November 22, always means only 1 thing

[Luv2play]

To me I always think of this day as the day the dream died in America. I was 16 and at school when we heard Kennedy had been killed. When I got home my mother was crying in front of the television.
That evening we assembled back at the school for a previously scheduled assembly. Everything in the program was ditched for an extended eulogy for the fallen president. 
And we were not even American, but Canadians. 

[pubic_assistance]

32 minutes ago, Luv2play said:

I always think of this day as the day the dream died in America.

Unfortunately, it really all WAS a dream.

Kennedy was the first Instagram Presdient. Lots of pretty pictures.

[mike carey]

18 minutes ago, pubic_assistance said:

Unfortunately, it really all WAS a dream.

Kennedy was the first Instagram Presdient. Lots of pretty pictures.

It was a dream, and the accession of Johnson to the presidency represented a 'return to our regularly scheduled programming'. What may have happened had he not been assassinated is a counter factual. It's possible to deduce, and many do, that there was a lack of substance to the Kennedy presidency, that it was all image and that would have continued had he lived. The strands of what he was doing might have come together into something better. Or a major event could have precipitated a major change to how the administration operated, for better or worse. But we will never know which of these alternative futures would have played out.

In any loss we lament what might have been, without knowing what would have been without that loss.

[+ Just Sayin]

I just read Heather Cox Richardson's letter this morning on JFK's assassination; I enjoy her putting events in context for her readers; the purpose of the trip, as she relates, was to quell the discontent in the South over desegregation; it is a gripping letter describing the events through Lady Bird Johnson's recollections; I highly recommend it if you have access.

[+ Charlie]

The heading to this thread, unfortunately, means two things to me. For many years it meant only the Kennedy assassination: I had been watching his arrival in Dallas, which was on the TV as I was visiting a classmate in the campus hospital. An hour later, I was walking across campus when I saw several guys standing around a car with the door open as they listened to something on the radio. I continued to the barbershop, where the radio was also on and everyone was chattering, and as I sat in the barber chair, I heard the announcement that Kennedy had been pronounced dead--the shop suddenly turned silent. A couple of days later, I was in DC, walking in the crowd heading to the Capitol to view the casket, and later watching on the street as the procession of dignitaries paraded to the cathedral for the funeral service. I thought that November 22 would always hold only one meaning to me.

Thirty-three years later I was teaching a class, when I was summoned to the department secretary's office for a personal phone call. It was a doctor friend, telling me that my best friend had just died of AIDS.  For me the date just seems to be cursed.