Many of my fellow senior citizens can easily recall today’s history and answer the question, “Where were you when JFK was shot?”

In 1963, when I was 26, it was clear to my friends and me that we were important. Our votes counted and we were convinced we could – and did – make a difference in how the country was run.

The Peace Corps was spreading out over the world. Young people were getting involved in helping others in far-off villages. I remember getting a job in a law firm when the secretary left to join the Peace Corps to teach English in a school in Ethiopia. Such a thing was unheard of in prior generations.

Many of my friends in Boston were proud to join the “Freedom Riders” and get everyone registered to vote. It was the right thing to do and we were so idealistic, it never occurred to most of us that anyone could get hurt – much less killed.

One fall day, as I was thinking about what to do on Thanksgiving, my neighbors on Symphony Road decided to go downtown shopping. I gladly agreed to go over to their apartment and take care of their baby son, Brian. The TV was on in the background, I remember, and I was changing a diaper. Just as I was closing the second safety pin (no Pampers), and half-heartedly watching the caravan of the president’s Dallas trip, a gunshot changed everything in my world.

When my friends returned from their shopping, eyes wet, they said the subway was absolutely still with Bostonians stunned, “walking like zombies,” and everyone crying. For days, we were glued to the black-and-white television set and wherever we went, people looked like they were in shock.

People in my parents’ generation could remember, and often told, what they were doing when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. My generation remembers where they were when the president was murdered. Today’s youth might recall the 9/11 attack or the Challenger explosion.

My world was never the same after that November day 50 years ago. Never again would I see a young generation so absolutely determined to get so involved in their own country. Often today, as an entrenched senior citizen, I feel sorry that some of our younger citizens don’t seem to have a goal that involves positive change.

It would be just the first of other terrible losses before that decade ended. Only a couple years after Kennedy was killed, we lost Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

Kay Soldier welcomes reader ideas for column topics of interest to seniors. She can be reached by email at kso48@aol.com, or write to 114 Tandberg Trail, Windham, ME 04062.