Here's what I remember. I was born November 29, 1963, so that was a week after JFK's assassination. And I don't recall anything specific about MLK or RFK. So here's my list:
The death of Elvis (1977): I was 13 at the time. We were eastbound on I-40 in Humphreys County, Tennessee, when we heard it on the radio. For the remainder of that trip, my mother (despite not being an Elvis fan) wouldn't listen to anything other than Elvis music on the radio. Most stations had gone all Elvis, all the time, but a few were beginning to return to "normal" programming. (For the record, we were on our way to east Tennessee to settle my late grandmother's estate. She had died the previous year.)
The death of John Lennon (1980): I had just turned 17 the previous week. Since this was a school night, I should have already been in bed, but I had sat up late listening to a side of a Beatles album (ironically!), then when it finished, I switched over to WLS, I think. I believe they were the first (that I heard, anyway) to announce the shooting. I switched around to other stations and heard the announcement that he had actually died. (I may have this the other way around. I may have heard about the shooting on the other stations, and the news of the actual death over WLS.) It was about 10:50 to 11:00 p.m. when I heard this, so this was only about an hour after it actually happened! The next morning, when mom woke me up, she tried to shock me with news about the murder, but of course, I had already heard it the previous night before going to bed.
The shootings of Reagan and the Pope (1981): I was at school when both of these happened, so I heard about both there. When Anwar Sadat was shot later that year, I heard about that that morning, and his death that afternoon after school.
Shuttle explosion (1986): I was working second shift at the time, so I had just gotten up. I turned on the radio and heard the news. I thought, if this is as serious as they are making it sound, there should be something about it on TV! So I turned on the TV, and sure enough, there was coverage of the shuttle explosion. I remember when Columbia was first launched about five years earlier, Dan Rather had said something to the effect that shuttle launches would become so common that they wouldn't be covered on TV anymore! That turned out to be very prophetic!
Oklahoma City bombing (1995): I was working for the Tennessee state legislature at the time when we heard the news. I had a co-worker who was actually from Oklahoma City, so I'm sure this touched her deeply. The next day, we had a bomb threat phoned in, and people were jittery, needless to say, but the legislature met in session anyway, and life went on.
9-11-01: I was working third shift at my own radio station when I heard Hollywood Hendrix announce over (then) Star 97 here in Nashville that a plane had hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center. (For those of you who know anything about Nashville, I was in the MetroCenter area at the time. I will never forget it.) I can't remember now, but I think the news of the second plane had hit by the time I got home. I went to bed and went to sleep and didn't really think anything about it. The reality of it all didn't really hit me until I woke up about 2:30 that afternoon and turned on the TV, and saw all the coverage. I would have expected the WTC to be damaged from the point of impact and upward, but I never could have imagined that the entire buildings would come crumbling down! It reminded me so much of The Towering Inferno!
The death of George Harrison (2001): Not as dramatic as Lennon's death of course, and certainly not unexpected (it had been announced that he was "gravely ill" a couple of days earlier, this following a "false alarm" about his illness a few months earlier), but I was still working at the same station as I had been during 9-11, and I heard the announcement of Harrison's death over our network news. I heard it early on the morning of November 30th, but I found out his death had occurred on November 29, 2001, which was my 38th birthday. (Ironically enough, I had just listened to a Beatles CD just prior to hearing the news, :'( similar to what had been the case (with the Beatles album mentioned above) when I had heard about Lennon's death.)
And this one has not been mentioned by anyone before, but I have saved it for last, and that is, the death of Dottie West in September of 1991. She had been seriously injured in a car crash on the way to the Opry the previous weekend, and we had actually pulled out some of her old albums to play some of her old cuts in the event that she died! I was working at a country station at the time, and I was actually on the air when I saw the news of her death come over the wire. I announced her death on our AM station (the one with the country format) and played a few of her songs. I also alerted our news director, who was working on a news update for our FM (automated) station. Fortunately, I got the wire copy into her hands before she did the update, so she was able to announce it over the FM station as soon as possible.
Unfortunately for me, our GM wanted us to use celebrity news stories (again, off the wire) in our prerecorded liners that we recorded for airing on the FM station. I had read one about Kenny Rogers wanting to record another duet with Dottie West when she recovered. Of course, as we know, that never happened. So I had to pull that liner, and replace it with something else, before it ever had a chance to play! Fortunately, I was able to get it out of rotation before it got to play. (Those "celebrity" news stories were often a headache for me, because our listeners hated them, and often called the station to complain about them!
)
But at any rate, the death of Dottie West marked the only time that breaking news ever occurred while I was on the air!
The death of Elvis (1977): I was 13 at the time. We were eastbound on I-40 in Humphreys County, Tennessee, when we heard it on the radio. For the remainder of that trip, my mother (despite not being an Elvis fan) wouldn't listen to anything other than Elvis music on the radio. Most stations had gone all Elvis, all the time, but a few were beginning to return to "normal" programming. (For the record, we were on our way to east Tennessee to settle my late grandmother's estate. She had died the previous year.)
The death of John Lennon (1980): I had just turned 17 the previous week. Since this was a school night, I should have already been in bed, but I had sat up late listening to a side of a Beatles album (ironically!), then when it finished, I switched over to WLS, I think. I believe they were the first (that I heard, anyway) to announce the shooting. I switched around to other stations and heard the announcement that he had actually died. (I may have this the other way around. I may have heard about the shooting on the other stations, and the news of the actual death over WLS.) It was about 10:50 to 11:00 p.m. when I heard this, so this was only about an hour after it actually happened! The next morning, when mom woke me up, she tried to shock me with news about the murder, but of course, I had already heard it the previous night before going to bed.
The shootings of Reagan and the Pope (1981): I was at school when both of these happened, so I heard about both there. When Anwar Sadat was shot later that year, I heard about that that morning, and his death that afternoon after school.
Shuttle explosion (1986): I was working second shift at the time, so I had just gotten up. I turned on the radio and heard the news. I thought, if this is as serious as they are making it sound, there should be something about it on TV! So I turned on the TV, and sure enough, there was coverage of the shuttle explosion. I remember when Columbia was first launched about five years earlier, Dan Rather had said something to the effect that shuttle launches would become so common that they wouldn't be covered on TV anymore! That turned out to be very prophetic!
Oklahoma City bombing (1995): I was working for the Tennessee state legislature at the time when we heard the news. I had a co-worker who was actually from Oklahoma City, so I'm sure this touched her deeply. The next day, we had a bomb threat phoned in, and people were jittery, needless to say, but the legislature met in session anyway, and life went on.
9-11-01: I was working third shift at my own radio station when I heard Hollywood Hendrix announce over (then) Star 97 here in Nashville that a plane had hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center. (For those of you who know anything about Nashville, I was in the MetroCenter area at the time. I will never forget it.) I can't remember now, but I think the news of the second plane had hit by the time I got home. I went to bed and went to sleep and didn't really think anything about it. The reality of it all didn't really hit me until I woke up about 2:30 that afternoon and turned on the TV, and saw all the coverage. I would have expected the WTC to be damaged from the point of impact and upward, but I never could have imagined that the entire buildings would come crumbling down! It reminded me so much of The Towering Inferno!
The death of George Harrison (2001): Not as dramatic as Lennon's death of course, and certainly not unexpected (it had been announced that he was "gravely ill" a couple of days earlier, this following a "false alarm" about his illness a few months earlier), but I was still working at the same station as I had been during 9-11, and I heard the announcement of Harrison's death over our network news. I heard it early on the morning of November 30th, but I found out his death had occurred on November 29, 2001, which was my 38th birthday. (Ironically enough, I had just listened to a Beatles CD just prior to hearing the news, :'( similar to what had been the case (with the Beatles album mentioned above) when I had heard about Lennon's death.)
And this one has not been mentioned by anyone before, but I have saved it for last, and that is, the death of Dottie West in September of 1991. She had been seriously injured in a car crash on the way to the Opry the previous weekend, and we had actually pulled out some of her old albums to play some of her old cuts in the event that she died! I was working at a country station at the time, and I was actually on the air when I saw the news of her death come over the wire. I announced her death on our AM station (the one with the country format) and played a few of her songs. I also alerted our news director, who was working on a news update for our FM (automated) station. Fortunately, I got the wire copy into her hands before she did the update, so she was able to announce it over the FM station as soon as possible.
Unfortunately for me, our GM wanted us to use celebrity news stories (again, off the wire) in our prerecorded liners that we recorded for airing on the FM station. I had read one about Kenny Rogers wanting to record another duet with Dottie West when she recovered. Of course, as we know, that never happened. So I had to pull that liner, and replace it with something else, before it ever had a chance to play! Fortunately, I was able to get it out of rotation before it got to play. (Those "celebrity" news stories were often a headache for me, because our listeners hated them, and often called the station to complain about them!
)But at any rate, the death of Dottie West marked the only time that breaking news ever occurred while I was on the air!