By Edwin Cooney
Last November 22nd, many of us who write, whether
as a vocation or avocation, offered our readers our thoughts on the fiftieth
anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. As hard as it is to believe that half a
century has passed since that terrible November Friday, there exists another
reality that’s almost as hard to fathom.
Last Thursday, May 29th, 2014, Jack Kennedy would
have celebrated his 97th birthday.
This reality is especially stunning when you recall that much of Jack
Kennedy’s persona was based on his youth.
Yet, there it is: John Kennedy’s 97th birth date, as real as the man
himself.
In the days, weeks, months and the first few years following
his murder, some of the most eloquent among us spent countless words and
thoughts in an attempt to capture his essence so that we might comprehend and
be nurtured by the depth of his value to us.
In the immediate aftermath of his assassination there was a tendency to
compare him with Abraham Lincoln, our greatest martyred president. However, with the passing of time and added
perspective (perhaps time’s greatest gift), most Americans have become more
than a little familiar with who Jack Kennedy really was. Sadly, not all of who he was is even close
to what he seemed to be during his lifetime.
Still, there is much about what and who he truly was that is both
inspiring and fascinating to recall.
Since the trauma of his death began to fade in the late
sixties and early seventies, few today insist that John Kennedy can be rated
more than as an average president. In
the wake of such legacies as The Peace Corps (1961), the Alliance for Progress
in Central and South America (1961), the settlement of the Cuban Missile Crisis
(1962) and the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Tuesday, October 8th,
1963), most of what we have to hang on to are wonderful impressions, images and
memories of the man called Jack.
The image of a tall slender man with sensitive blue eyes and
thick reddish brown hair parted on the left side, standing at a podium, his
right index finger extended as he attempted to make a point during a speech or
as he selected the next questioner at one of his frequent Tuesday afternoon
news conferences will linger forever in the minds of millions of Americans.
Then there’s the memory of that thick Harvard accent mixed with his native New
England twang as he spoke of “vigga” or of “Cuber” and the goals of the new
“frontieea”.
Even as we temporarily wallow in these delicious images,
history snaps us awake with reminders of women named Judith Campbell Exner,
Mary Painter Myers and Marilyn Monroe with whom Jack Kennedy had extramarital
relations in violation of his marriage vows to Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy. Still, those of us who remember Jack Kennedy
as erudite, quick-witted and, of course, forever young, have more wholesome
memories to sustain us as we ourselves merge into that ageless domain where the
past increasingly becomes wisdom and memory becomes reality.
The scenes of “Camelot,” that period of time between Friday,
January 20th, 1961 and Friday, November 22nd, 1963, can
be dismissed as merely an anguished widow’s pipedream. However, Jack Kennedy’s presidency was far
more than the fulfillment of his political ambition or even his personal
dreams.
As he told a crowd of screaming supporters in Boston on
election eve, “This is the most responsible time in the life of any free
citizen of any free country. And I do not run for the office of the presidency,
after fourteen years in the congress, with any expectation that it is an empty
or an easy job. I run for the Presidency of the United States because it is the
center of action. And in a free society, the chief responsibility of the President
is to set before the American people the unfinished public business of our
country.”
As he set out to begin that task, we can still see in our
mind’s eye his inauguration in the snow. We remember him introducing himself as
the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris. There’s the pride he
displayed as Jackie conducted America on a tour of the remodeled White House in
February of 1962. We can recall vividly President Kennedy’s grim determination
as he stood in front of a map describing to an incredulous nation as well as to
the world at large where the Soviets were installing missiles in Cuba and the
range of their path of possible nuclear destruction.
As he sought election to the presidency in 1960, the
43-year-old Senator from Massachusetts kept insisting, as most young people do,
the importance of being “first.”
Obviously, young Jack wanted to be first on Election Day, but he also
insisted that America should be first in all important matters. Thus, throughout the exactly 144 weeks of his
presidency, the nation was treated to scenes of competition with their leader
somewhere at the center. They saw touch
football games at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, swimming, sailing, tennis and
golf events at Palm Beach, Florida, and, of course, scenes of the president
tossing out the first ball on opening day of the baseball season at Washington,
D.C.’s Griffith Stadium. Additionally, a
comedy album playfully mocked the Kennedy family’s accents and competitive
recreational activities.
There was even a bit of competitive chatter at the summit of
international affairs. In June 1961, JFK
met with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna.
Author Paul F. Boller writes in his book “Presidential Anecdotes” that
Khrushchev tried to take credit for Kennedy’s election. After all, Khrushchev insisted, if he had
released Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot who’d been shot down over the
Soviet Union just before the election, Kennedy would have lost the election by
at least 200,000 votes. Kennedy replied
that if Khrushchev let it get out that he liked him better than he liked Nixon;
Kennedy would have been ruined at home.
So it must be throughout JFK’s 1,108-day presidency that
“first” was essential. We must be first
in education, in sports, in science, in equal opportunity and, most
dramatically of all, first to the moon.
To think about first is the driving motivation of the young. Probably more than perhaps anything else,
Jack Kennedy -- the man whose 97th birthday many celebrated in their
hearts last Thursday -- was forever young.
Come to think of it, we were young, too!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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