JFK's death 44 years later and the big 'what if?' [View All]

[Omaha Steve]

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2007/11/jfks_death_44_years_ago_today.html



President Kennedy greets Ft. Worth, Tex. crowd hours before his death in Dallas. Photo credit: REUTERS/JFK Library/The White House/Cecil Stoughton/Handout

by Frank James

Today is not only Thanksgiving but also Nov. 22, 2007, the 44th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination on Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Like 9/11 or Dec. 7, today is one of those anniversaries in American history that, for those old enough to remember the tragedy itself, still delivers a certain chill and a sadness. Even for many born afterwards there is a sense of loss, like what we feel for Abraham Lincoln.

It is a feeling only intensifed by looking at the webcam image from the "sniper's nest" from the Sixth Floor Museum in what was the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. Or by this home movie of the president's motorcade made by George Jefferies about 90 seconds before the fatal shot.

Nov. 22 is a day for private remembering. Evidently, the Kennedy family has never wanted large public remembrances of the assassination. Better to remember the president's life than the way he died.

As Dallas Morning News columnist Jacqielynn Ford noted this week, it's also a day for conspiracy theorists to again get ginned up, with something of a spectacle occurring at the site of the assassination.

But for those of old enough to remember, the Kennedy assassination marked the start of the time of tumult that the 1960s were to become. Vietnam. Riots. Anti-war and civil- rights protests. More assassinations.

FULL story at link.