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When I look back through the clippings in our newsroom
folders, I'm often surprised by the things I read. I often have no recollection
of many of the events chronicled in our school board files - even when
I was the one who wrote about them.
That's not the case when it comes to the events of Nov. 22, 1963.
Saturday will mark the 40th anniversary of the death of the last U.S.
president to die while in office, but that tragic Friday remains as
vivid as the images of the nightmare that happened on a sunny Sept.
11 two years ago.
Four decades ago we were in study hall at Chamblee (Ga.) High School,
marking time until it was three o'clock. We didn't have a care in the
world. The weekend waited a couple of hours away, and Marilyn was going
to celebrate her 13th birthday with a slumber party that night.
We heard the crackle of the ancient intercom sometime around 1 p.m.
Coach Allen hollered at us to be quiet, and we hushed in time to hear
our principal, Dr. Cooper, announce that President Kennedy had been
shot.
We stayed quiet, hoping the next news would be better. But in a matter
of minutes, the generally unflappable Dr. Cooper, in a voice choked
with emotion, came on the loudspeaker and told us our president had
died in Dallas.
Just as my generation added 9/11 to its collective indelible memory,
our parents paired that Nov. 22 with their recollections of Dec. 7,
1941.
Our slumber party was postponed, and we watched the first national tragedy
of the television age repeat itself endlessly on screen.
Law enforcement officials quickly arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, a name
we had never heard but which soon became all-too-familiar. Then a shell-shocked
nation watched as Oswald was shot, live and on camera, by a man named
Jack Ruby.
JFK is the first president I remember. Truman was president when I was
born, and Eisenhower was in the White House from 1953 until 1961, but
it's the images of John Kennedy and his family that still resonate.
We were in sixth grade the November Kennedy was elected. Bobby McKay
was Kennedy and Gary Ingemanson was Richard Nixon in our classroom debate.
Nixon actually won our mock election at Sexton Woods Elementary School,
but we were die-hard Democrats at my house, and I knew Kennedy would
win.
As ecstatic as my parents were when Kennedy won is just how devastated
they were three years later when he was murdered.
My friends and I later learned that our parents, less than two decades
removed from World War II, actually feared a communist takeover or governmental
collapse in the wake of the Kennedy assassination.
For us teenagers, though, what we lost was charisma and inspiration.
We believed the dashing young president who told us to "ask not
what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country,"
and we resented the stodgy LBJ who inherited the Oval Office.
History has not always judged our 35th president kindly with regard
to his presidential or personal side, but that's not something I can
judge. His light was too strong, his words were too moving and his memory
is too cherished for me to be impartial.
I came across a column on the Internet by David Shribman, and he expressed
a similar view:
"I will leave it to others to examine President Kennedy's moral
successes and moral failures. For me, on this occasion, it is enough
to argue that President Kennedy achieved what he ascribed to Winston
Churchill: He mobilized the English language. He gave voice to American
idealism, and perhaps it is not too much to say that the glow from that
fire can, still, truly light the world," Shribman writes.
To illustrate his point, Shribman offers passages from several of JFK's
speeches. The president's words still resonate, because then, in the
wake of the Cuban missile crisis and in the midst of the Cold War, there
was much debate about America's role in a world society, just as there
is today with our soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"Finally, it should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger
abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it
preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by
those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully
educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems
and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And
only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain
the worldwide defense of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned
the opportunities of our system and society," President Kenndy
said.
We'll close with the final paragraph of the speech JFK prepared to deliver
in Dallas:
"We in this country, in this generation, are - by destiny rather
than choice - the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore,
that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise
our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our
time the ancient vision of peace on earth, goodwill toward men. That
must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always
underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: ‘Except the
Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.'"
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