It is November 2017. The year has seemed to quickly trudge and stammer by. Quickly, because it seems like it just started. Trudge and stammer because there have been a few events or circumstances that took a toll on us. Especially in Houston, where we live, and where Hurricane Harvey visited for 4 dark days. The holidays are just days away, if like me, you don’t start counting until Thanksgiving Day. But another memorable day in history is coming even sooner.
At the end of September, my wife Beth and I took a trip to Boston to celebrate our 26th anniversary. First time for both of us. We picked the dates to coincide with the Houston Astros final series of the year with the Red Sox. But before we got to Fenway, we visited the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. I am a big fan of history, and I was excited to visit his library.
Little did I know.
November 22, 1963.
I was just young enough to remember bits and pieces of this in real life. Most of what I know I found out later, but I still remember the day the principal came on the intercom, announced that the President had been shot, and piped in the radio reports to us. I was in first grade. I was in a Catholic school in suburban Milwaukee Wisconsin. We went to the church to pray.
As I walked the dimly lit halls of the museum, a theme was developing in my head. This sounds and looks familiar. The dates, names, and some locations have changed, but this is happening all over again.
• Kennedy won Presidency with a popular vote of 49.7%
• Old tv sets with scary looking cameras
• A mockup of a stage where the first televised debate was held
• Walter Cronkite’s anchor desk for the election
• Cold War with Soviet Union intensifying
• Cuban Missile Crisis- bringing the USA and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.
• Recession in US economy
• Segregation still prominent; right to vote still denied to blacks
• Racial turbulence spread to the North
We seem to have our own parallel universe of events and conditions in 2017.
Kennedy launched programs and initiatives. Challenged us to go to the moon. And saw that journey start with the Mercury and Gemini programs. He worked hard to get to a peace with the Russians instead of world annihilation. In a speech in West Berlin just after the Berlin wall was erected, Kennedy said, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” (I am a Berliner). He said all free men are citizens of Berlin. He was verbalizing US support of West Germany, messaging the Communists of our attitude and intentions.
We landed on the moon. The Berlin Wall came down.
Technology back then was a manual typewriter and a teletype machine that used Morse code and a spool of paper tape. But it was state of the art at the time and was used to connect Washington DC and Moscow for the first time. Kennedy arranged this and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khruhschev.
Then I came upon one of the most personally chilling parts of the museum. In a mockup of brother Bobby Kennedy’s office as Attorney General was an original letter sitting on the desk written by James Meredith. Meredith was a black student at the University of Mississippi. The first black student to be admitted to the largely upper class, traditional white southern state university. It took about a year and a half to get him in. JFK and RFK were personally involved in this fight. And a fight it was. First with words, threats, demonstrations. Then force. JFK’s determination and RFKs leadership in a time of caustic hatred, manipulative deceit, and forces of good vs evil, were two key forces that finally, after bloodshed, death and demonstrations, brought peace, calm, and a settlement that started American education, and America, on a better road.
Since my daughter is a recent graduate of Ole Miss, I have spent a considerable amount of time on campus in Oxford. I have stood on the steps of the Lyceum, one of the original buildings on campus that had weathered years of use, the Civil War, was a hospital for troops on both sides, and was now the scene of one of the ugliest and most hate-filled confrontations in American history. I stood in the center of the memorial structure that commemorates that event. I stood next to the statue of Meredith. If it is life size, he is a man of maybe average height. But his memoir (A Mission from God, A Memoir and Challenge for America, Meredith with William Doyle) recounts a man of towering determination, focused actions, and Divine inspiration. From the potentially worst possible outcome came a turning point in America that only we could present. Because America is an idea, not a place.
“We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and as clear as the America Constitution.”
-President John F Kennedy, June 11, 1963. Report to the American People on Civil Rights
“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.”
-John Fitzgerald Kennedy
After that, we enjoyed Boston. Fenway twice (the Astros won twice), historical sights on the Freedom trail, the USS Constitution – the oldest active warship in the Navy fleet- and ate a lot of fantastic food. We were kindly treated by the people in Boston. They showed genuine concern for us when the found out that we were from Harvey-stricken Houston.
Later, back home, Houston recovers from Harvey. There are lots of stories, most of them uplifting, encouraging, an example of what can come of people when they think of others. An appropriate sign of the times was when the city rode the wave of the Houston Astros Postseason. Especially the World Series. The Astros fought long and hard to bring that trophy home. No one could have been prouder than its residents.
I spoke to one of the managers of the Library as we departed. I mentioned that the things I saw seemed to be reappearing in current life. He said, Yes, that’s why its so important to come here.
History repeats itself. I hope and pray that it repeats itself again, all the way through. God help us.
Kennedy was flawed. He had his detractors. So do we all. But his contribution is notable, and noteworthy for our time and for all time.
“We in this country, in this generation, are – by destiny rather than choice - the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility – that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint – and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of ‘peace on earth, good will toward men.’ That must always be our goal – and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: ‘except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’"
-from President John F. Kennedy’s undelivered remarks prepared for the Dallas Trade Mart, November 22, 1963
Quotes from the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, Massachusetts
