Author’s note: This column is an adaptation of my column that appeared in the Bennington (VT) Banner in November of 2003 – forty years after John Kennedy was assassinated.
When John Kennedy was shot, I was in history class at St. John the Baptist School in Hillsdale, NJ. The principal came into the room, ashen-faced, and said that the president has been shot and is being rushed to the hospital. It was the Friday before Thanksgiving, about two PM on a beautiful late fall afternoon.
Forty-five minutes later we learned he had died. I’ve thought about that afternoon countless times since then, but always more in late November.
The sobering fact is that less than 20% of today’s US population was alive on November 22, 1963, and perhaps two-thirds of those were old enough to remember the assassination or of Kennedy’s all-too-brief Presidency. But for those of us who are old enough to remember this event it was just like 9/11; you remember vividly where you were and what you were doing.
This column is for those people, those too young to have a memory of Kennedy….Because to some in my generation, Kennedy was the inspirational figure who ignited an interest in public service, activism, and in politics as a means for positive change in the world. (And, my God, do we need such inspiration now!)
So, for those without any such memory, I have compiled thoughts from a few contemporaries, to tell you what John Kennedy meant to us.
- Helen Thomas, a United Press Iinternational White House correspondent during the terms of 8 presidents, from Kennedy to Clinton, said: “…He was inspired; he had lots of vision. He was the most eloquent president that I’ve covered. He made a great contribution to encouraging young people to go into public service. He set a goal to land on the moon in a decade, even though he didn’t live to see it. He went for the first nuclear test ban, and paved the way for future arms negotiations. He gave a lot of people hope, which we haven’t had since…”
- Sean Wilentz, a Professor of History at Princeton, writing about what losing Kennedy meant to future events: “…Kennedy probably would not have Americanized the war in Vietnam, as Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy on reflection have conceded. After the missile crisis, he was embarked on a course to wind down the cold war and stop nuclear testing and proliferation. If Kennedy had been finishing his second term in 1968, it is difficult to imagine the political resurrection of the two-time loser Richard Nixon.
But with Kennedy dead, Nixon won the White House by following a ‘Southern strategy’ that inflamed the reaction against Johnson’s Great Society programs and exploited the national divisions over Vietnam. Without Nixon’s Southern strategy, it is in turn difficult to imagine the consolidation of the hard-line Southern Republican conservatism that later proved so essential to the election of Ronald Reagan and, even more, George W. Bush. Kennedy’s death changed everything…”
- Jack Ohman, an editorial cartoonist for The Oregonian, in Portland Oregon, wrote: “Jack Kennedy, with all of his well-documented faults, flaws, and mistakes, is still idealized…as the template, not only (for) what modern politics should be — and generally isn’t — but for what we should aspire to as a nation…I was at lunch with a friend the other day. He is 53 years old, a successful man, a father. He was 13 when Kennedy was killed. He described the exact moment he found out, in gym class in New Jersey….Then he stopped talking for a few beats. He looked out the window for a very long moment. That’s what Kennedy meant to us.”
Finally, an explanation for the title of this column…It comes from a moment, 61 years ago, when I was with my father, in front of the TV news. They were reporting on President Kennedy’s multi-city visit through Texas. The reporter said Dallas was next on the itinerary. My father — a Republican (much different in those days) — had just returned from a business trip to Dallas. He said that the atmosphere there was poisonous, with right wingers portraying Kennedy in wanted posters, for such “crimes” as a failure to invade Cuba and his support for civil rights.
He said: “He shouldn’t go to Dallas.”
Tragically, my dad was right.
Featured image caption: A newspaper ad and handbill being circulated by the John Birch Society in Dallas, November, 1963.
Kevin McDonald spent more than 40 years in healthcare administration in strategic planning and communications roles for hospitals and health systems in several states, as well as in public agencies that regulated health care, He retired from the Maryland Health Care Commission in 2021 and moved to Gettysburg in 2022. On the side, he ran marathons and wrote a weekly column for the Bennington (VT) Banner, and also served on Bennington-area school boards for nine years.
Concise and informative! This piece shows the unexpected magnitude of the decisions we make. Had one person told President Kennedy not to go and had he listened, perhaps there wouldn’t have been a President Trump….
Yes, the world would have been much different…and may still have been had we not lost his brother robert and MLK just 5 years later!