John Lennon was killed 41 years ago today

[Cuthbert Allgood]

I know we just came off of Pearl Harbor which is a major historical event, but the killing of John Lennon left a huge impression on me. I am about as old as you can be and still be Gen X. I was a freshman in high school when Lennon was killed. We had choir rehearsal that night. I remember most of us being devastated. I was 4 when the Beatles broke up, so I don't have that moment in my memory, but they were still a big part of my musical youth. And I loved Lennon. I had just bought Double Fantasy (vinyl, of course) and had listened to it so many times already when Lennon was killed. I also am one of the few that liked the Yoko Ono songs.

So. Anyway. Today brings a lot of memories of grief back to my mind. And a fondness for a musical genius taken too soon.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

1. Agree! Silly that my biggest memory was my little sister

thinking Jack Lemmon had died.

[Dial H For Hero]

2. I was a freshman in college, and remember many classmates sobbing openly when they heard the news.

I recall being puzzled at such strong reactions. While of course I knew at that time who the Beatles were, I hadn't grown up with their music as so many had.

[JenniferJuniper]

3. Me too.

I can still hear people yelling the news out of dorm windows after it was announced on Monday Night Football.

That age group had a lot of Beatles fans. Presumably because we heard their music throughout childhood.

[Botany]

4. I remember that awful night and it still hurts.

I was 20 something and a friend and I were just driving around and smoking some dope we were
an cemetery in Delaware, OH looking for this really neat old headstone. It is huge and and it is an
oak tree, with bird nests, snakes, deer, squirrels, rabbits, geese, and a lot more and just as the head-
lights hit the monument Imagine came on the radio, snow was falling and then I heard that awful
I collapsed to my knees and started crying.

41 years later and we still have no gun laws.

[Boomerproud]

6. My mom and dad are buried right off of route 23.

Yes, that day is still with me. I was 24.

[electric_blue68]

14. That's some story! And that is a beautiful headstone.

[PlanetBev]

5. I was a mess

Reagan had just been elected, I turned 30 and John Lennon was murdered. Miserable end of year.

I knew even then, that Reagan’s election was the beginning of the end of the America that I grew up in. To make it worse, an American asshole with a gun took out such a beloved figure.

[tenderfoot]

7. And gun violence has only gotten worse since...

thankfully, nothing will ever be done about it.

[Deuxcents]

8. I remember my mother in law

Asking me how I felt about the news. I was so upset about what a loss this was n the gun issue that I could not express myself and she hugged me. I still get emotional thinking of her n her kindness to me that day.

[slightlv]

9. I was in my senior year at college,

on the phone with a study buddy, studying frantically for an experimental psych exam due the next day when the news hit the radio. Any thoughts of study flew out the window. I broke down in tears, my buddy hung up the phone and came over to the house where we listened to all the old records in our own kind of memorial to John. I pretty much blew the psych test but passed the course, which is all that mattered to me at that point. I couldn't believe someone would shoot John Lennon. It just didn't seem real. 41 years later, it still doesn't seem real. What a loss of talent and humanity.

[ElementaryPenguin]

10. I was watching Monday Night Football. Howard Cosell made the announcement.

Stunning.

Part of me has been in mourning ever since.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

11. Just saw this Howard Cosell announcing John's death on Monday night football

Link to tweet

?s=20

[chowder66]

12. I was 14 and I was in bed. My best friend called to tell me.

[electric_blue68]

13. As a kid my mom would take me to the dentist who was on the same block as The Dakota...

We'd get out of the subway, round the corner and pass the big entrance (very impressive), and head westward. This was even pre The Beatles by several years.

Once we moved we got a dentist in our neighborhood. Didn't think about the building till John & Yoko moved there.

Anyway I was listening (almost positive) to Vin Scelsa either on WNEW, or PLJ when he broke the news.
Then he opened the phones for hours for people to grieve.

It was for you in your '40s like being culturally ran over by a several ton truck. It was terrible.

I remember John & Yoko doing an anti Vietnam War concert in ?Bryant Park.

I was so shocked I couldn't even cry for days. Me, my sis and friends went to the memorial in Central Park. Eventually visited Strawberry Fields as well

[LeftInTX]

15. I did not know about this until the next evening...Didn't have TV..I was 24

Got up the next day and went to work. On the radio, they played a John Lennon song and said "Remembering the late John Lennon"..but nothing else. I was running late to work and didn't have time to listen further.

I worked with a bunch of mean people, whose idea of modern culture was Little House on the Prairie

After I got off work, I bought a paper.

[mnmoderatedem]

16. the rather eerie photo

Lennon signing an autograph for Chapman, hours before Chapman shot him. Still haunting.

https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.o4UT3lCzy8mMi5h8AT40awAAAA&pid=Api&P=0&w=214&h=154