Do You Remember

How many of you remember where you where were and what you were doing when you heard the news about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination? Right now every one of you is having one of three thoughts. The first group of you who remember are running through you mind the exact time, place and event as it was unfolding. The second group of you is saying I was to young to remember the assassination. The last group of you is saying I wasn’t even born yet.

I am a member of the first group. I was in eighth grade at Kearns Junior High School. It was near the end of fourth period gym class because I was just getting out of the shower and getting dressed when the first announcement about the shooting came over the intercom system. About fifteen or twenty minutes later during first lunch I was standing next to my locker, and this is a stranger part, alone in an empty hall, when the announcement came over the intercom about President Kennedy’s death. I remember holding onto the door of my locker and starting to cry. I suggest to you, one of the reasons there aren’t more liberals around today is because to many of you are in the second and third groups.

You see those of us who were around when the assassination occurred also remember his invigorating words of what was possible and the stimulating words of challenge he presented. We remember his “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country”, the proposal to start the Peace Corps and encouraging words of what was possible to accomplish. We remember his passionate plea to end racial equality in the United States and the challenge to put a man of the moon by the end of decade. We also remember the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In the fall of 1962 the world was on the brink of nuclear war. The United States had placed a naval blockade around Cuba preventing the former USSR, the United Soviet Socialist Republic, from placing any more ICBMs, inter-continental ballistic missiles, in Cuba and demanding the removal of those already installed. ICBM’s launched from Cuba had the capability of reaching Washington, DC within about ten minutes and Salt Lake City within about twenty minutes.

Those of you in groups two and three do not have the experience of these events to help shape your attitudes and ideals of today. You have neither the sense of what is possible the liberal movement brought into focus or the realization of what real terror is in the form of world wide nuclear destruction.

We who remember the Kennedy assassination were raised by parents who lived through World War Two and they remember the Great Depression. Both of these major world events influenced them and their ideals. This in turn impacted how they imparted that knowledge and wisdom to us, their children. I suggest to those of you who have been raised in the era of no draft and the advent of the computer that you take a closer look at history before you decide if liberal is a dirty word or not. Perhaps more of you will come to the realization that there is much more to the world than your video games. Perhaps you will find a reason to put the controller down, turn the monitor off and get involved in shaping the events of today which will effect the quality of the rest of you life as well as the lives of your children.