Jenyce Gush was a teenager skipping school in Dallas.
Dean Kahler was a college kid walking on campus to class.
Clara Jean Ester was a young woman hoping to meet a hero in Memphis.
Each was an ordinary person who lived through an extraordinary event.
I was 15 years old, going to Rusk Junior High.
The whole city came alive.
It was the most exciting thing Id ever seen.
And then there they were the president and the first lady in an open Lincoln limousine.
I was in awe.
This was the Camelot era.
There had never been apresident like John F. Kennedy or a first lady like Jackie.
I was surprised to see them in an open car, that there was no bulletproof bubble.
But mostly I was thinking about how attractive he was.
He had on a pinstriped shirt, and he had these bushy eyebrows.
I looked at Jackie, who was the epitome of beauty, with lipstick that matched her pink suit.
She was yelling, They shot him!
I thought she was talking about someone she knew, a family member or something.
They shot the president!
No, no, I said.
We just saw him.
I went into Skillerns Drug Store and saw people huddled around a TV.
I thought,This cant be happening.
For days, it was all anyone could talk about.
It was such a dark time for the whole world.
My mother had previously worked as a waitress for Jack Ruby, at the Carousel Club.
Within a short period of time, the FBI showed up at our door.
I answered, and there were these two agents with badges.
I panicked, shut the door in their faces and ran to get my mother, who was asleep.
The FBI is here!
Did yall kill the president?
Somehow, my young mind had made that leap.
Of course, she had nothing to do with it.
Looking back, it was something you never dreamed could happen, and certainly not in your own hometown.
I was going to work for a bank part-time and needed help with my 6-month-old son, Patrick.
We got to London and I rang the agency, which was called Occasional & Permanent Nannies.
Heres someone, the woman on the phone said.
Her name is Diana Spencer.
So, this young woman showed up for an interview.
The name Diana Spencer meant nothing to me.
She and I hit it off, and I hired her on the spot didnt even check her references.
For the next year, she came to my house two days a week.
We had a very intimate relationship.
I called her Diana, and she called me Mrs. Robertson.
One day I found a bank deposit slip sticking out of a sofa in my living room.
The slip was from Coutts, the bank for the aristocracy and the royal family.
And the name on it was Lady Diana Spencer.
I knew that this was an important title.
It just seemed impossible, and one of the British bankers said, We think youre great.
But theres no way that someone with her pedigree would be working for an ordinary American like you.
She had been taking my son to Kensington to play with her sisters little girl.
When our family moved back to the States, these little blue airmail letters started arriving.
Of course I was reading in the newspapersabout her relationship with Prince Charles.
Then, one day in February 1981, my phone rang.
It was a friend from London.
She said, Your girl made it!
I literally jumped for joy.
Then came another note.
Of course, Diana wrote, you will be receiving an invitation to the wedding.
We went to the wedding and also to this fabulous party at Buckingham Palace two days before.
Prince Charles could not have been more gracious.
I believed in the fairy tale.
I thought this was going to work out wonderfully.
For the rest of Dianas life, we wrote letters and saw each other when we could.
I knew she was having a hard time.
The food was not kid-friendly, but Diana cut my daughter Carolines chicken puff pastry for her.
Caroline fell in love.
This was a real-life princess.
One night in August of 1997, I was awake at 2 a.m. because wed had a family party.
Mary, she said, go turn on your television.
Diana has just been killed in a car crash in Paris.
I rushed downstairs, turned on CNN and watched for hours.
It all seemed so unbelievable.
Ill never know who thought to invite us to the funeral.
Diana was the only person in the royal family that we knew.
But I got a call from Lord Chamberlain, inviting me.
I was 26 and a Ph.D. student at Cornell University.
It was a time of great change.
People were trying to leave East Germany.
Protests were going on.
In October, East Germanys leader, Erich Ernst Paul Honecker, resigned.
It was clear something important was going on, but nobody was talking about the wall coming down.
That seemed a long way off, if it was to happen at all.
On the afternoon of November 9, I was listening to a press conference.
Crowds began to gather in East Berlin.
Eventually, some border guards opened gates, and the crowds from East Berlin poured into the West.
The following morning I went down to the wall.
I have a picture of myself standing on the wall that day, celebrating.
West Berlin was full of East Germans, and they were welcomed.
There was a party atmosphere.
Many from the East were driving their smoky East German cars the Trabants.
Everyone was delighted, because nobody expected it.
Over the next days, the wall came crumbling down, and I have pieces of it.
Little details stand out.
I stayed in Germany for nearly another two years.
Circumstances that you’re able to take for granted can change so quickly.
Just because things are the way they are today does not mean they will be like that tomorrow.
I was 22 years old and had just graduated from Chicago Teachers College.
I want a convertible, I told the salesman.
Come in the back room with me, he said.
I have something special to show you.
We went into the back room, and there was this car, under a tarp.
He pulled off the cover, revealing this marvelous skylight blue automobile.
It looked sporty and small, and it had bucket seats.
I loved it right away.
But he let me buy it.
It was a convertible and had all the bells and whistles, and I paid $3,447.50.
My parents loaned me the money.
They were so excited!
I felt like a movie star.
Suddenly there were Mustangs everywhere.
The car became so popular that Ford could not make them fast enough.
My husband and I drove that car for 15 years.
Then one day he came home from work and said, Theres something wrong with the car.
He put it in the garage and said he would fix it next week.
That next week turned into 27 years.
Tom saw a guy online claiming to be the first Mustang owner.
He said he had bought his Mustang on April 14, 1964, in Canada.
But I had bought mine on April 15, and I had all the paperwork.
Eventually, Ford verified that my Mustang was the first one sold in the U.S.
