{November 22, 1963}

LT. JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY

There are some dates in everyone’s life that you will al ways remember. Unfortunately these are usually tragic rather than happy events. The first of these to occur in my lifetime happened when I was nine years old. It was November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

When this date comes around each year, I don’t really think about that horrible day but rather reflect on the man and his short, but inspiring time as president. If you were a kid or a young adult during that time, he was probably just as much a hero to you as he was to me. He took office on Jan 20, 1961. Movie star handsome, a Pulitzer award winning author, Harvard graduate, war hero and the most inspiring speaker of our time - he looked and sounded like a president should.

The young voters of America were completely taken by him and inspired by this charismatic man with great vision and new ideas for the future. He was filled with a youthful, energetic optimism and it was contagious.

He spoke of the “New Frontier” of the 1960’s and emphasized the need for new scientific inroads, space exploration, securing peace in an unstable world (the cold war) and trying to end poverty and prejudice that still was very much of a problem.

The allure of his own little family, in fact the entire extended Kennedy Clan, added to the mystique. They were like a strange cross between the landed gentry, and Hollywood celebrities but at the same time down to earth people with strong social concerns. The president, by the way, donated 100% of his salary to charity.

His beautiful, cultured wife Jacqueline Bouvier, became an icon in her own right. Everything about the Kennedy years, to many, seemed so special and full of hope they were referred to as the “Camelot” years.

I felt a tiny bit of a connection to the president because of my father. He was a Philadelphia police detective in the Intelligence Division who was often given security details with visiting political leaders. He and his partner were assigned to the president during an extended visit to the Philadelphia area. On at least one night, they slept in adjoining motel rooms.

J.F.K. was one of the first presidents to go hatless (maybe because of his great head of hair). One day they were escorting the president who was following in an open convertible. It began to rain on and off and the president was starting to get a drenched head.

My dad and his partner ran into a nearby 5 & 10 store and bought him the only piece of headware they could find, a kind of cheap throwaway hat. After wearing this in the rain for awhile it soaked right through, so they bought another, which got him through the day. My dad’s partner kept one of these hats as a souvenir and I’m sure his family still has it after all these years.

A big part of what made Kennedy such a hero to us was an incident during World War II that earned him the Navy and Marine Corps Medal.

In 1943, he was a young lieutenant assigned command of a PT boat (109) and its crew that were stationed in the South Pacific. Their mission was to conduct nightly patrols around the Solomon Islands, heavily infested with Japanese soldiers.

One evening without warning, a Japanese destroyer (the Armagiri), not seeing or hearing the small vessel running quietly on one engine, rammed the PT boat, cutting it right in half,. Two men were killed instantly and several wounded.

Lt. Kennedy in pitch black darkness, gathered the survivors together in the water and with only a few salvaged emergency items, paddled to a nearby island while clinging to some floating wreckage. Kennedy, a former member of the Harvard swim team, towed the worst of the wounded men by swimming breast stroke and holding the strap of the mans life vest in his teeth for the 3 1/2 miles to the island.

The little speck of the island they landed on, however, had neither food, water or much cover. The Lt. went back in the water and swam about four miles until he found a more suitable island, He returned and led the crew to the new location that had coconut palms and fresh water. The men stayed here for several days, keeping well concealed from frequent enemy patrols.

Eventually 2 island natives, scouting for the US Navy, stumbled on to Kennedy and crew. The scouts could not speak English so the Lt. carved a message for help on a coconut shell. The men took this back and soon a boat arrived to rescue the PT crew. They were stranded a total of 6 days.

The summer before the presidents’ death, a motion picture entitled PT 109, staring Cliff Robertson, was released.

My friends and I “played” the story on the beach in a large lagoon. We pasted wet sand on our faces which would dry to look like (we thought) the unshaven ship wrecked sailors. Curious adults just looked on as we swam around “rescuing” each other as we scouted for Japanese soldiers.

A year or so after this movie came out local sight seeing boat Captain Sin purchased a replica of the PT 109 and had regular tours along Wildwoods’ beach front. If I remember right, the PT boat may have been one of several used in the movie.

I was in school when the teacher gave us the horrible news from Texas. It was an unreal day for a fourth grader. The entire world seemed to go into mourning for the next several weeks.

A wise teacher told us kids if we were smart we would make scrap books of this tragedy because it would be known as one of the most important days in history. I took this advice and collected all of the news clippings and special pullout features on JFKs’ life. One of these, a beautiful color photo portrait, ended up framed and hanging in thousands of Irish Catholic homes across the country. (I still see some hanging)

I also included, in a special section, the articles about the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald which happened two days after the presidents’ death. No tears shed here though.

During the next several years I tried to read everything that came out about JFK including “A Thousand Days” by Arthur Schlesinger but some of it, including this book, would have to wait until I was a little bit older to understand.

Many years later as I became an adult, and had a mature knowledge and wisdom, I could more realistically assess the man and his legacy.

Many of the great ideas he championed (like medicare) did not come to be until Lyndon Johnson came into office. In his short time in Washington however, JFK was able to get more legislation passed than at any time since the 1930’s.

I was also aware now of some more things, some controversial, such as the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crises, Berlin Wall, Space race with the Russians, Vietnams beginnings, Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Kennedy.

Funny thing is, my views about him haven’t changed a bit. When I see his old newsreels I can’t help but get that same inspired feeling that I haven’t had since then and say to myself “man - now there was a man born to be president” and wonder what could have been if he had the time.

Headlines, November 22, 1963, on the 6:25 train to Stamford, Connecticut. By Carl Mydans