We Lost John Lennon 40 Years Ago Today

December 8th, 1980. It's a day I will never forget. At that time, I was working at a radio station in Elmira.

For some reason, I was at the station late, probably just to hang out with the night jock who I was close friends with. Back then, we go our news (outside of local news) from a huge clunky loud United Press machine. It would spit out state, national, world news and other items 24 hours a day.

Whenever there was a major story to come over, a series of bells would go off. And that's exactly what happened the evening of December 8th, 1980. At first we thought it was probably some world news alert that would amount to nothing, but we quickly found out that was not the case.

We were in shock to read that John Lennon had been shot in New York City. So, we went on the air with what little we knew at the time and played a few John Lennon songs. As we later found out, he has passed away due to four gunshot wounds.

Our first thoughts were who in the hell would do such a horrible thing. And that person was Mark David Chapman. Chapman had earlier in the day met John and asked for an autograph of his 'Double Fantasy' album, which John gladly did.

Upon John and Yoko's return home, Chapman was there and shot John four times at close range. Later then Chapman was asked why he did it, he stated it was for attention. He killed a person for attention. Well he got what he asked for, and since has regretted it, but none of us will ever forgive him for this horrific, selfish act.

40 years later we continue to miss John Lennon. I like to believe that the world would be a better place if we were alive today.