Those "where were you?" events

Some events are forever etched in our memories.
This past Sunday night I was intrigued watching the Twitter traffic that President Obama was about to deliver a rare Sunday night broadcast message -- topic unknown.
It just had to be something big.
Because if there's one thing I've learned in my journalism studies it's that news that governments or agencies would like shielded from the public eye is released close to the weekend, when news production sources are minimized and people's thoughts turn to other -- usually outdoor or recreational -- activities. By publicizing these events late in the weekly cycle they are either buried on inside weekend pages or are "old news" by the time the Monday work week begins again. That's what made a Sunday night pronouncement particularly curious. An announcement to be made on Sunday night when people's thoughts are turning to the coming work week had to be something really, really big. And the links gave me that feeling, but we'd have to wait to hear from the president. Finally, as I was waiting for another tweet to let me in on the big secret, I instead turned on Fox News, where a headline already announced that sources had confirmed that bin Laden had been killed. While the details were still sketchy, the cat -- so to speak -- was now out of the bag. It was very much a biggie. And what a capper to an historic weekend, which began with the royal wedding on Friday, the beatification of Pope John Paul II, and then the announcement of the death of bin Laden.
Most anyone old enough to remember the 9-11 attacks can tell you where they were when they first heard the news that somber day almost 10 years ago. I was at my computer, working in the Jonas H. Lien US Armed Forces Reserve Center in Sioux Falls. With the radio on. Listening to the report of the first airplane crash, then the second, and the third in a series of ghastly, related events.
Now while I don't remember exactly where I was when I heard about the space shuttle Challenger's destruction on Jan. 28, 1986, I was working as a writer at the Fairfax Standard back then, and was moved to commemorate the astronauts in a column that ran in the Standard.
And when South Dakota Governor George S. Mickelson was among eight people killed in the crash of a small airplane near Dubuque, IA on April 19, 1993, that death hit particularly hard. Earlier, Governor Mickelson had been our surprise tour guide in the state capitol when we visited Pierre. The governor, whom we met in the hallway of the Capitol, invited us into his office and had the children take turns sitting in his chair. He told the kids about a determined mother goose who doggedly incubated her eggs through the worst of weather on the lake beside the capitol. And after his easy-going visit with us, he gave the kids each a gold pin emblazoned with the likeness of a buffalo. After his death, I recalled the visit in a column for the Alexandria Herald/Emery Enterprise, and sent a copy to his widow, Linda. Mrs. Mickelson, in turn, wrote a warm letter of thanks.
My earliest recollection of history in the making was President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. I was a third-grader in Alexandria. As I remember, someone came to the door of our classroom and our teacher, Mrs. Hershey, answered the door, and returned to the front of the classroom -- obviously shaken. She told us that the president had been killed. At recess we asked each other why would someone do that? Kill our president?
Some historic events evoke those memories of time and place. I'm not sure I can place bin Laden's death in the same category, but the online traffic prior to the announcement created a curious "buzz" that I won't soon forget. Some events are forever etched in our minds like a snapshot in time. We become witnesses to history.