"We will never be young again" Thank you John F. Kennedy! [View all]

[gopiscrap]

As Mary McGrory waited at Andrew's Airbase with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the coffin holding John F. Kennedy, descended from Air force One and she turned to him and said "O we will never laugh again" and Moynihan replied "Heaven's Mary, we'll laugh again. We'll just never be young again" and how profound that statement was.

And yet in the moment of those shots, in some ways the youth of the soul of America was killed. The promise and the hope of what Kennedy was trying to ignite stirred the hearts of many. His exhortation to "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country" was a touchstone of many who entered public service. He exalted the nobleness of serving others. His actual legislative accomplishments may have been few in the 1,036 days of his presidency, yet his mark on the tone and tenor of the nation was enormous.

For me personally, it was profound, I had gotten up early in the morning as a small child and saw him in that most famous speech in Berlin and a month later we had moved temporarily to Tacoma, Washington and in September I saw him again at Cheney Stadium. So to me he was real and it was the first REAL person I knew who had died in my life.

And then it was gone, in a few years that nobility of service would be replaced with cynicism and doubt. It was the explosion of the crime surge, it was a time when the right silently worked to take over the nation.

Sadly 17 years later Ronald Reagan completely reversed the tone Kennedy had set. While he didn't have the guts to directly say it, his subtle under text was that "I've got mine, so too bad for you" and that is when this country really went into decline.

So for establishing the Peace Corps, promoting literacy and the arts, for setting in motion the landing on the moon and for yes in the words of that song: "For one brief shining moment...." Thank you John F. Kennedy

We are better nation for it and for your time spent on this earth!