1960 saw the
torch passed from the WWI generation to the veterans of WWII. We saw it happen as JFK stood in the snow and
cold proclaiming the shift and intending to make it happen.
After WWII
and Korea, after FDR, Truman, and Ike, the apparent youth and energy of JFK and
his family made the comparison to Camelot an easy one. The popularity of the administration and the
first family became intermixed and mingled with the popular musical.
It was a time
when science was in vogue, when men in white shirts and narrow ties used slide
rules as tools and as weapons as the U.S. faced down the USSR in every
imaginable venue. From beneath the polar
ice cap to the moon, competition drove us to make this a better nation.
Then, a
single sniper took the image of Camelot away from us. LBJ did not and could not fit into the images
we had formed around Kennedy. He was, in
fact even blamed for the assassination in an adaptation named “McBird”
It’s been a
long 50 years since the murders in Dallas.
We think we know what would have changed, what might have been the
future of the U.S. if Kennedy had lived.
However, that’s all conjecture. My
war, and that of all VietNam vets might not have been. Johnson’s Great Society might have been
derailed by Kennedy’s New Frontier.
We’ve spent
50 years listening to conspiracy theorists who could and did prove absolutely
nothing. We’ve spent 50 years listening
to and watching bits of history that changed our images of the Camelot years
and players. In the end, many of us
idolized JFK and believed him to be more than we now know he was. His death was a watershed moment in our
lives, a generational billboard on the highway of American history. But, Johnny, we hardly knew ye!
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