My late grandfather worked on a prominent Wingham well-drilling outfit for the majority of his adult life. He and his crew were drilling a well on an area farm on Friday afternoon, Nov. 22, 1963, when the farmer’s wife came out from the house and told them that U.S. President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. My grandfather, not knowing what ‘assassinated’ meant at the time, simply went back about his business.
My mom sent me a text about this little family historical tidbit last week on the 60th anniversary of JFK’s murder. I actually already knew the story well; my first-ever interview was with my grandfather nearly 25 years earlier for a high school project, and he told me that anecdote after I had asked him what were some of the significant moments in history throughout his life that he vividly remembered. And while Grandpa may not have initially understood the gravity of what had happened in Dallas that day, he and the rest of the world would certainly bear witness to the drastic ripple effects that Lee Harvey Oswald’s fatal bullet would have over the years and decades to follow.
I’m sure there is a great percentage of our readers already up in arms at the sheer mention of Oswald’s name in the preceding sentence. And regardless of my own beliefs, I’m not here to debate whether or not JFK’s assassination was one disturbed man acting alone, or the shadowy string pulling of the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. Or perhaps it was the Ku Klux Klan retaliating for Kennedy’s administration pushing a civil rights agenda, or even a CIA conspiracy to escalate the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. I’m simply going to reflect upon JFK’s extensive resume while in office, and the fallout from one of the most significant and infamous events of the 20th century.
At 43, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the youngest U.S. president to be elected to the country’s highest office (Vice-President Teddy Roosevelt was a year younger when he was sworn in as president following William McKinley’s assassination in 1901). You could argue that with the exception of Honest Abe Lincoln, who presided over the Union States during the Civil War 100 years earlier, Kennedy was taking the leadership reins at the most tumultuous period of American history. Ironically, both their presidencies ended abruptly with an assassin’s bullet.
In the early 1960s there was unrest abroad with the Soviet Union and China extending communism to many different pockets of the world, and certainly unrest at home with mounting pressure from the public for the White House to usher in a new era of civil rights. It’s incredible to me to think that JFK was only in office for approximately 1,000 days. So much happened in that relatively short span.
As popular as he was from the onset, Kennedy experienced both triumphs and debacles during his presidency. The former can be highlighted by his verbal support and legislative advances of the American Civil Rights Movement and the gradual abolishment of racial segregation, particularly in the southern states; his administration’s commitment to the Space Race and landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade (which was accomplished in July 1969); and finally, initial steps towards nuclear disarmament with the Soviet Union through the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which was a direct result of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 – the closest the world has ever come to full-scale nuclear war.
JFK also had his share of controversies. He dove right into his foreign affairs agenda only a few months after taking his presidential oath, meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna to tackle a growing problem in Berlin, which had been divvied up by the Allied Second World War victors post-1945. The Soviets essentially wanted to absorb West Berlin – which fell entirely within USSR-governed East Germany – as it had seen an influx of East Berlin citizens flee to the U.S./Great Britain/France-supported western areas of the city. While Berlin would stay divided as per the original agreement, Kennedy’s aggressive stance on the issue and subsequent military buildup in the summer of 1961 in part led directly to the Soviets building the Berlin Wall, which would physically separate the city for the next 30 years. A literal Iron Curtain.
With stemming the ‘Red Tide’ top of mind in American politics in the mid-20th century, the Kennedy administration handled socialist Cuba and leader Fidel Castro poorly in terms of the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961. Essentially bankrolling a military insurgency for exiled Cubans to return to the island and instigate an uprising in the country that lies only 100 miles from Key West, Florida, the invasion was crushed by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces and gave JFK and his advisors an embarrassing political black eye.
The attempted overthrow made Castro and his government permanently leery of the U.S. right up to the present day, resulting in an ongoing economic and political chess game between the two countries. It was also a direct instigator of the afore-mentioned Cuban Missile Crisis a year and half later.
Throughout his presidency, there were persistent rumours surrounding JFK and his apparent infidelities with prominent public figures, the most famous being Marilyn Monroe. While I’m sure an entire column could be devoted to spitballing those alleged transgressions, I don’t subscribe to celebrity affair gossiping, past or present. It simply doesn’t interest me.
And despite the official end of American involvement in the conflict happening a solid 50 years ago, the Vietnam War still very much holds my interest (I told you we’d get back here eventually, as per a previous semi-related piece I’d written on the subject late in the summer).
Kennedy wasn’t the first U.S. president to begin intervening in Southeast Asia, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last. Predecessor Dwight Eisenhower got the ball rolling in terms of financial backing and providing military advisors to democratic South Vietnam in the mid to late 1950s, and JFK continued that thread by increasing non-combatant support. Throughout his tenure as president, via a number of sources, it became more and more apparent that Kennedy opposed direct American military intervention in Vietnam.
Kennedy’s Vietnamese policies could be taken either way in terms of a positive or negative during his presidency. He did escalate American involvement, whether it was begrudgingly or not. Many historians believe that had he not been assassinated, the U.S. would have ultimately avoided the full-scale intervention that resulted in the deaths of over 50,000 American personnel and millions of Vietnamese people over the next decade. This could have also had a ripple effect on the resulting peace protests and riots back on American soil that followed, on both the anti-war and civil rights fronts.
Maybe JFK’s younger brother, Robert, would have succeeded him after two full terms of general peace and prosperity. RFK warrants a future column as well; I’m one of those who believe he would have made an even better president than his brother had he not suffered the same fate at a Los Angeles hotel in June 1968.
And maybe if RFK gets elected that year, Richard Nixon doesn’t. Tricky Dick’s history is well known, and his behind-the-scenes string pulling both internationally and on the domestic front, culminating in the 1972 Watergate Scandal, put a permanent mistrusting gaze on the White House right up to the present day. And rightfully so. It’s easy to argue that there have been far more poor presidents than good ones since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who set the bar for all U.S. leaders after him impossibly high.
The ‘maybes’ and ‘what ifs’ are endless when it comes to this topic, and I simply don’t have the space to explore them all. It’s both fascinating and entertaining to speculate what may have been, but in actuality we will simply never know.
What we do know is that JFK had the potential to become one of the greatest presidents ever, and instead became perhaps best remembered for the dramatic manner in which he died. And that’s truly the tragedy in all of this, and likely why so many can’t let it go, even 60 years later.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you back here in a fortnight.
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This is a bi-weekly opinion column; for question or comment contact Dan McNee at dmcnee@midwesternnewspapers.com.
