Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

That moment in time is frozen in my memory forever.
I still know exactly where i was and what i was doing when i heard the sad news.

kiramdear wrote:That day my view of the world changed, irrevocably. I still think of him every day.

Me too... I often wonder if Nixon had gotten him deported would he have ended up back in Canada... Long John Baldry (a fellow Hamburg Rock and Roller) ended up living about 20 miles from where I live for over 25 years..

But there ius no point in dwelling on the what ifs... I am glad that we had him when we did...

But you can't help but miss what might have been... Lennon at Live Aid etc...

I was 24 when it happened and I felt like my whole childhood and been stolen and cut off from me forever, and I was facing a cold, cruel, new world. No other loss in my whole life has hit me like that. I know it's silly but I'd give just about anything to go back in time and somehow erase that one event.

kiramdear wrote:I was 24 when it happened and I felt like my whole childhood and been stolen and cut off from me forever, and I was facing a cold, cruel, new world. No other loss in my whole life has hit me like that. I know it's silly but I'd give just about anything to go back in time and somehow erase that one event.

There is a beautiful Spider Robinson short story, called "Rubber Soul" about John waking up from hibernation to find an aged Paul waiting for him...

I also remember an 1980's Twilight Zone episode where a time traveler went back to 1963 and replaced Kennedy at the moment of his assassination. I think many of us would have taken a bullet to have saved John...

I was 13 about to turn 14 the following week that Monday morning in 1980. I had the day off school for a Doctor's appointment. I wandered around all day with a transistor radio glued to my ear, waiting for the bulletin that said "it is all a mistake - John is OK"..

It never came alas...

Aha!

I found the Spider Robinson story RUBBER SOUL online... If anyone wants to read it. It is very short but powerful..

http://embee.freqshift.net/fun/books/Sp ... 20Soul.pdf

kiramdear wrote:l No other loss in my whole life has hit me like that. I know it's silly but I'd give just about anything to go back in time and somehow erase that one event.

Nothing silly about that. I have the same feeling and wished the same thing many times since.

gregga41 wrote:That moment in time is frozen in my memory forever.
I still know exactly where i was and what i was doing when i heard the sad news.

I was in the Navy then, stationed aboard a Destroyer on a six month tour of South America. Imagine the days before internet, cable news, satellite, etc... We got our daily news updates from a teletype machine. The radioman would post the news, just text on a page, to the bulkhead adjacent to the mess hall. Being an engineer, I rarely had time to stop and read anything, but on that day, there was a group of people staring at the wall in disbelief. It was one line that read:

"Former Beatle John Lennon shot and killed outside New York City apartment"

There was no other news source to check, no CNN, FOX, HLN, no newspaper or radio broadcast to tune in to... We just had that to deal with until the next day's teletype confirmed with more details.

That was one sad & lonely day for a lot of us. It's probably the worst I've ever felt about losing someone that I didn't actually know. Still doesn't make sense to this day.