November 22, 1963. Our President is Killed!

Every year on the 22nd day of November I pause to remember. I think about a time that in some ways feels like yesterday and in some ways like another lifetime ago. The young people today will always remember where they were when the news broke that airplanes had flown into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. People my age and older will always remember that day in November 1963.

For me I was at Emily Brittian Elementary School in Butler, Pennsylvania. I was eleven years old and in fifth grade. Vietnam was just some distant place where we had, "advisers" and did not dominate the nightly news. We had a young President, Jack Kennedy and an equally young first lady and family.

Our President had, in three short years, started the Peace Corps. He challenged us to, "by the end of the decade, land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth." He had stared down, racist Governors of our southern states and paved the way for blacks to attend state universities. He was in the lead to turn back our segregationist nation and start us on the path to true equality. Kennedy stood face to face with Nikita Krushchev as the two nuclear super powers had us on the brink of annihilation. The Soviet Union blinked as our President forced a showdown with a blockade around Cuba. He gave a courageous speech at American University, in June 1963 where he challenged the Soviet leaders to establish Nuclear Test ban Treaties, that even received praise from his Soviet counterparts. His famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner) speech showed the world that America would not abandon it's allies, but join them in search for peace through out the world.  All of this in such a short time and now  we heard reports that shots were fired on the President's motorcade. Shortly after, we realized the worst. John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was dead.

We cried as a nation. Our innocence evaporated on that November day in 1963. What once was Camelot was now gone.  As a nation we mourned and moved on, but it was not the same. What could have been, was changed. Forty eight years later we cry once more, a shining light has been extinguished forever. We hardly knew you, but will always think of you.