It’s hard to say anything about President John F. Kennedy that hasn’t already been said. There was even a newspaper article about the pink suit and pill box hat Jacqueline Kennedy wore in Dallas that day. (They have been preserved, complete with blood stains, not to be displayed for another 50 years.)

What struck me last week, when I watched the two-part PBS special about JFK, is how young he was, how young we were.

Young and innocent.

This was before Watergate, Columbine, 9/11, Newtown. This is before we lost face, lost hope.

It’s as if he embodied all the promise of a younger nation — and all that died with him on November 22, 1963.


(Tourists visit Kennedy’s grave in Arlington Cemetery.)