Many in tears across Chaffey College the day Kennedy was assassinated



“He was very popular,” Lopez said. Kennedy’s youth and his young family in the White House made him easy for students to identify with and like, he said.

“There was a lot of chaos. Everyone was stunned,” said Lopez, 69.

“I don’t think my generation had seen anything of this magnitude before,” Lopez said from his Fontana office at the United Steelworkers Local 7600, which represents a broad group of Kaiser Permanente employees.

After school, Lopez went to his job at a gas station in the center of Corona.

“People were in a daze when they drove in,” he said. “They would just sit in their cars, staring ahead as they listened to the radio.”

That day happened to be the birthday of his youngest sister.

“Her birthday party was ruined,” he said, adding that to some extent the assassination has affected every birthday celebration since.