The Night of Monday, December 8, 1980.

This blog and post is in memory of John Lennon, one of my favorite singers from as far back as high school. From 1976-1980. He had left the music business to help take care of his new son and was living in New York in the Dakota Apartments.
While on vacation in the Bahamas he had the inspiration to start writing music again after spending five years raising his son, Sean. He got the idea for the name of his album from a flower he saw in the Bahamas called "Double Fantasy."
He called Yoko to let her know he was starting to write music and she started as well. They started to record at The Record Plant in New York City. They signed with Geffen Records. The album was released in November of 1980. The first single was "Just Like Starting Over."
The album was declared gold by the end of November.
Mark David Chapman came to New York on December 6, a Saturday. He first purchased the album "Double Fantasy" in a record shop in New York. It wasn't until December 8, in the afternoon, when he got John Lennon to sign his album. He waited several hours until John returned to his apartment and when he was walking through the doorway he yelled, "Mr. Lennon?" He then shot five bullets at his back.
The police arrived minutes later and the guard at the Dakota pointed at Chapman who was standing across from him, reading a copy of "Catcher in the Rye." Chapman was arrested and taken to the police station. Lennon was taken to Roosevelt Hospital where he was declared dead minutes later, after the hospital staff tried to revive him with blood transfusions.
A press conference was held, after they arrested Mark Chapman, announcing the death of John Lennon.
The next Sunday they had an 11 minutes of silence on the radio in memory of John and a vigil was held outside of the Dakota Apartments in memory of him.
Mark Chapman was eventually sentenced to 25 years to life and is serving at Attica Prison in New York. The picture of Jared Leto, in "Chapter 27," refers to the movie about the killing of John Lennon. The film is pretty fair.
I was attending Oregon State University in Corvallis during fall term when I heard the news of John Lennon's death. I collected newspaper articles which I placed on my dorm room door for people to read. They described what happened. In 1983 the album "Milk and Honey" was released, which was going to be a follow-up to "Double Fantasy." It was released posthumously and featured some of Yoko Ono's work too.