Thanksgiving,
1963
Dear
President Kennedy,
Thank
you for being our President. I am so sorry you were shot. It’s hard to believe.
We prayed for you at our Christian school, even though you are Catholic.
I
was so very sad all that weekend, watching all the news about your death. We
went to a Mexican restaurant that Saturday night to get away from the TV and I
was surprised to find it was filled with people having a good time, laughing as
if nothing had happened. I just turned 13 last month, but it felt wrong. I felt
so sad for your family and for our country. You were so smart and funny,
good-looking and cool, and you did a lot of good. I especially liked your Peace
Corps idea.
Sunday
morning I saw Lee Harvey Oswald shot live on TV. I did not feel good about
that, but was glad he would no longer get so much attention.
I
know my Aunt Helen is particularly sad. She took my older brother to the
Democratic Convention here in Los Angeles when you were nominated for
President, and as a high school math teacher in Kansas, she is active in the
NEA.
My
parents loved Roosevelt and Truman, and voted for Adlai Stevenson twice. Please
don’t hold it against us that they voted for Nixon partly out of fear that you would
be under the Pope’s control. (By the way, I was very sorry that Pope John XXIII
died this past summer. I knew the world had lost a great man.)
Even
though many of our friends are Republicans, some of our best friends are
Democrats, and we are glad that Republicans and Democrats can get along despite
their differences.
I
am so glad you were President when the Russians tried to put missiles in Cuba. We
were having a schoolwide assembly for my junior high when Mrs. Gerrald, our
principal, announced the Russian ships had turned around. We were very happy,
because we were afraid we were going to have the atomic war we have been afraid
of all of our lives. Mrs. Gerrald was also the one who went from class to class,
including my English class, to announce you had been shot in Texas. My algebra
teacher Mr. Parrish said it was likely the singlemost historic event that we
would ever witness. I wonder if that’s true.
My
mother cried when they took your rocking chairs out of the White House.
I greatly
admire you, and I want to be like you when I grow up.
We
will never forget you.
Love,
Chris
While the content is
true, this letter is a work of imagination, and I invite readers old enough to
remember President Kennedy’s assassination to consider writing their own letters
from the perspective of their age and experience at the time. It may help us
understand why his life and death and that era meant so much to so many over
the past 50 years.
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Copyright © 2013 by
Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of
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