STRENGTH IN WHAT REMAINS BEHIND
“Now he is gone. Today we mourn him. Tomorrow and tomorrow we shall miss him. And we shall never know how different the world might have been had fate permitted this blazing talent to live and labor longer at man’s unfinished agenda for peace and progress for all…”
—Adlai E. Stevenson
November 27, 1963
Jo Anne Beall
On November 22, 1963, an avowed Marxist shot and killed President John F. Kennedy, one of the greatest statesmen the world has ever seen and one of the greatest presidents this nation has ever had.
Although it has been almost one year since that fatal day, it seems like only yesterday that our President said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” These words, spoken by President-elect John F. Kennedy at his inauguration on that bleak and snowy day in January, 1961, will live for generations to come.
John F. Kennedy also said in his inaugural address that we should never negotiate from fear, nor should we fear to negotiate. This belief shows his bravery and his conviction that refusing to compromise is, in effect, saying, “I am above human fallacies.”
He came to know well in his thousand days as President what Ralph W. Emerson meant when he said, “To be great is to be misunderstood.”
When the assassin’s bullet fatally wounded President Kennedy, the murderer placed JFK in the hearts of most Americans. His bullets penetrated the souls of all Americans when he took it upon himself to rid the American people of their leader. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was never so great in the minds of some people and, at the same time, never so hated by others as he was at that moment when he was assassinated on the streets of Dallas.
Although many of us still feel the agony of John Kennedy’s death, his memory remains with us as a constant reminder of his energy, dedication, faith, and courage. Time will never destroy that memory, but will make that memory more profound.
Re-considering JFK’s famous challenge, will we be American enough to ask what we can do for our country, instead of constantly asking what our country can do for us?
We have in the past; we must again dedicate ourselves to a great America in the future. Let us continue; we must continue.
John F. Kennedy would have us to be as William Wordsworth stated in his poem “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality”:
“Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass,
of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not,
rather find
Strength in what remains behind.”
