Fifty Years Salute

"And we raised a glass to JFK,
And a dozen more besides,
When I got back to my empty room, 
I suppose I must have cried"  
                         Thousands are Sailing by The Pogues
 
 
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, I salute you.
 
One day, the Camelot torch will be picked up by somebody who will use it to harness real hope and push forward real change.  
 
One day...

What might have been.

R.I.P President Kennedy. There will always be those amongst us who will remember what you did for this world, and how your untimely death altered the course of History. You will NEVER be forgotten.

R.I.P

In 1963, my father had a part time job as a bartender on weekends. He worked all day Saturday, November 23.
 
Dad said the crowd was lighter than usual that day and the mood was quiet and solemn. Everyone was watching the continuous news coverage on the TV up in the corner above the bar. Then this one guy comes in, and before long, he starts saying things in raised voice such as "That dirty bastard had it coming," and stuff like that. He wouldn't shut up.

Dad asked him to tone it down, but he didn't. Finally Dad quietly walked around the bar, and—uncharacteristically for him—grabbed the guy by the collar and "escorted" him to the entrance. As the guy went through the door, Dad gave him a final push for good measure.
 
There was applause.

Lee Farley wrote:

Thanks for posting this, Lee. Don't recall ever seeing it.

George Bailey's article:

http://oswaldsmother.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/fifty-years-ago-today_1799.html

I think Bailey runs one of the best blogs on the net.

I thought it might be appropriate to post a poem here about the death of JFK but I couldn’t find a good one. Even the wonderful WH Auden’s ‘Elegy for JFK’ is very poor by his standards.
 
Here’s a poem about the death of the 17^th century Irish chieftain Eoghan Ruadh O’Neill that touches on emotions and themes evoked for me by JFK’s death:
 
 

That was awesome, GS.  Jack and Eoghan were cut from the same cloth, for sure.  This we connaught deny.  Thank you.  Onward and All Hail!

You’re more than welcome, Mark, and thanks for the appreciation.

As it’s approaching the 51^st anniversary of the assassination of John F Kennedy and as I believe this is the last or second last day for posting on this thread, I’m posting this now.

About a year ago I posted ‘Lament for the Death of Eoghan Ruadh O’Neill’ above as a tribute to JFK. At the time I wondered whether my choice was tainted by chauvinism and said more about me being Irish than about JFK.

I was reassured on this recently when I was flicking through my copy of Sons and Brothers by Richard D. Mahoney and came across the following description, which I had forgotten since I read the book ten years or more ago, of Robert Kennedy’s response in the months after his brother’s assassination (p. 302):

Bobby grimly lockstepped through the cascade of oral tributes, the unending references in his presence to the tragedy and the greatness of his brother, and the renaming of parks, boulevards, and airports in President Kennedy's name. Gradually he learned to speak about Jack in public without breaking down. At a St. Patrick's Day dinner in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1964, he quoted the lines Jack had often used in reference to Owen Roe O'Neill, an Irish freedom fighter:
 
We are sheep without a shepherd,
When the snow shuts out the sky —
Oh! Why did you leave us, Owen?

Why did you die?