A Crowd of People Stood and Stared

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29 years ago today, Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon. To this day I can clearly remember waking up for school the next morning, and my mom telling me, "They killed John Lennon."

Although I knew at the time that Lennon's death deeply affected people around the world, I don't know that anyone appreciated how profoundly his music touched those who heard it - even those who perhaps didn't care for him or his message of peace. (I will never forget, some years later, watching with jaw agape as Pat Robertson went on TV to explain why Lennon's "Imagine" was such an "evil" song. He went through all of the lyrics, sharing his twisted interpretation of them, and when he got to the line "Imagine all the people sharing all the world," Robertson cried, "Well, that's Communism!")

Here is a fascinating time capsule I found online - the news of Lennon's death being reported the next day by Walter Cronkite. The voice of trust reporting the loss of the voice of peace:

CBS Evening News December 9,1980
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