ON THIS DAY

I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge and commemorate in my own small way, the anniversary of the death of the first President I loved, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I was a child of age...ok, lets say I was a very, very small child, but I remember him. My parents, and my Irish grandmother adored him and that made him very God-like and all powerful to me.

I can very faintly remember the Cuban missile crisis. I didn't know what was going on, of course, but I remember a few very tense days in my little family circle when my parents would sit around the kitchen table in our small post-war house they had built. I heard the stress in their voices as they talked with my other relatives and their friends who visited. And I remember the joy and relief when President Kennedy brought our country through that deadly, perilous time. The bourbon flowed in the South. I remember because it was so rare to see everyone celebrate in such a way.

I remember the shock of the assassination in the reactions of my parents, especially since my oldest sister had just brought home her newborn, my first niece. It should have been a happy time, but it was tinged with sorrow. I didn't realize what had happened exactly until I watched the funeral on the TV. I remember I was wearing a frilly white dress and patent leather maryjanes. I remember John-John saluting the coffin and I cried. We all cried.

I pray that mercy and justice will bring this country another great man, like John F. Kennedy, to lead us in a new direction. We need him.