Remembering JFK

Where were you when JFK was shot?  It is a question many folks are asking as we approach the 50th anniversary of his assassination.  And most Americans over the age of fifty-five or so can answer it.  I was at school.  I can picture the clock on the classroom wall (I must have been counting the minutes until class was over).  When the principal's voice came over the PA system announcing the sad news we all gasped.   We were sent home a little early.  My parents never let us watch very much television, but that week we were practically glued to the set much of the time.

My folks were staunch Republicans, and had been Nixon supporters in the election that brought Kennedy into office.  I think they had some real reservations about his ability to govern.  I don't know if they ever changed their mind about that.  But that didn't stop my Dad, also a pastor, from conducting a special prayer service at our church during the official mourning period.  We prayed for the Kennedy family, and we prayed for the nation in those uncertain times.

The service itself was held in the church basement--all our services were held there at the time because the sanctuary was undergoing renovations.  I remember how odd it felt getting on my Sunday clothes in the middle of the week (I was ten at the time) and going to church on what would have been a school day.  Life seemed off-kilter--and in many ways it was.

Some commentators over the last week or so have said that the assassination of Kennedy marked the end of an era of innocence for our nation.  And certainly the decades that followed have been full of major challenges, including wars that have been, for the most part, rather unpopular.  But I question whether or not we were truly innocent before that fateful time in 1963.  I was.  I was just a kid after all.  But as a nation?  In the 20th century alone we had experienced two brutal wars, the dropping of the A-bomb, the McCarthy era . . . and the list goes on.  I wonder if we as a nation were ever innocent. 

Historians are still weighing the importance and effectiveness of Kennedy's short tenure as President.  But whatever the final outcome of history's assessment, one thing he left behind was his stirring reminder that for a democracy to function fully and well, all of it's citizens must be willing to participate.  "Ask not," he famously said, "what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country."  It is good to remember the convertible and the pink suit and the brave secret service agents.  It is better yet to remember the need to serve others.