There I was sitting in class just after lunch at Our Lady of Peace Roman Catholic Elementary School. Sister Mary Emily was teaching but what she was teaching I do not recall at all because the events of that date have driven it from my mind. Most likely it was speeling or Englsih for they were afternoon subjects. Suddenly the PA system came on and we heard the voice of our aged principal Sister Mary Fridolin: “Sister, Sister” she shouted, “President Kennedy has been shot and is badly wounded.” One boy shouted out “Those dirty Russians!” The rest of us tried to remember where he was supposed to be that day. “He is in Dallas” said one girl. Immediately Sister turned on the TV which we had in class way back then to watch the educational channel.

We could not tell much of anything from that as all I recall seeing was the inside of the auditorium where JFK was supposed to have made a speech. Workers were folding chairs. After about a half hour or so, we got up and went over to church to pray. We still did not know what was going on but then we saw all the nuns praying and weeping and then we knew.

I and so many others were devastated by this event. JFK was near godlike to us, a man who could do no wrong for he was, like us, a staunch Roman Catholic man. We idolized and trusted him. He was a strong president who faced down the Russians over the Cuban missiles the year before, and an idealistic man who inspired us to do good deeds for our nation and the world. We were filled with sorrow and sadness because the great hope he represented was gone.

Even now it is hard for me to read of the events of that day or see them on the news. Yet now I look back and realize that JFK was not such a great man and not a great president. He was a political hack who came from money, whose father bought him the election. Although he did stand fast against the Russians he could not stop them. He approved the assassinations of the leaders of South Vietnam, supposedly our allies.

What was worse was that he was an adulterous womanizer who had affairs not just with Marilyn Monroe but dozens of other young women one of whom had ties to the Mafia. I think now “This was the man we idolized?” We never heard then of his sexual improprieties because the press covered them up. Nowadays that would not happen. JFK would never had been elected today: those affairs would have kept him out of office.

JFK looked presidential. We were caught up with his charisma, youthfulness and idealism but we were sold a bill of goods and we believed it. It is sad that JFK had to die so young and so tragically, but had he lived I do not think he would have been so great as we remember, but maybe this world would have been a bit different. Perhaps the civil rights movement would have been easier, perhaps neither Martin Luther King nor RFK would have been assassinated and we would have been spared the devastating riots that swept America in the sixties. But as for Vietnam, JFK actually got us involved there and started a process that only escalated into a fiasco. So yes, I remember JFK and mourn his passing, but he was a man with feet of clay as we all are, not one to be idolized or heaped with praise.

¹ Praise the LORD!Praise the LORD, O my soul! ²I will praise the LORD as long as I live;
    I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

 ³ Put not your trust in princes,
    in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
⁴When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;
   on that very day his plans perish.

 ⁵ Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
   whose hope is in the LORD his God,
⁶ who made heaven and earth,
   the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever;
 ⁷ who executes justice for the oppressed,
    who gives food to the hungry.

   The LORD sets the prisoners free;

 ⁸ the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
    the LORD loves the righteous.
⁹ The LORD watches over the sojourners;
    he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
   but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

(Psalm 146)