Sunday Drive: JFK

Yesterday was the 45th anniversary of that awful day. I remember it vividly: a brilliantly sunny autumn day, my mother hanging clothes out on the line in the backyard, myself watching TV in my parents' bed - I'd stayed home from school that day with the sniffles. All the ordinary routines of life going on as they should, as they always had, safe and predictable.

Then suddenly all was changed: a blank screen and the CBS logo; the ominous words, We interrupt this program . . . ; shots fired in Dallas at the Presidential motorcade; President Kennedy taken to a hospital; confusion on the streets and in the broadcast studio. I ran to tell my mother to come see. "Oh honey, don't joke about a thing like that." "No, Mommy, it's true, Walter Cronkite said . . . ."

And then the long, sad weekend, no cartoons on Saturday, no programs at all but news coverage and documentaries about the President's life. Not even any commercials for three days. We kids bemoaned the fact that there was nothing else to watch on TV; but young as we were, we were unwillingly fascinated by all that was happening, just like the grownups. And all the unforgettable images that have been replayed and repeated so many times across the years since then.

Well, I don't want to dwell today on the details of JFK's death, the poignant tableau of his widow and young children, the grief of a whole nation united in shock and sadness. Instead, I want to put a reminder here of who Kennedy was and why he inspired the nation and the world: the legacy of hope, the vision of all that America could be and should be to the world.

The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high--to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.

The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises--it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook--it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.

It would be easier to shrink back from that frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric--and those who prefer that course should not cast their votes for me, regardless of party.

But I believe the times demand new invention, innovation, imagination, decision. I am asking each of you to be pioneers on that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age--to all who respond to the Scriptural call: "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed."