29 years ago today :(

[pair8head]

John Lennon was taken from us 29 years ago today......

Maybe you’re old enough to recall Dec. 8, 1980, when sportscaster Howard Cosell told a “Monday Night Football” audience watching the New England Patriots and Miami Dolphins that an unspeakable tragedy had just been confirmed by ABC News:

“This, we have to say it. Remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses... John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all The Beatles, shot twice (actually four times) in the back, rushed to the Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival.”

http://www.courierpress.com/news/2009/d ... ahoo_feeds

[VanillaGrl]

I can remember that day like it was just yesterday. Lennon was and has always been one of my favorites.

[dnw]

[ph4ever]

I remember that day. It was such a shocker.

[C-Dawg]

I was in high school, didn't have my license yet, and was out on a date. My Mom came and picked me up around 10pm and told me when I got into the car. We listened to the radio on the way home as they discussed his death and played his music. I was dumbfounded, as it was the first "idol" I had lost.

[SuperTrooper]

Here's the clip from the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gcdz1IRVoM

[buffettbride]

Victoria's crush at school is into John Lennon and she was pleased to have a John Lennon fact handy today.

[MammaBear]

I remember that night very clearly. John Lennon was and remains one of my favorites.

One of my dear friends is about 30 years older than me. She and her daughter always had this "psychic" thingee going. She called me that night and said that she and her daugher were walking their dogs. Her daughter stepped into the street, stopped, looked at her Mom and just said John Lennon. Her Mom asked her what about him...her response is "he's dead".

She called me back later that night after the news broke on TV....they were always doing things like that.

[Wino you know]

I was living in Honolulu at the time, and got a message from the police dispatcher that I had an urgent message to call an off-duty officer friend of mine who was at home.
Since there were no cell phones back then (NO, really-there weren't), I parked my patrol car at a gas station and used their phone to call my friend, who gave me the news.
What was so ironic about that is that the gas station I called from was just across the street from the condos where Mark David Chapman lived.

And I hope the S.O.B. rots in hell.

[flipflopgirl]

i remember it like it was yesterday....and i remember my mom crying, he and the Beatles were one of her absolute favorites!!!

and i hope he rots in HELL too!!!!!

[SMLCHNG]

I was dumbfounded, as it was the first "idol" I had lost.

Me too.

[Karacal]

[ejr]

I was in a hotel room in Milwaukee watching the football game and heard the awful news from Cosell. I remember thinking that when I went into high schools the next day ( i was a college recruiter) that the kids wouldn't possibly understand why I was so upset.

[rich_big]

what a sad day.

[moog]

Vin Scelsa was broadcasting on WNEW FM NY at the time. Here is a segment from a 1996 show that features audio from the 1980 broadcast. Ironically Vin was playing Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Jungle Land’ (not heard in this copy) when the bulletin came over the wire.

http://earbuds.popdose.com/rob/scelsa_lennonsdeath.mp3

For a backstory
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9996682/

[Dally]

John Lennon is and always will be my favorite musician. He was poetic and his music was just raw and hardcore. He sang and wrote from the heart.

I was born 4 years after he was murdered.....but I will never forget and I hope that everytime "that b@stard" (I refuse to say his name) goes up for parole he gets turned down EVERY time. Then sometimes I think, if he was to be let out he wouldn't last a day walking the streets of NYC or anywhere......but that would go against everything John Lennon stood for. He was for peace and love, but I still can't forget or forgive.

One of these days I will make a trip to NYC to see the Dakota and go to Central Park and visit "Strawberry Fields" and the "Imagine" mosaic shrine they have put up.

[moog]

The December 14, 1980 vigil in Central Park as covered by WABC-TV NY.

In three parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_h_ZUh5QX4