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Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
Some men see things as they are now and say "Why" while others see things that never were and say, "Why Not?"
Tuesday, November 19, 2002
Maybe it was that he could quote Shakespeare, Shaw and Tennyson at the drop of a hat.Maybe it was because he actively pursued the youth of the United States to join the Peace Corps and build bridges, friendships and goodwill in underdeveloped nations rather than forcing young pilots to bomb the hell out of them. Or maybe.....it was because he was a man who died at his apex and never had a chance to grow old, decrepit and corrupted.
Whatever the reason and, granted, much of it may very well be over-romanticized reverie, I will stop for a moment or two this Friday November 22nd and recall a death some thirty-nine years ago ("Can it really be that long ago!!") that changed not only my world but, one could justifiably argue, the world's direction as well.
For many years after November 22, 1963 it was almost a cliche to recall where one was on that fateful day when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. "Baby-Boomers", like myself, could recall the class ( Gr. 9 English), the teacher (Mrs. Archibald) and the time (1:46 P.M.) when the news first reached our ears. (Ironically, almost forty years later, in my last year of teaching, it was I, an English teacher, teaching grade nines, that broke the news of the attack on the World Trade Center towers to them. September 11th, 2001 will, in many ways, become this generation's "November 22nd".)
It was the death of innocence for many of us. Most of us were born before World War 11, knew little about the Korean War and were naive to the developing tensions in Vietnam. We did not think that some one as young, as vital and as alive as Kennedy was, could be struck down so quickly and without warning. It made us all see, for the first time in our sheltered, "just-out-of-the-fifties" worlds, that if the President of the United States could be struck down in an instant then, we too, were very vulnerable and frightfully mortal.
It shocked us, scared us and gave us all pause and I do not think that many of the "baby-boomers" in North America, and maybe a good portion of the world, ever really recovered. After those horrible dark days in November that seemed to bring more tragic news with each passing hour, we all were numbed and made somewhat callous. We were ready for any type of tragedy or horror story after that and our sensitivity was vastly diminished. It took much more to shock us after that. Newspapers and magazines got much more graphic, movies and television became much more violent in an attempt to make an impression upon our jaded psyches, and the world in general became a colder and much less humane place. Pictures of the nation's youth in Peace Corps garb were quickly being replaced by pictures of the nation's youth returning home in body bags.
He was intelligent and surrounded himself with like-minded men in his cabinet ( 15 Rhodes Scholars) and the best and the brightest as advisors ( Elgin County's own John Kenneth Galbraith for example). He was gracious, charming, witty, urbane and humane. He, along with his family espoused values of family loyalty and put public service above all else. He could be tough and strong one moment (ie. Cuban Missile Crisis) and then, in the next, be brilliantly self-effacing . He once invited all of the living Nobel Peace Prize winners to the White House and began the evening by saying that there was more brilliance in this room than any other time, save for when, Thomas Jefferson dined alone!. Can you imagine George Bush, Jean Chretien or, for that matter, any other modern day politician being intelligent enough to issue witty and insightful off-the-cuff comments like that??
Did he have faults? Of course he did! He was, after all, a notorious "womanizer", as the modern media loves to recount and embellish with great glee. He had a father who was not much better than a glorified "thug". JFK was absolutely "human" in the best and worst sense of that word.
But you know – he still represents, in my mind at least, the best of what we mere mortals can be. He was, for many of us, a modern day living hero. Yes, of course, his image has been tarnished. In a world that is frightened of intellectualism, worships the banal and the lowest common-denominator, shuns all but anti-heroes and believes that might makes right, a man like Kennedy MUST be discounted, disregarded and discarded.
He was a Renaissance man, a man for all seasons who was as comfortable playing touch football as he was attending a Robert Frost poetry reading. His mere existence allowed young idealists to have a hero to emulate and admire, even if it was only for three scant years in a hopelessly fragile world that some have romantically dubbed "Camelot".
Where are the "JFK's" to-day? Where are our Renaissance leaders? Why do so many of to-day's leaders resemble fence posts and seem capable of being no more inspiring than tepid dish-water? Why are the mindless ramblings of sports celebrities listened to more than our best and brightest? Oh, Johnny, why did you ever leave us when we need you now more than ever?
Jim and Lisa Gilbert are local, national and international award winning educators and historians.
