Sixty-one years ago today, our sixth grade class was outside for recess, playing kickball on a field near our school that warm Friday afternoon, when our teacher, Hyman Krantz, came out to let us know.

“The president has been shot,” he said, speaking slowly and softly, obviously sorry to have to say what he had to say, and paused to let the news sink in. “He’s been killed,” he added, his voice now hoarse with sorrow, his face etched in grief. “The president is dead.”

Similar scenes unfolded all across the country as other teachers broke the news to other students in other classrooms. It was after all the middle of a school day when the shooting occurred at 1:30 p.m. EST and John F. Kennedy was pronounced dead 30 minutes later. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the United States then had 30.7 million children enrolled in elementary school, with another 11.5 million in high school.

Most likely, then, it was our teachers more than our parents who had to meet the moment and play the profoundly unwelcome yet pivotal role of messenger about a tragic assassination to the children of America. Parents would have had to tell only a child or two or three — hard enough for sure — but those teachers had to announce it to an audience of 20 or 30 children.

In the years since, some of those children have publicly recounted hearing the news from a teacher. Some teachers burst into tears. Others consoled distraught students. Still others somehow managed both. One teacher, evidently overwhelmed, dismissed her class for the day without the ability to bring herself to say why. Another, learning of the once-in-a-generation event and apparently traumatized, left the room, telling students she would be right back, but never returned.

Wendy Klenetsky of Brooklyn told USA Today she remembered hearing the voice of her school principal come crackling over the public address system with the news. “Let us bow our heads and observe a moment of silence,” the principal said.

Howard Wilkinson recalled Mrs. Phipps, his fifth grade homeroom and history teacher at Cleveland Elementary School in Dayton, Ohio, face down on her desk, sobbing and trembling, her cheeks streaked with tears. But then she sat up straight, took a deep breath and composed herself. “’Girls and boys … Go home to your families to reflect on what has happened here. Don’t be afraid to talk about it. Pray for our country. And know that I am always here to help you.’ … One by one, she hugged each of us as we left.”

That’s what an entire generation of American children learned in school that day. It was our rude introduction to death. Those teachers set an example that taught us the value of grace under pressure.

Mr. Krantz taught the fourth, fifth and sixth grades for 35 years at Radburn Elementary School in my hometown of Fair Lawn, New Jersey.

He also served as a rabbi at the Glen Rock Jewish Center, the first rabbi in that town, for 34 years. A graduate of Yeshiva University, he was married for 76 years.

He presided over the wedding ceremonies of his three sons and seven grandchildren as well as the bris of his first great-grandchild. By all accounts, he was widely beloved, with a reputation for kindness second to none.

This past April, he died at the age of 95.

“He loved being a teacher in Fair Lawn,” one former student of his said in tribute to him. “He always told his students that one day you will be the ones to make this world a better place. He made sure his kids were ready for the future.”

His death prompted me, 61 years after Kennedy’s assassination, to ask myself questions I’d never asked before.

How must Hyman Krantz have felt telling our class of innocent, unsuspecting 11- and 12-year-olds that someone had gunned down our commander in chief? How must he have felt — as a teacher, a rabbi and a father of three young children — witnessing the shock and sadness on the faces of his students? How, too, must he have felt living in the aftermath of that watershed moment, a day no American alive at the time will ever forget, for the rest of his life?

I asked his three sons if he had ever talked with any of them about it. No, his youngest son Josh told me, they have no memory of the topic coming up in conversation.

Maybe, then, the experience was not only hard for Hyman Krantz but unspeakably hard. Possibly he never spoke of it during all the decades afterward because it already spoke for itself. Sometimes that’s how it can be in the face of death, especially a death that reverberated worldwide. Sometimes nothing speaks more eloquently, nor better honors those gone, than our silence, an echo of the silence we hear at Kennedy’s grave in Arlington Cemetery.

Bob Brody, a consultant and essayist, is author of the memoir “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age.”