John F. "Jack" Kennedy was Murdered in Dallas 56 Years Ago Today

John Kennedy was murdered 56 years ago, and it's still seared in my memory. I had seen JFK, his wife, and a host of prominent Texas politicians going down Broadway in his motorcade the day before. It was the second time I'd seen him that way, and like the first, I could have hit him with a baseball, or a rock. The open limousine was that close. In retrospect, the security was woefully inadequate, but it was a different America then and security at that level for important politicians was common. It was assumed that the Kennedy/Johnson ticket would carry Texas in 1964, but the president took nothing for granted. He was scheduled to give a very political speech later on the 22nd in Austin, celebrating Texas history, the Texas Revolution, Texas joining the Union, and the state's long ties with the Democratic Party. A copy can be seen either online, or at his presidential library in Boston.

About a year before, I was at Rice Stadium, seeing him give his "Going to the Moon by the end of this decade" speech. The film of Jack Kennedy giving that speech doesn't convey just how charismatic the man was. It gave me chills. I had seen the famous 1st debate with Nixon on live TV in 1960, but seeing him in person was very different. His influence is difficult to describe. As an example that will seem silly, Kennedy didn't wear a hat for his inauguration, which was outdoors, of course, in Washington on a very cold day, and it forever changed men's fashion. A very large majority of the nation was following literally everything Jack and Jackie did. Jackie gave a tour of the White House that was broadcast live on TV, something that hadn't been done before. It was a ratings hit. Even their very young children were famous, photographed by the media whenever they were given the chance.

You felt like you really knew him in a way only FDR, in what quickly seemed a different era, could approach. The country was stunned. People wept openly, even those of a different political persuasion. The country was united in its grief. His death simply didn't feel real. That a man who came across as so alive, and who seemed to represent a new, better course for the country, was suddenly gone just didn't seem possible. There are times I look around at the country today and wonder about what might have been had he lived, or if his brother, also murdered a few years later in 1968, had lived. The country would be far different, and how different, of course, we will never know. I hope he rests in peace. Both of them.

 

Should I change the title?

“JFK Died Yesterday and is Climate Change Real?”

By the way, I visited glaciers in Switzerland in the mid-‘60’s, 1971, and in 1982. Much later, in 2016, my SO and I visited Switzerland. The melting of the glaciers, disappearing fast, is shocking. Simply shocking. They are still trying to estimate the long term impact on the rivers and streams of Europe after they are gone. That, and the climate. I am not a scientist. I can only go by first hand observation over a period of many decades. In 1971, the lower glacier at Grindelwald, a famous Swiss resort that the Eiger looms over, was a beautiful blue. There was a wooden plank walkway across part of its face that you could walk on, drilled into the ice. I walked on it. Now it is all gone. The image below is an example of what’s happening in much of Switzerland.



This is where there was an amazing glacier at the top of the valley of Grindelwald not that long ago: