr.—a tribute to a man whose footprints I still follow. His narrative traces an extraordinary path from a Nashville childhood on Fatherland Street to the classrooms of Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech, to Sundar Nagar, India and then to the Pentagon. A veteran of WWII, Darden’s life remained deeply rooted in the history of the family home at Tick Hill and his wife’s family legacy at Ransom Place. This project goes beyond the uniform to uncover the man himself, moving from the halls of Central High to the final years in Brentwood. For more info, see William A. Darden: Upcoming Biography and Legacy Project. Be part of the discussion on Facebook.

Related historical and biographical articles on William A. Darden are collected in the full archive here: William A. Darden – Articles & Legacy Archive.

To be notified when the book is available, please email darden.k@gmail.com with the subject ‘Book Interest’.