It’s November 22 and any history buff with a nose for historical dates will be able to tell you what happened on this day 49 years ago (US time). Anyone like to hazard a guess?
President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas as he was driven in the Presidential motorcade down Dealey Plaza by Lee Harvey Oswald, a disaffected malcontent who was a former marine and had lived in the Soviet Union for a while and was obsessed with Cuba and Cubans at the time.
I’m currently reading a book on the assassination of the President which has only recently been published and it follows his life and tenure in office leading up to his murder in a much more accessible way than some of the more scholarly efforts I have perused which are academically researched and a little too heavy on detail for my stodgy mind to devour.
It was a sad and pointless act which probably changed the course of history as Kennedy’s ambitions in the growing war in Vietnam looked to be decidedly different to the ones which were later realised under his successor, Lyndon Johnson. Of course we will never know exactly what Kennedy would have done, only speculate. How the world turns on a assassin’s bullet.
Kennedy remains a much admired figure by many in the general public of the United States and the world in general although historian’s usually place him in the teens when it comes to the rankings of US Presidents although anyone who lived through the Cuban missile crisis, the thirteen days when the world was perched precariously on the edge of nuclear war, may be thankful that President Kennedy was in the big chair at the time in preference to some of his more hawkish successor’s and predecessor’s.
He was a flawed man and his philandering is a character trait that is hard for common people to reconcile with but he was an enigmatic character who was also honest and decent in most other ways and who saw what the United States was and what it could be. He gave the nation and the world hope that there were better days ahead, a hope that was shattered on November 22 1963 by a 6.5 millimetre bullet which shattered his skull and sent the world into mourning.
It’s quite a poignant story.
The book recalls how a mere eleven days before his death he had attended the Remembrance Day ceremonies at Arlington cemetery in Virginia, just outside of Washington .
Arlington was the former estate of Confederate General Robert E Lee and had been confiscated by federal authorities at the height of the conflagration now known as the American Civil War.
Mrs Lee still lived on the property as the Civil War raged and as far as I know the mansion in which she and the general lived still stands.
It was decided to bury the soldiers that Mrs Lee’s husband was killing on the estate and the first burials were made far from the house but these bodies were soon re-interred in Mrs Lee’s rose garden. Federal authorities were going to make sure that the house could never again be occupied.
Of course Arlington is now the major military cemetery in the United States with many thousands of US veterans buried within it’s grounds and I’m sure the services which are held there are beautiful and appropriate.
On President Kennedy’s last visit before his death he remarked that Arlington must be one of the most beautiful places on earth and he wouldn’t mind “ending up here”, a reference to where he might be buried at the end of what he would’ve assumed to be a long life.
Little did he know then that a mere two weeks later his wish would be fulfilled and he was laid to rest in the cemetery with full honours and an eternal flame burns for evermore above his tomb. May he rest in peace.
We get very cynical about our politicians and it always seems that countries like ours and others in the western world are always divided on the questions that haunt us. The nation swings from left to right and back again and things which were acceptable fifty years ago are scoffed at and scorned as the relics of a bygone time.
But on this day, November 22, let us remember back to a terrible tragedy that not only shook the United States to it’s core but sent a wave of grief around the world and changed it forever.
Let us remember President John F Kennedy and the brief, shining moment that he held centre stage and for many people offered hope for a better life and a better world. Amen.
President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas as he was driven in the Presidential motorcade down Dealey Plaza by Lee Harvey Oswald, a disaffected malcontent who was a former marine and had lived in the Soviet Union for a while and was obsessed with Cuba and Cubans at the time.
I’m currently reading a book on the assassination of the President which has only recently been published and it follows his life and tenure in office leading up to his murder in a much more accessible way than some of the more scholarly efforts I have perused which are academically researched and a little too heavy on detail for my stodgy mind to devour.
It was a sad and pointless act which probably changed the course of history as Kennedy’s ambitions in the growing war in Vietnam looked to be decidedly different to the ones which were later realised under his successor, Lyndon Johnson. Of course we will never know exactly what Kennedy would have done, only speculate. How the world turns on a assassin’s bullet.
Kennedy remains a much admired figure by many in the general public of the United States and the world in general although historian’s usually place him in the teens when it comes to the rankings of US Presidents although anyone who lived through the Cuban missile crisis, the thirteen days when the world was perched precariously on the edge of nuclear war, may be thankful that President Kennedy was in the big chair at the time in preference to some of his more hawkish successor’s and predecessor’s.
He was a flawed man and his philandering is a character trait that is hard for common people to reconcile with but he was an enigmatic character who was also honest and decent in most other ways and who saw what the United States was and what it could be. He gave the nation and the world hope that there were better days ahead, a hope that was shattered on November 22 1963 by a 6.5 millimetre bullet which shattered his skull and sent the world into mourning.
It’s quite a poignant story.
The book recalls how a mere eleven days before his death he had attended the Remembrance Day ceremonies at Arlington cemetery in Virginia, just outside of Washington .
Arlington was the former estate of Confederate General Robert E Lee and had been confiscated by federal authorities at the height of the conflagration now known as the American Civil War.
Mrs Lee still lived on the property as the Civil War raged and as far as I know the mansion in which she and the general lived still stands.
It was decided to bury the soldiers that Mrs Lee’s husband was killing on the estate and the first burials were made far from the house but these bodies were soon re-interred in Mrs Lee’s rose garden. Federal authorities were going to make sure that the house could never again be occupied.
Of course Arlington is now the major military cemetery in the United States with many thousands of US veterans buried within it’s grounds and I’m sure the services which are held there are beautiful and appropriate.
On President Kennedy’s last visit before his death he remarked that Arlington must be one of the most beautiful places on earth and he wouldn’t mind “ending up here”, a reference to where he might be buried at the end of what he would’ve assumed to be a long life.
Little did he know then that a mere two weeks later his wish would be fulfilled and he was laid to rest in the cemetery with full honours and an eternal flame burns for evermore above his tomb. May he rest in peace.
We get very cynical about our politicians and it always seems that countries like ours and others in the western world are always divided on the questions that haunt us. The nation swings from left to right and back again and things which were acceptable fifty years ago are scoffed at and scorned as the relics of a bygone time.
But on this day, November 22, let us remember back to a terrible tragedy that not only shook the United States to it’s core but sent a wave of grief around the world and changed it forever.
Let us remember President John F Kennedy and the brief, shining moment that he held centre stage and for many people offered hope for a better life and a better world. Amen.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 