One way to emphasize the historic impact of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is to reach out to people who experienced the moment when the country came to a standstill.

That’s what American Government students at Flathead High School have done as part of their study of events surrounding the assassination 50 years ago today.  

On Wednesday in history teacher Pat Reilly’s class, students shared what they learned from interviewing adults who lived through the assassination of the 35th president, an event that tore a generation’s “Leave it To Beaver” image.

Some of the adults interviewed were children, teenagers or young adults on that grim day, Nov. 22, 1963.

Junior Mallorie Mason interviewed her grandfather Quentin Wells, now 72, of Utah, who was a 22-year-old college student in 1963. He was attending class when someone passing in the hall shouted, “Kennedy has been shot,” Wells said during a phone interview Wednesday.

The class was dismissed.

Wells said he was deeply impacted by the news. He had been involved in Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

“The Kennedy presidency,” Wells said, then paused. “The only thing I can liken it to is the way the British feel about the queen and the royals. Everything they did had an aura about it, but there was a large part of the country that didn’t like them. Some of them were just as virulent to Kennedy as they are to Obama today.”

Despite the polarizing nature of politics, Reilly said, Kennedy reached out to people and was thought of as a “good friend.” The burgeoning popularity of TV had brought Kennedy’s charisma into the living rooms of American families. His shocking death was played out across those living-room televisions, too.  

Even young children and teenagers could sense the gravity of Kennedy’s assassination through the very visible displays of grief, confusion and silence from adults around them.

Sharon Sevier, 64, of Kalispell was one of those teens. On Wednesday she was interviewed by her grandson Connor Roettig, a junior at Flathead.

“I was 14,” Roettig said during an interview at Flathead after school. “It was in the morning — the principal came over the P.A. system and announced the president had been shot.”

Sevier said she remembered thinking she would be the first to break the horrific news about the president to her mother.

“I came in and said, ‘Mother, did you hear the president was killed?’ Of course she has the curtains pulled shut, she’s been crying, the TV was on and she was very well aware,” Sevier said.

Even though Sevier was uninterested in politics or presidents at the time, news of his death rocked her family’s world as it did families across the nation.

“I know we were Republicans, but he [Kennedy] turned out to be somebody we admired,” Sevier said. “It was a wake-up call for the country.”

In the days following Kennedy’s death, Sevier said, her family was glued to the television. Prior to 24-hour news channels and the Internet, there weren’t opportunities to review missed broadcasts.

Reilly who was then 7, was home sick watching the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” show when news of Kennedy’s death interrupted the cartoon.

“Mom stood looking at the news guy, tears streaming down her face,” Reilly said. “Our country came to an absolute standstill.”