“Searching for the Real John F. Kennedy
(JFK, 1917-63),” Dialogue Given June 20, 2016, 10-11AM, Adshead, Uplands
Village, Pleasant Hill, TN. 38578.
bfparker@frontiernet.net (footnotes in preparation).
Betty: Our book review title is “Searching for
the Real John F. Kennedy (JFK, 1917-63).”
Why? Because JFK as
U.S. President is wrapped in myth, legend, praised by admirers, put down by critics. Assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, age 46,
frozen in time, yet continually re-examined as a key figure in history. What was the real JFK like?
Frank:
To many people JFK was and is special: our youngest, most charismatic
president. He established the
Peace Corps (1961), proposed sending Americans to the moon and back, saved us
from nuclear destruction.
When? Oct. 16 to 28, 12
days in 1962. Why and how?
Betty:
When USSR’s Khrushchev secretly built nuclear missile sites in Cuba able to
pulverize the eastern US.
President JFK cautiously negotiated a way to have those missiles removed
peacefully, saving the world from nuclear war. Ten months later he led the
USA-USSR-Britain to agree to a partial nuclear test ban treaty, Aug. 5, 1963,1
a first step toward easing Cold War tensions.
Frank: When young U.S. President Kennedy was
pushed by war hawks in the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), Pentagon Joint
Chiefs of Staff, and State Dept. toward a nuclear war, he said NO. Those war hawks, knowing JFK’s
intention in his second term to “pulverize the CIA” wanted JFK removed
permanently.
Betty: Little-known even now was
a plan to assassinate JFK in Chicago, Nov. 2, 1963, but JFK, warned in time,
canceled his Chicago trip.
Frank: Twenty days later in Dallas, Texas,
Nov. 22, 1963, JFK was shockingly assassinated. And on each anniversary since he is fondly remembered. Betty saw JFK 56 years ago during his
1960 presidential campaign trip through Austin, Texas, where we then lived.
Betty: Assassinated JFK instantly became a
martyred legend, studied and re-studied to find what made him so
memorable. Admirers’ answer in one
word: HOPE. His soaring speeches, his charismatic personality, his uplifting
vision spread hope for peace worldwide.
Frank:
JFK’s assassination spread JFK myths and legends in thousands of JFK books,
articles, and films. He is revered at over 1,200 worldwide JFK-named schools,
institutes, streets, parks, squares, eternal flames, and other memorials.
3
Betty:
We searched for the real JFK from his childhood through his school and college
years to his last almost 21 years in U.S. government service: 4 years the Navy
(1941-45), plus 14 years in Congress: 6 years in the House of Representatives,
8 years in the Senate, 1953-60, plus U.S. President 1,037 days, just under 3
years
Frank:
Then, in Dallas, Texas, JFK shot dead, universal grief, little John John
saluting his father’s casket.4-1
Betty:
What were JFK’s successes, failures, motives, sins, dreams? How do we explain
this complex man?
Frank:
JFK was shaped by his dictatorial father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., who
pushed his 9 children to be first and best. Joe Sr., growing up in East Boston,
Mass., fighting then prevalent anti-Irish prejudice, skirted the law to become
increasingly rich, powerful, and influential. Why? To rise, to become U.S.
President himself. When that
failed, his drive was to see his first-born son, Joe Jr., become president.
When Joe Jr. died in World War 2, Joe Kennedy determined to win the presidency
for second son JFK.
Betty:
Sickly JFK, boy and man, five times given last rites for the dying, hid his
pain behind good looks and
charm. Little JFK admired, looked
up to, yet competed with first-born Joe Jr., much favored, molded by Joe Sr. as
future president.
Frank:
Joe Jr., died Aug. 12, 1944, piloting a dynamite-loaded plane, which exploded
targeting a Nazi buzz-bomb launch site in Nazi-occupied France. Then Joe, Sr.
thrust the presidential quest onto sickly, carefree JFK.
Betty: President Kennedy faced
big crises in his short presidency: First, the April 1961 failed Bay of Pigs,
Cuba, invasion. The invaders, CIA
trained, led by Cuban anti-Castro dissidents living in Florida, was planned
under Pres. Eisenhower. Military
and CIA experts assured Kennedy the invasion would succeed.
Frank:
When it failed, Pres. Kennedy was horrified that he had listened to his advisors,
took full blame, privately realizing, too late, that his CIA and Pentagon Joint
Chiefs of Staff had set him up.
They deliberately told new Pres. Kennedy that the invaders would
succeed; that Pres. Kennedy as Commander in Chief should order US bomber
support so that Cuba could be retaken.
What these war hawk advisors did not tell JFK was: we set the invasion
up to fail so that Russia would retaliate; so that the USA, now more powerful,
can obliterate Russian communism forever. Pres. JFK knew he faced a possible
horrendous nuclear World War 3.
Betty: At home, the civil rights movement
burst upon the national scene with sit-ins, Freedom Rides, protest marches,
clashes between black protesters and the police. JFK was slow to help oppressed
blacks. Why?
Frank:
Because JFK’s 1960 presidential win was the slimmest in U.S. history. He barely
won, even with father Joe, Sr.’s buying illegal votes for him in Chicago and
West Va. JFK needed conservative Southern votes to win his intended 1964
reelection. His other first term problems besides Civil Right protesters were:
1-a rising jobless rate, and 2-awesome USA-USSR Cold War clashes. Those problems made him cautious about
alienating Southern white segregationists.
Betty:
Two events led President JFK to aid protesting African Americans and won him
black votes. First: Martin Luther King, Jr., jailed in a remote Georgia prison,
was likely to be beaten to death. JFK phoned King’s wife Coretta to say that
Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s brother, had ordered that Georgia
authorities free King.
Frank:
Second event was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s galvanizing
August 28, 1963, March on Washington “I have a Dream” speech which impressed a near tearful Pres.
JFK.
Betty:
JFK’s Civil Rights bill, introduced June 11, 1963, blocked in Congress by
die-hard Southern conservatives, was not passed until JFK’s successor,
President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73), a masterful congressional manipulator,
pushed it through with other JFK legislative proposals through Congress. How did Pres. Johnson do it? By appealing to Congress’s and
the public’s great sorrow for the assassinated JFK.
Frank:
USA-USSR Cold War competition, a clash of ideologies, involved the drive to be
first in space. Russia’s Sputnik went up first, but JFK proposed sending
men to the moon and returning them.
Betty
Another Cold War problem was how to stop USSR from communizing colonial people
who were seeking independence from their European masters. Communism was making
serious inroads in colonial countries whose leaders sought independence in
Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam.
Frank: JFK’s most crucial Cold War problems
were: 1- Russian-built Berlin Wall, August 13, 1961, to keep
Communist-controlled East Germans from escaping into the free West. And, 2-October 1962 Russian-built
missile sites in Cuba capable of wiping out the eastern USA.
Betty:
Interruption, Frank; a question: many will wonder how we amateurs have gathered
information about John F. Kennedy?
Frank:
Our last year’s book review. titled “The Tumultuous 1960s…,” told of Pres.
JFK’s challenges: minority protests for equal rights at home plus abroad
USA-USSR Cold War crises in Berlin, Cuba,Vietnam.6
Betty:
Earlier we explored JFK in our 2009 review titled: “The Kennedys of
Massachusetts,”7 We learned much about JFK, knew that JFK’s prime
shaper was his father, Joseph Patrick
Kennedy, Sr., knew that another key influence was JFK’s mother, Rose Kennedy
(ftnt1890-1995, died age 105), who, having
to live with open womanizer Joe, Sr., was often away from home, often
neglecting bedridden JFK and the other children. FTNt?
Frank:
That sickly schoolboy JFK missed motherly care. At Choate school, Wallingford,
CT, JFK reportedly said to his roommate: my mother is a nothing, recalling when
from the school’s infirmary sick bed he had admonished his mother, about to
depart on a trip, with something like:
Fine mother you are, always leaving us when we need you. FTNT?
Betty:
Another key factor shaping JFK was his lifelong poor health, hidden from the
public for political reasons. They complicated his political career, led him to
seek quack treatments, and to ease excruciating pain with sexual excesses.
Frank:
Still another powerful shaping factor was JFK’s guilt feeling that his older brother
Joe Jr. might have volunteered for his fatal secret mission to outdo JFK’s
earlier much publicized PT Boat 109 heroism. Joe Jr. and younger JFK always tried to best each other.11 and 12
Betty:
JFK’s last shaping factor came from within, ennobled him for all time; it was
the heart and soul of the real JFK--what was it?
Frank:
Betty, John Kennedy grew in understanding. He changed from a moderate anti-communist member of the U.S.
House, then U.S. Senate to a
peace-seeking U.S. President. To save the world from nuclear catastrophe during
the Cuban missile crisis and other Soviet encounters, JFK did the unexpected.
He secretly went over the heads of his own diplomats, CIA, and Pentagon
advisors. He sent secret messages by trusted intermediaries to and received
replies from USSR’s Nikita Khrushchev.
Betty:
He did it after seeing aerial photographs of Russian nuclear missile sites
being built in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida.
Frank:
He did it when his military advisors urged, insisted that as Commander in Chief
he approve bombing the missile sites in Cuba. JFK, certain that the Russian
would retaliate, decided firmly, NO.
We must not destroy humanity and our planet with nuclear war.
Betty: JFK first thought of an embargo,
stopping all Soviet ships to Cuba. But an embargo is an act of war. He chose instead a less aggressive,
softer solution, a quarantine by USA warships to stop and search any USSR ship
headed toward Cuba believed to be carrying missiles.
Frank: Luckily, the quarantine gave Khrushchev
time to receive and ponder JFK’s sincerity about a solution fair to both sides:
JFK to pledge in a public speech not to invade Cuba. Khrushchev to remove the
Cuba missiles aimed at the USA. Later, quietly the U.S. would remove USA
missiles in Turkey aimed at the USSR.
Betty:
Tell me, Frank, did JFK’s resentful military, CIA, State Department hard-liners
actually scheme to eliminate JFK?
Frank:
Many historians believe so. JFK
knew that undercover CIA agents were involved in cover-up killing of believed
pro-Communist, independence-seeking leaders like Congo’s Pres. Patrice Lumumba
and others. Knowing that highly
placed U.S. agents had secretly killed before, JFK sensed that he might be
targeted. Many historians believe that JFK’s peacemaking that led to his
assassination.
Frank:
Now, before we shift to key JFK biographical events, we briefly mention the
best books we used.
Author, title, date, Significance
Betty:
1. Robert F. Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. NY: Little, Brown and Co., 2003,
critics cite it as the best one volume book on JFK In church library.
Frank:
2. James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unthinkable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. NY: Simon &
Schuster, 2008, Author is Catholic peace disciple of peace-seeking monastic writer Thomas
Merton, Gethsemani, Ky.
Betty:
3. Hersh, Seymour M. Hersh, The Dark Side of
Camelot. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1997, journalist uncoverer of JFK’s
many sins.
Frank:
4. James W. Hilty, Robert Kennedy; Brother Protector. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1997, how Bobby as U.S. Attorney General and JFK worked so well together.
Betty:
5. Gareth Jenkins, John F. Kennedy
Handbook. NY: St. Martin’s Press, March 1, 2006,
rich in JFK photos at practically every age.
Frank:
6. Larry J. Sabato, The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination,
and Lasting
Legacy of John F. Kennedy. NY:
Bloomsbury, 2013, especially good on how JFK’s 9 succeeding U.S. presidents of
both parties quoted JFK to support their various different political
approaches.
Frank:
NOW to JFK’s biographical highlights by Date and Event.
Betty:
(May 29, 1917): JFK born and lived
first 10 years in Brookline section of Boston, Mass. Kennedys then lived in more exclusive Bronxville, New York
City, 3 years; moved again to Riverdale, N.Y. JFK attended best nearby private schools.
Frank:
Growing up during the 1930s Great Depression, JFK knew little about it, read
about it later in college. With his father Joe, Sr. often away in Hollywood
making films and money, and his mother regularly in Europe or elswhere,
servants cared for the children, with Joe, Jr., at meals sitting at the head of
the table.
Betty: (Sept.
1931-35): JFK attended 9th through 12th grades at Choate School, famous then
and since for educating many prominent Americans. Older brother Joe Jr., already at Choate, was outstanding in
academics and sports.16
Frank: JFK was
a mediocre student, but a rapid reader of history and political biographies. He
was mischievous, led rowdy friends who exploded a firecracker that broke a
toilet seat. The headmaster in
chapel held up the broken toilet seat and denounced the perpetrators.
Betty: To save
JFK from expulsion, Joe Sr. visited Headmaster George St. John (1859-1947), who
told Joe Sr.: Young JFK’s chief gift is making friends, adding: "When he
flashes his smile, he could charm a bird off a tree,” an early insight into
JFK’s winsome personality.
Frank:
JFK’s later speeches contained striking insights from Choate Headmaster George
St. John’s powerful chapel messages.
Example: Headmaster St. John;
“Ask not what Choate can do for you, ask what you can do for Choate,”
used by JFK in his Presidential Inaugural as: “Ask not what your country can do
for you, ask what you can do for [your country.”17
Betty:
(1934): JFK, often ill at Choate, was sent to Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.,
diagnosed with colitis, another lifelong problem.
Frank:
(1935): JFK, a 1935 Choate graduate, age
18, ranked 64th in class of 112. Later that year JFK took his first trip abroad
with his parents. He intended studying at London School of Economics as Joe,
Jr. had done. But illness forced JFK’s return home.
Betty: (Fall 1936-1940): JFK attended Harvard
College, ages 19-23, from which his father and Joe Jr. graduated. Joe Sr., then U.S. ambassador to
England (1938 to 40), during Harvard holidays and other breaks, sent Joe, Jr.
and JFK as investigating aides to U.S. Embassies in Europe, where they learned
much about Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Stalin’s USSR, Franco’s Spain.
Frank:Having
gathered much inside information about pre-World War 2 Europe, JFK wrote his
Harvard senior thesis on “Appeasement at Munich,” about why Britain was
unprepared for WW 2. Joe Sr. paid New York Times journalist Arthur Krock to
rewrite the thesis, published as Why England Slept. Through Krock’s influence
it became a New York Times best seller. FTNT?
Betty: (1941-42): Joe
Jr. enlisted early as a Navy flyer.
The Army twice rejected JFK because of his health. Joe, Sr. maneuvered
JFK into U.S. Naval officer training, somehow bypassing a physical exam.
Frank:
(1942-44): When JFK’s PT Boat 109 was cut in half by a speeding Japanese
destroyer on a dark night in the Solomon Islands, South Pacific, JFK saved the
lives of his 11 crew members. He suffered a lower back injury which plagued him
the rest of his life. Joe Sr. had major U.S. magazine publish articles about
JFK’s heroim. Older brother Joe
Jr.’s Aug. 12, 1944, death on a secret Navy mission piloting a dynamite-filled
plane haunted JFK, who feared that his own much publicized PT Boat 109 heroism
had prompted his brother to risk the hazardous mission on which he died.
Betty: (1945-46): JFK, discharged from the Navy (March 1, 1945), was hired as
a journalist by his father’s friend William Randolph Hearst to cover the United
Nations’ birth in San Francisco, and then to cover politics in Britain.
Frank:
(June 17, 1946): JFK, age 29, gaunt, still suffering from his war wounds and
his bad back, won his first election to the U.S. House of Representatives, assembled
a competent staff, met constituents’ needs, and prepared for his upward
political climb.
Betty:
(Fall 1947): JFK, age 30, ill in London, was for the first time accurately
diagnosed with Addison’s disease, a hormonal disorder that causes fatigue, weakens
the immune system, usually leads to early death. Joe Sr. arranged that all
JFK’s medical records in various physicians’ offices be kept under assumed
names.18 JFK’s Addison’s disease, kept from public notice, plagued
JFK the rest of his life.
Frank:
(1948-1952): JFK re-elected to the House of Representatives second term then
third term. In 1952 JFK, grandson
of low class “shanty Irish,” ran for the U.S. Senate against Boston’s highest
upper class Brahman Republican incumbent U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge II
(1901-85). Lodge later laughingly
said: I was beaten by those damned Kennedy ladies (JFK’s mother, sisters,
Democratic women activists), by their ‘Vote for Kennedy’ teas and coffees held
all over Massachusetts.
Betty:
(Sept. 12, 1953): U.S. Senator JFK, age 36, intent on becoming president,
needing a wife, married beautiful Jacqueline Bouvier (1929-94), at age 24 12
years younger, the elder daughter of a Wall Street stockbroker. Jackie attended
Vassar, spent her junior year at French universities, and received her degree
from George Washington University, majoring in French Literature.
Frank:
Jackie became a Washington Times-Herald photographer, met JFK at a 1952 dinner
party. Like Rose Kennedy with Joe, Sr., Jackie (whose parents had divorced) was
hurt by but quietly tolerated JFK’s womanizing .
Betty: Jackie became a greatly admired First
Lady. After JFK’s assassination,
she modeled his unforgettable funeral after that of Pres. Lincoln. Later she
asked author Theodore White (1915-86) to write for Life magazine an article
emphasizing that JFK loved listening to recordings of the musical “Camelot”,
particularly its last line: “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a
spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot,” creating the
myth of JFK as a modern knight of Camelot fighting off evil enemies.
Frank: (Dec 2, 1954): The U.S. Senate voted to censure Wisconsin Republican
Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-57), whose false charges of government leaders
being communists ruined many careers, JFK was the only Democratic senator not
voting against McCarthy, ostensibly because he was ill in hospital on voting
day. He could have voted by note, phone, or proxy. JFK’s not voting against
McCarthy displeased leading Democrat Eleanor Roosevelt and other liberals to
oppose Kennedy’s 1960 presidential nomination.
Betty: (Dec 2, 1954, Cont’d.): Explanation: JFK probably deliberately missed
McCarthy censure vote because 1-Joe, Sr. was a strong McCarthy supporter,
2-McCarthy dated JFK’s sister Patricia, 3-JFK’s younger brother Bobby worked as
lawyer for McCarthy’s communist investigation sub-committee. JFK’s not voting:
was it a moral lapse or family loyalty?
Frank: (1954-1956): U.S. Senator JFK, then ages 37-39, aided by
his speechwriter Theodore Sorensen (FTNT1928-2010), wrote his book, Profiles in
Courage, about heroic U.S. senators who stood steadfast for their principles
against majority opinion. Joe Sr. got
NewYork Times friend Arthur Krock, leading Pulitzer prize board member, to persuade other
board members to award the 1957 Pulitzer prize to Profiles in Courage, making Kennedy the only president to
receive the Pulitzer prize.
Betty:
(Aug. 16, 1956): At the Democratic National Convention, JFK gained national
attention when he introduced its nominee, Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson
(1900-65), who then asked the convention to choose his vice presidential
running mate. JFK, in the running, lost to Tennessee’s Estes Kefauver, yet
JFK’s prominence at that 1956 Democratic convention boosted his candidacy for
the 1960 presidential run.
Frank:
(1957): JFK’s brother Bobby became chief prosecutor for the U.S. Senate Rackets
Committee investigating criminal use of labor union retirement funds. Bobby’s
relentless pursuit of Jimmy Hoffa’s (ftnt1913-75) teamsters’ union and mafia
criminal heads, made mafia leaders hate the Kennedys enough to become suspects
in JFK and Bobby assassinations.
Betty:
(Nov. 27, 1957): JFK’s daughter Caroline Bouvier
Kennedy born. She is now U.S. Ambassador to
Japan. On Nov 25, 1960, Jackie gave birth to
John F. Kennedy, Jr., who while piloting a private plane died in a 1999 crash.
Frank: (July 13, 1960): JFK won the hard-fought Democratic
Convention battle to become presidential nominee. On
father Joe, Sr.’s advice, JFK chose Texan Lyndon Johnson, JFK’s fiercest
competitor, as his vice presidential running mate to help win Southern
conservative votes.
Betty:
(Sept. 12, 1960): Fearing defeat from strong anti-Catholic bias, JFK faced the
religious issue boldly by saying to a Houston, Texas, Protestant ministerial
group (Sept. 12, 1960): I do not speak for my Catholic church. My Catholic
church does not speak for me. As U.S. president, my guide will be the U.S.
Constitution, not my church. JFK received a standing ovation, largely ending
anti-Catholic bias.
Frank1960:
First ever TV presidential debates. Republican Richard Nixon, better known as Pres. Eisenhower’s Vice President,
with no makeup, was bested by photogenic, handsome, articulate JFK, who
convinced the audience he was competent and ready to be president. Radio
listeners preferred Nixon’s content. JFK won the larger TV audience. Nixon did not challenge JFK’s
extremely narrow election win, despite
talk that father Joe, Sr. bought JFK votes in Chicago and West
Virginia.
Betty: (Jan. 20,
1961): JFK Inauguration: freezing sunny winter’s day, JFK sworn
in, then as U.S. President said famously: “Let every nation know,
whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden,
meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival
and the success of liberty.” fTNT?
Frank:
Besides these soaring words: “Ask not what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your country,” JFK also said these less remembered
lines: “My fellow citizens of the world…ask not what America can do for you,
but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” JFK, as he was driven past
the reviewing stand, stood, locked eyes with father Joe, Sr. in the audience,
tipped his top hat, tears welled, a moment to remember.
Betty: (March 1, 1961): JFK by Executive Order 10924 created
the Peace Corps.
Frank:
(March 13, 1961): JFK announced a USA and Latin American "Alliance for
Progress."
Betty: (April 16-19, 1961):
Joint Chiefs of Staff military and CIA advisors urged JFK to approve the
earlier planned, under Pres. Eisenhower, Bay of Pigs, Cuba, invasion aimed at
overthrowing Castro.
Frank:
(Same, April 16-19, 1961): JFK, though uneasy, accepted CIA
advisers’ assurance that Florida-based U.S. Army-trained anti-Castro Cubans
would invade Cuba and install a government friendly to the US. JFK was shocked
when an alerted superior Castro defense force killed over 200 and imprisoned
1,197 invaders (later freed when U.S. paid a large sum for medicine needed by
Cuban children).
Betty:
(Same, April 16-19, 1961): JFK took full responsibility for the
failed invasion but increasingly feared the military. This failed Cuban
invasion plus other later JFK peace-seeking moves, many believe, triggered
angers leading to the assassinations of both JFK and Bobby.
Frank:
(May 25, 1961): JFK announced plans to land a man on the moon by the end of the
decade and return him to earth.
Betty: (May 31-June 3, 1961): JFK and
Jackie in Paris, talks with Pres. Charles DeGaulle who told JFK what to expect
in his planned talks with Khrushchev.
Jackie charmed the French with her beauty and mastery of the French
language.
Frank:
(June 3-4, 1961): JFK-Nikita Khrushchev talks in Vienna, Austria, went badly
for JFK. Khrushchev was belligerent, as JFK later privately told brother Bobby:
“Khrushchev thought me young, inexperienced, naïve, weak; he wiped the floor with me.” FTNT
Betty:
(August 13, 1961): Khrushchev built the Berlin
Wall to stop East Germans from fleeing to the free West. The Wall was a direct
challenge to the three Allies (U.S., France, Britain) controlling the other
sectors of Berlin.
Frank:
(Dec. 19, 1961): Joe Sr. suffered a stroke, partially paralyzed,
wheelchair bound, unable to speak except for a guttural drawn-out “Nooo.”
Betty:
(March 1962): JFK forced the steel industry to eliminate a price increase,
which would have hurt the economy.
Frank: (Oct. 16-28, 1962): U.S.A. photos of
Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK’s
naval quarantine of Cuba, and JFK’s secret contacts with Khrushchev avoided
nuclear war. Bobby Kennedy shared these secret negotiations with Soviet
Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin (1919-2010) in Washington, DC, to assure that the
secret messages reached Khrushchev.51Ftnt:
Betty:
(June 10, 1963): Five months before his assassination, Pres. JFK gave his
masterful peace speech at American University Commencement, paraphrased:
The peace we seek is not won by weapons of war but by making “life on earth worth living…[and enablng] men and nations
to grow…to hope, …to build a better life for their children--not merely peace
for Americans but peace for all [the world]--not merely peace in our time but
peace [for] all time.”
Frank: June 26, 1963, Kennedy, after visiting the Berlin Wall, spoke in
a nearby square to 120,000, attacked the communist system, and famously shouted
“Ich bin ein Berliner.”
(Aug
5, 1963): JFK-led U.S-Soviet
Union-Britain agree to a limited nuclear test-ban treaty.
Betty: (Nov. 2, 1963): Plan to assassinate JFK
in Chicago was aborted. Told of the plan, JFK canceled his Chicago trip.
Frank:
(Nov. 22, 1963): JFK, with Jackie, went to Texas to heal a liberal-conservative
split among Texas Democrats whose votes JFK needed for his second term
election. Knowing that other Democratic leaders visiting Texas had been roughly
treated, JFK told Jackie: “We’re headed for nut country.”
Betty:
(Nov. 22, 1963, Cont’d.): Despite some heckling signs, JFK was well received in
San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas:
In Dallas, open limousine, cheering crowds, Democratic Gov. Connally’s
wife Nellie, sitting in the front seat looked back, said: “Mr. President, you
can’t say that Dallas doesn’t love you.”
Frank:
(Nov. 22, 1963, Cont’d.): Open Limousine slowed, Dealey Plaza, past Texas Book
Depository, Crack! Bullet into back of JFK’s neck, exited his Adam’s apple. JFK
was sped to Parkland Hospital and pronounced dead. Vice Pres. Lyndon Johnson took the Oath of Office, Lady Bird on one
side, and widow Jackie in blood stained pink suit on the other. The world mourned.
Betty: Time now, Frank, for Kennedy slide
show, with grateful thanks to Phil Nevius. We will conclude during the slide
show
Betty: Frank, our conclusion.
Frank: The
real JFK did more in his under three years’ presidency than many presidents did
in their 4 years or 8 years. We list his major accomplishments:
Betty: 1-He
averted a catastrophic nuclear conflict in the Oct. 1962, Cuba missile crisis.
Frank: 2-After calling civil rights a moral
crisis (June 11, 1963), JFK prepared the strongest ever Civil Rights Act and
after JFK’s death Lyndon Johnson won Congressional passage of it.
Betty: 3-His
June 10, 1963, American University “Peace Speech” prepared the way for the
limited (US, USSR, Britain) nuclear test ban, a milestone toward easing the
Cold War.
Frank; 4-His
Sept. 12, 1960, Houston Texas, address to Protestant ministers on separation of
church and state helped perpetuate the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution
and answered forever that a Catholic can be president.
Betty: 5-His
January 20, 1961, Inaugural “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what
you can do for your country,” ranks with Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 “We have
nothing to fear but fear itself” speech in extending hope and courage in
troubled times. These two are the most remembered 20th century inaugural
addresses.
Frank:
6, last: His founding of the Peace Corps, March 1, 1961, is a lasting legacy
which if duplicated by other countries would help upliift more and more of the world’s needy, poor, sick, troubled, marginal people everywhere.
Three
short John Fitzgerald Kennedy quotes:
1-Let
us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right
answer.
2-Mankind
must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.
3-We
are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or
to watch - we are going back from whence we came. Ftnt: Source:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_f_kennedy.html
I end with what Kennedy’s closest advisor, speechwriter Theodore
Sorenson,
said on hearing
of JFK’s death: Quote:
"How
could you leave us, how could you die? We are sheep without a shepherd
when
the snow shuts out the sky.” END bfparker@frontiernet.net
