HEART OF STEELE

If you are of a certain age, you probably remember where you were on Nov. 22, 1963.

Sixty years have passed since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and still new stories and new evidence are coming to light. Last week, a forensic laboratory in Colorado cast more doubt on the theory that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, fired the three shots that hit Kennedy and Texas governor John Connally, who survived his injuries.

The president and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy were riding through Dealey Plaza in Dallas in the back seat of the presidential limousine. Connally and his wife, Nellie, sat in front of them and behind the driver. The 1964 findings of the Warren Commission, organized to investigate the assassination, pinned the blame firmly on Oswald, who was killed by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby while being taken to jail.

I doubt we’ll ever know exactly what happened on that fateful day. Conspiracy theories will continue to multiply and muddy the waters. Even the president’s brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, believed the plot may have been organized by Fidel Castro or the mafia.

What we know for sure is those bullets cut down a leader who, despite an apparently messy personal life, inspired a generation of Americans at a critical time in our history.

Even though I was barely five years old when he died, President Kennedy’s words have long informed what I believe about government: that it can and should ensure that we live in a strong, just, and compassionate country.

Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I still have faith in these words: “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”

And in these words: “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.”

And, of course, these: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

If you read the national news, it’s easy to think we’ve strayed too far from John Kennedy’s vision for America. But in the words of Rotary Vern White award honoree Rebecca Moore, profiled elsewhere in this issue, “You’d have to work pretty hard to not see all the good” being done in our community.

May we always keep our fallen president’s words close to our hearts and be that shining example he dreamed of seeing across the country.