Recalling JFK’s assassination despite near vacuum in media

Bill Knight column for 11-28, 29 or 30, 2019

As November 22 approaches each year, I recall the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and for some reason this year, I longed for perspective on the tragedy and expected the news media to remind the country of that day 56 years ago. I saw very little beyond shared memories of friends.

Some may think, “OK, Boomer” and dismiss the belief that it’s worth remembering by those old enough to remember being youngsters in 1963. After all, 2019 schools’ “active shooter” drills are sadly more real than the exercises to prepare for nuclear war that we did during the Cold War. However, JFK’s murder was as tragic for the nation as 9-11 was 18 years ago. Both were moments that destroyed an innocence here, and in some ways Kennedy’s assassination contributed to Vietnam protests, racial unrest, Watergate criminality, and even the polarization, inequality, militarization and flirtation with white nationalism and authoritarians that Americans endures now.

Hometown classmates and others shared memories on Facebook, remembering that “very sad day,” a “surreal” moment, an “eerie” feeling. That day in 1963, I was at my high school locker and overheard Cindy tell John about the shooting and went into Latin class thinking it was a bad joke. Other friends were going to P.E., Home Ec, English and other routine destinations, where they heard the news, anything but routine.

It’s been helpful to have run across President Kennedy’s prepared remarks planned to be delivered that night to the Texas Democratic State Committee at Austin’s Municipal Auditorium. Archived at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the speech was a campaign-style address, but reading it decades later shocks the system with applications to 2019.

“The Democratic Party is not a collection of diverse interests brought together only to win elections,” Kennedy was to say. “We are united instead by a respect for the past and a recognition of the needs of the future.”

About halfway through his term, Kennedy said his administration “pledged to increase America’s strength against its enemies, its prestige among its friends, and the opportunities offered to citizens.

“In El Paso, I pledged in 1960 that we would give the highest and earliest priority to the re-establishment of good relations with Latin America,” his speech continues. “And American officials are no longer booed and spat upon south of the border. The United States is once more identified with the needs and aspirations of the people to the South.

“In San Jose and Mexico City, in Bonn and West Berlin, in Rome and County Cork, I saw and heard and felt a new appreciation for an America on the move – an America which has shown that it cares about the needs of its own and other lands,” he’d intended to say.

Reflecting on what he saw as his first term’s help for farmers, industries, employment and natural resources, and ambitious plans for the space program, fighting poverty, pollution and waste in government, providing more housing for the aged, and increasing Social Security benefits, he added that his administration had “opened more new doors to minority groups – to transportation, voting, education, employment and places of public accommodation – than had been opened in any three-year or 30-year period in this century.”

Continuing on the importance of schools, JFK’s speech notes, “Civilization, it was once said, is a race between education and catastrophe – and we intend to win that race for education.”

Kennedy had hoped to encourage Americans to persevere and challenge people’s resolve, writing, “Neither fanatics not the faint-hearted are needed.”

            The 46-year-old President was to have wrapped up his remarks by returning to his call for unity, saying, “Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our nation’s future is at stake.”

That day, our school’s principal, Mr. Ihrig, came on the intercom and shared the news: “Ladies and gentlemen, the President is dead,” and amid a silence broken only by stifled sobs, the future seemed more precarious than ever.

Last week, an old friend, talented singer/songwriter/recording artist Mark Donham, shared some lyrics for a “talking blues” number he’s working on. His words, touching and truthful, include, “We were just kids, didn't know what to feel,/ we were just kids, didn't seem real/ but when the adults cried,/ it was scary, made you want to hide… I still feel the pain/ worse than a shame –/ our country has never been the same.”