If you are of a certain age, the one thing you would hear most often around this time of year was "where were you the day Kennedy was shot?" - and everyone of that certain age will tell you exactly where they were, what they were doing and what they were thinking. It was just that kind of day. It was that kind of event.

For my part, it began what would become a lifelong pursuit of collecting history. The day Kennedy was shot I was home recovering from surgery and I was bored and playing with my parents tape recorder, just recording random things off the radio. As fate somehow how had it, it was the precise moment I was recording something that the very first bulletins came on. And for some reason, I had to record everything that happened as it was unfolding.

As years went on and the archive grew, I began to get more recordings of the event, such as an original ABC Radio network recording, which was a much better version of the one I originally made.

The shock and urgency and the feeling of helplessness are still there, even listening to this tape 47 years later.

I don't think there is anything I can add to this that hasn't been gone over adinfinitum through the years.

Here is the first hour, exactly as it happened this day in 1963.