By Noel Serrano
This November 22 marks the 50th anniversary of
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was a traumatic experience
for people in the U.S. and around the globe. Those old enough to remember can
tell you the exact spot they were standing when they heard the news. Kennedy
seemed to represent a new, vigorous leadership, after the gray Eisenhower
years, committed to reforming American society and making a better and peaceful world.
Many liberal Democrats also believe there was a
deeper tragedy in Kennedy's death--that it literally altered the course of U.S.
history. As they see it, the so-called "turmoil" of the 1960s--the
ghetto uprisings, the war in Vietnam .--all would have been avoided if Kennedy
had lived.
It was the fall of 1960. I was 4 years old, I
used to spend a lot of time looking out the window of my mother’s bedroom and
see the New York skyline. I loved watching the fabulous structure of the
Tri-Borough Bridge and loved to watch the helicopters land on Randall’s Island.
It was on a cloudy day like this that I gazed down the wide New York streets and saw crowds of
people flocking around a group of cars. It looked like a parade. There was much
excitement for one of the long cars. They were waving and trying their best to
reach out and shake the hand of a tall man with light brown hair. There was a
roar of excitement as throngs would run and surround the car. I did not know what was the commotion and I did not know
that I was viewing the 1960 Presidential
Campaign. This was the first time that I saw
the young man who would, weeks later, become the 35th
President of the United States. I can still recall the sound of the roaring
throngs of friendly crowds and the long motorcade winding down from 7th
Ave and entering Spanish Harlem the and
enormous crowds of people surrounding the Limosine and running towards the man that stood erect, shaking hands and
waving to the adoring crowd. At that moment, I did not understand what I was
looking at and I was too young to realize that I was watching history and yet,
this view captivated my attention and it was seared to my memory. On November
of 1963, I was 6 years old. It was a normal autumn day with memories of brown
and orange leaves on the ground. I walked to the nearby grade school of P.S.123
in Queens, NY. All the children at my
first grade class were excited because we had a substitute teacher on that
Friday morning of November 22, 1963. I glanced around the room and there was a
lot of kids acting up and I remember feeling a little sorry for the Sub teacher
trying to get the students attention to start the lesson for the day. It seemed like a normal Friday and I was
excited because Fridays meant that it would be the start of another weekend to
play with my brothers. I recall great commotion in the early afternoon in that
small classroom. The teachers seemed distressed as they asked all the children
to form a line on the right hand side of the classroom , facing the doorway.
The teachers frantically placed us all , row by row on the hallway, just
outside of the classroom. I thought that maybe it was a special Fire Drill or
even Assembly which was common on Fridays. I waited patiently as I leaned on
the massive yellow brick wall in the
hallway and gazed up at the dimly lit
beige lighting fixtures that hung from
the ceiling. The children were fidgeting and occasionally a teacher would come
and quietly nudge them to be silent. It seemed as an eternity, standing in that
hallway. I started getting a deep
feeling that something terrible had happened but I did not know what t was. It
was just a feeling. I remember the light at the end of the school hallway reflecting
off the floor as word went round and the weight in the air the days after.
Finally we were allowed to leave to go
home. My cousin Pecio came running to me and hugged me as was his custom. We
quietly walked home a couple of blocks
away and went to the kitchen where my
father and his brother were talking about what had happened on that terrible
November day. Heard my Uncle say; “Did
you hear that someone shot at the President today?” My heart sank and at that moment in time I became keenly aware
that someone had killed the Leader of our Country. For kids my age, it
was like losing a father It was stunning and so awful. And so unreal. To have just seen the
young, vibrant, charismatic president a few months before and now he was dead.
A true pivot point in my life. Nothing was ever the same and the 60s were
downhill from there. I always tried to imagine how the world would have been
different had he lived. I don't believe he would escalated Vietnam, as his
manhood was not open to debate with him being a war hero. I do wonder if he
could have passed the Civil Rights legislation as effectively as President
Johnson, but do think he would have tried. A huge, irredeemable loss from which
many of us have never fully recovered. I was 6 years old on 11/22/63. Long
after remembering the tears that were all around me shed on that day, I still
feel haunted that somehow it could have been prevented. This event has followed
me throughout my life. I'm a man that has stood by and often quoted from the
Presidents most well written speech that will stand true for all of time.
"Ask not what my country can do for me but rather ask what I can do for my
country." We are so accustomed at doing just the opposite that we have
completely stepped away from what once made America a great Nation. Can you
only Imagine if every person that lives in the boundary of the United States of
America would only adopt what President Kennedy echoed so long ago, how the
lives of every American would literally take on a new meaning. America would
return to the way America once was so very long ago. we have lost sight of what
is really important, not only for us but more important, for our neighbors. He
is perhaps one of the leading
visionaries from the standpoint of American presidents. His presidency
presented international and national challenges that were up to that time,
unlike never before. America I'm sure cannot help to wonder what could have
come had this assassination never occurred. A certain second term of leadership
and progress. The 50th anniversary of J.F.K.’s assassination is both too much and
not enough. The inexplicable loss, the unanswerable questions, the sense of
history suspended—they’re all still being fed by the powerful charisma of the
man who was America’s first Pop president. "He's
frozen in people's minds at age 46," said Kennedy biographer Robert
Dallek. "Kennedy still gives people a sense - to this day - of hope for
the future."His appearance changed with his
mood, strikingly so, and this made him always more interesting than what he was
saying. He would seem at one moment older than his age, forty-eight or fifty, a
tall, slim, sunburned professor with a pleasant weathered face. Five minutes
later, talking to a press conference on his lawn, three microphones before him,
a television camera turning, his appearance would have gone through a
metamorphosis, he would look again like a movie star, his coloring vivid, his
manner rich, his gestures strong and quick, alive with that concentration of
vitality a successful actor always seems to radiate. Much of what people know
about Kennedy comes from his inauguration speech, with its rhetorical
flourishes that seem to inspire liberal activism.
They are largely misinterpreted. It is a conservative, Cold War,
anti-Communist speech. When Kennedy declared: "Ask not what you country
can do for you but what you can do for your country," he wasn't asking
people to go out and fight poverty, he was saying don't expect the federal
government to hugely expand social welfare programs.
When Kennedy said, "Let every nation know...that we shall pay any
price, bear any burden...in order to insure the survival and success of
liberty," he was not talking about the U.S. defending the right of nations
to self-determination but that the U.S. would intervene against any threats to
its power, like in Cuba, that just had a revolution against a U.S.-backed
dictatorship.
"We will not
prematurely...risk the cost of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be
ashes in our mouths--but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it
must be faced," Kennedy declared in his address to the nation on October
22, 1962. The Russians didn't run the blockade and withdrew their missiles. And
this is how the world came the closest ever to nuclear holocaust--under John F.
Kennedy. When the truth is discovered, it becomes clear that far from being a
progressive liberal, JFK was a moderate-centrist with viewpoints that were
considerably to the right of the Democratic party's liberal wing. And if JFK
was not truly "progressive" before or during his presidency, then the
idea that he was murdered by reactionaries opposed to "progressive
reform" loses all credibility. And who was JFK the Man, ultimately? A
gifted speaker and eloquent communicator. A man who understood the pulse of the
nation enough in 1946 when he positioned himself apart from the natural heirs to
the liberal New Deal tradition. A man who recognized early the need for an
assertive stance in the developing days of the Cold War, and who positioned
himself perfectly within the framework of what Louis Hartz has called the
"Age of Consensus." Part of the consensus on America's place in the
world, and on the moral correctness of the Cold War struggle that would endure
until the late 1960s. A man who understood the moral correctness of integration
but who was reluctant to press too far in the struggle for racial justice. A
man who as President, never forgot his roots and was an active Cold Warrior in
the tradition of Truman and Eisenhower, and who in domestic policy kept himself
positioned to the right of the Democratic party's liberal wing. Kennedy and his image of youth and vigor have not lost a hold on
the American imagination. The five decades since
Kennedy's murder have also seen a decline in respect for government in general
and presidents in particular. Dallek noted that, since Kennedy's death, only
President Reagan has been able to hold a large measure of affection from a mass
of Americans.
"So many of the other presidents have
fared so poorly," he said. "Kennedy and Reagan gave the country
optimism and hope. They gave the sense of the country's best values."
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