John F. Kennedy – An Enduring Legacy

In the unsettled times we are currently in, we reflect upon the legacy and assassination of President John F. Kennedy (JFK) sixty-one years ago on November 22, 1963. It was a horrific loss followed by his brother Bobby’s assassination five years later in June of 1968. Two horrific losses in a single decade accompanied by the murder of Dr., Martin Luther King that year. It becomes impossible to get your mind around these shocking events of the 1960s.

Do you ever find yourself asking “What if the Kennedy brothers had lived?”

I think of this all the time in light of the leadership challenges we’ve experienced since the 1960s. Seems we’ve lost our way in recent times and people are voting their wallets instead of the country. The brothers Kennedy understood duty to country. They lived it. They served the People. Both served during World War II.

The Greatest Generation…

John Kennedy was a Harvard graduate in 1940 followed by joining the U.S Navel Reserve in 1941. Thrust into World War II, he commanded PT boats in the Pacific and managed to survive the sinking of PT-109. He managed to rescue fellow sailors from PT-109 which made him an immediate war hero. He suffered serious injuries as a result yet managed to survive to serve in the House of Representatives from 1947-53 – and later in the U.S. Senate from 1953-60 when he was elected to the Presidency. He went up against the likes of incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon (later President in 1968) with the first ever televised debate in which he performed very well followed by a narrow presidential win in 1960 that put him in The White House.

President John F. Kennedy was the youngest person ever elected to the presidency at age 46 and certainly in uncertain times during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. In a frightening turn of events in 1962, the United States became precariously close to nuclear war a short time into the JFK presidency. Kennedy was tough tested by threatening times that put our country in great danger in when nuclear weapons were placed on Cuban soil 100 miles from the U.S. coastline – which became a heated standoff with the Soviet Union. The Cuban missile crisis was the greatest test of the Kennedy years. The missiles were removed yet tensions with the Soviet Union remained.

I firmly believe it was President Kennedy’s words at Rice University in September of 1962 that served as the rocket fuel and inspiration that got us to the Moon – “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” 

NASA was listening…

We all watched the Gemini and Apollo missions with great anticipation. There was the unspeakable loss of three NASA Apollo 1 astronauts on the launch pad in 1967 – a heartbreaking setback for our journey to the Moon. Discouraged, but never deterred, NASA and the country continued on with great tenacity with Apollo 8 orbiting the Moon at Christmastime in 1968 – and Neil Armstrong’s immortal words in July 1969 – “The Eagle has landed…”

Apollo 1’s tragic loss was not in vain… We shouldered on and honored JFK’s vision.

It was a chilly fall day in November of 1963. I was in second grade and had just moved to Laurel, Maryland with my family. We had just returned to class after lunch period and recess when school was abruptly cancelled for the day and the busses lined up. At the age of seven, I had no idea why we were being discharged from school. In fact, I welcomed the early dismissal. At such a tender age, I couldn’t grasp the severity of what had just happened.

My school bus rolled up to the corner of our apartment complex and I headed home. Everyone was crying and I had no idea what the emotion was all about. I walked into the apartment and my mother was sitting there in tears. I glanced at our Philco console TV and the news explained itself. Our newly elected president was dead – shot by an assassin from a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository in the heart of Dallas. There was much to be learned.

Within hours of this announcement, the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was booked and charged with the assassination of President Kennedy. In those days, there was mostly live TV – with the rest done on film or on newly conceived video tape. You were able to see the news as it happened – unedited. Oswald was shot to death by nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, on live TV during a police transfer in the basement of the Dallas Police headquarters.

We will likely never know the motivation behind the two-prong assassinations of the Kennedy brothers. We will forever wonder how different the world might have been had they both lived to see the 1970s. What we do know is – their agenda was always country first – with a great legacy of service.