End Of Innocence ...

Forty-five years ago to the day, on November 22, 1963, the gusty winds of change were howling at gale force as one of America's most gleaming flames of hope was suddenly and violently doused ... gunshots heard round the world overshadowed the parade-like atmosphere that fateful autumn day at Dealey Plaza, conveying shock and sorrow before the watchful eyes of a horrified nation ... no one then alive can forget where they were when they heard the woeful news that became forever embedded in our national consciousness ... our hero was dead ... our joy was turned to sadness ... our confidence became uncertainty ... our fears became stark reality ... our hearts were forever broken ... it was the end of innocence ... John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullet as his motorcade wound through the streets of Dallas, Texas, he was hardly past his first thousand days in office. Kennedy was the youngest man ever elected President; he was also the youngest to die. Of Irish descent, he was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. Graduating from Harvard in 1940, he entered the Navy. In 1943, when his PT boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer, Kennedy, despite grave injuries, led the survivors through perilous waters to safety ... Back from the war, he became a Democratic Congressman from the Boston area, advancing in 1953 to the Senate. He married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953. In 1955, while recuperating from back surgery, he wrote Profiles In Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history. In 1956, Kennedy nearly gained the Democratic nomination for Vice President, and four years later was a first-ballot nominee for President. Winning by a narrow margin in the popular vote, Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic President ... Kennedy's Inaugural Address offered this memorable injunction: "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." ... as President, he took vigorous action in the cause of equal rights, calling for new civil rights legislation. His vision of America extended to the quality of the national culture and the central role of the arts in a vital society. He wished America to resume it's old mission as the first nation dedicated to the revolution of human rights. With the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps, he brought American idealism to the aid of developing nations. Before his untimely death, he laid plans for a massive assault on persisting pockets of privation and poverty ... As with any great leader, John Kennedy also had flaws and failures, his most glaring occurring in April 1961. Known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Kennedy permitted a group of armed and trained Cuban exiles to invade their homeland in an attempt to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro. This event became a disaster and an embarrassment for the young President. Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union renewed it's campaign against West Berlin. However, Kennedy also displayed unfaltering creativity, courage and resolve, and decisively responded to the Soviets by reinforcing the Berlin garrison, and increased American military strength, including new efforts in outer space. Confronted by this reaction, Moscow, after the erection of the Berlin Wall, relaxed it's pressure in central Europe ... President Kennedy's most shining hours came in October 1962. Discovered by air reconnaissance, the Russians were seeking to install nuclear missiles in Cuba just 90 miles from the coast of Florida. Enforced by a naval blockade, Kennedy imposed a quarantine on all offensive weapons bound for Cuba. While the world trembled on the brink of nuclear war, the Soviets, under the direction of Nikita Khrushchev, backed down and agreed to take the missiles away, total global annihilation of all humankind had been averted ... Kennedy then contended that both sides had a vital interest in stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons and slowing the arms race - a contention which led to the test ban treaty of 1963. The months that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis showed significant progress toward his goal of "a world of law and free choice, banishing the world of war and coercion." His administration saw the beginning of new hope for both equal rights of Americans and the peace of the entire world, but dark days lurked just beyond the horizon ... As long as I shall live, I will remember sitting there as a young boy, watching an old black and white TV, as Walter Cronkite announced that President Kennedy had been shot while in Dallas, Texas, then minutes later, Cronkite, his trusted and familiar voice breaking, would deliver the awful news to the anxious throngs that our dear President was dead ... an entire nation languished in silence and stunned disbelief. How could this have happened? The President of the United States of America, the most powerful nation on earth ... the leader of the free world had been gunned down in broad daylight, in the middle of a public byway, like some animal, and before the gaping eyes of the entire world ... During the ensuing days, as the nation sat in a state of darkness and mourning, and as our slain prince was ultimately carried to his final resting place, many impressions and images were indelibly etched into my young psyche ... images of the President being struck by the assassin's bullets ... his wife Jacqueline climbing onto the trunk of the presidential limousine in an effort to retrieve parts of her husband's skull which were blown away by the gunshot ... her pink dress drenched with his blood ... Lyndon Baines Johnson being quickly sworn in as thirty-sixth President of the United States while standing aboard Air Force One ... Jack Ruby cold-bloodedly shooting Lee Harvey Oswald to death on live national TV as he was being led from the police station to jail ... Then the seemingly endless days involving the pageantry surrounding the fallen President's state funeral, which was patterned after that of Abraham Lincoln ... the entire trip, from Capitol to White House, to St. Matthews Cathedral, to Arlington National Cemetery was six miles. An estimated one million people lined the route. Diplomats and heads of state from around the globe were in attendance, along with Kennedy's family members and close friends, all of whom stood with blank and empty expressions on their haggard faces ... the clopping sound of the horse's hooves striking the hard pavement as they proudly drew the caisson bearing the President's coffin, and the haunting sound of the steady cadence of muffled drum roles that accompanied the cortege were particularly poignant and memorable ... perhaps the most heartrending moment took place on the steps outside St. Matthews Cathedral when Jackie leaned over and whispered to little John-John, who smart and crisp, proudly saluted his father's departing coffin ... the President was finally laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, and at the end of the burial service, a soldier handed Jacqueline a lighted taper with which she lit the John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame. The presidential memorial was inspired by the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which she and her husband had seen during a visit to France in 1961, and/or took inspiration from "candle in the wind" of Arthurian legend, and the Broadway Play "Camelot." ... Scarce are the words that are yet to be uttered as to this tragic and unspeakable act that graved a deep and painful scar on the furrowed brow of American history ... it matters not whether you agreed with Kennedy's political philosophies or religious beliefs ... it matters not whether you liked the man personally ... John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a human being, he did not deserve to be openly slaughtered in such an inhuman manner ... John and Bobby Kennedy both gave the ultimate sacrifice in service to their country, they deserve the utmost in respect and honor ... I often wonder what great accomplishments and progress that could have potentially been made had they not been prematurely and swiftly robbed of their lives ... what a shame ... please remember John and Robert Kennedy this week, and say a prayer for the remaining Kennedy family ... the end of innocence ... "He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights .... It's--it had to be some silly little Communist." --Jacqueline Kennedy, on hearing that a leftist had been arrested for her husband's murder. *Some biographical information supplied by the U.S National Archives --sja