Anniversaries, Pt. II

The second anniversary of this week has slightly more personal resonance than the mass suicides at Jonestown.

Friday, November 22, 1963 was my eighth birthday. I have now out-lived the man who was shot this day, who died at the age of 46. I don't know if it was a lone gunman or a conspiracy involving everyone from J. Edgar Hoover to Fidel Castro. All I knew then was the President had been shot. John F. Kennedy had been assasinated on my eighth birthday.

Many of my friends who are the same age have a memory of hearing the announcement in school. My memory is of watching Uncle Walter deliver the news once I got home. There's a good possibility my memory betrays me, for Kennedy died around 1:30 p.m. Central Standard Time. Seems like we watched the funeral at school, but my memory may be playing me false there as well.

I don't recall that I was very much aware of Kennedy or national politics prior to his death. I would have been a rare eight year-old if I had been. But I did get caught up in the hagiography following his death — to the point that I felt very conflicted about the coincidence of my birthday falling on the date of his assasination. This became so extreme that I announced that I did not want to celebrate my birthday.

Well, you know a kid is a bit overly sensitive when he doesn't want to celebrate his birthday! No clue why my dad didn't hie me to a therapist then & there.

But I've had mixed feelings about the date even as recently as a decade ago. But here we are, fourty years later, and it's a day. I'm no more troubled by the coincidence than I am by the fact of growing older.

I did watch the better part of "The Kennedys" on PBS this year. To be honest, as I watched again, I felt sadder about Robert's death in '68 than I did about Jack's. But I have not watched any of the other specials, and do not anticipate watching the ABC special supporting the theory of a Lone Gunman (Lee Harvey), which is scheduled to air tonight.

I suppose that's the trick of it — to be aware of the coincidence, but not immerse myself in it. The man is dead. He had his faults and his glories like any other man. As we have learned, he was far from a saint. He certainly made a tragic mistake by increasing America's involvement in Viet Nam. The Bay of Pigs was a mis-step almost worthy of our current President. But on the other hand, his response to the Cuban Missle Crisis proved that he could achieve a diplomatic ideal. The Civil Rights Act began on his watch — although, admittedly, events pressed him to finally take action on what was a political hot potato (he needed southern votes to achieve a second term).

In other words, like most of us, John F. Kennedy was a complicated man. We may see him as a tragic hero, in the mold of King Arthur, or we may see him as a deeply flawed human being, like Bill Clinton. Either extreme misses the real person, whom we can only hint at. It does not serve the man's memory to beatify him, for that neglects the whole person.