Ask not what your country can do for you....

It has been 50 years today since JFK was assassinated.  It was four years before I was born.  Yet somehow his spirit resonates with me. 

JFK seemed such a charismatic person.  He was a young, dynamic and much liked President.  Everyone who was of an age to remember, remembered what they were doing when they heard that Kennedy had been assassinated.  It sent a shock wave throughout the world.  People in foreign countries and of all different cultures wept at the news.  JFK was almost like a symbol of a new, progressive USA.  Of a time and place that times were changing, that things were being done, that a new country was emerging.  I sometimes wonder what would be different now, if JFK had been allowed to live.  How much change he would have bought about.  If life would be any different now. 

He left behind a strong, confident widow....Jackie Kennedy...and his young family Caroline and John– who could forget those poignant pictures of a young John-John saluting his father’s coffin – and just the memory of two other children, Arabella who was still-born and Patrick who passed from respiratory distress at only 2 days old.  JFK seemed to be very much a person’s president, having seemed to have suffered heartache and had to endure the hardships of life like many of those that supported him...perhaps that is why he seemed so popular.

JFK seems to embody much of what the USA means to me...it’s loud, patriotic, confident, positive and fun.  They haven’t had another President that comes even close since.  And I only wish that we had such a candidate to choose from when election time comes around in Australia.  They would win hands down in my opinion. 

JFK was from a time long passed, but his legacy lives on in the hope for a time and a place where everyone can be truly free.....in body and in mind.  I may not have been alive when he died, but I sure hope I am alive to see his dream come true.

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.......