(Updated to reflect the passage of time.)

By Bob Gaydos

JFK … at a press conference

 Eleven years ago, I wrote a column about what I see as the synchronistic connection between myself and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, beginning with the fact we share the same birth date, May 29. The key point in the column, at least to me, was my pledge “to remember to honor him not on the date he died, but on the date we both were born.”

      It’s a pledge that’s even more important today, I think, when there is such a dearth of public figures who inspire the kind of hope and pride in America that JFK did for me and millions of others. Hope and pride are two elements in short supply in today’s political debate. They’ve been replaced by deceit and anger, which only begets more deceit and anger. A path to ruin. So today, on what would be JFK’s 107th birthday, I choose hope.

       My connection with Kennedy began to take shape in my college years. His handling of the Cuban missile crisis allowed me to graduate on time. But as I was home waiting to report to Fort Dix, N.J., for basic training, JFK was assassinated, on Nov. 22, 1963, postponing my duty for a month. And 20 years later, as fate would have it, the first editorial I was asked to write as the new editorial page editor for The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y., was to mark the 20th anniversary of Kennedy’s death. Headline: “The Measure of the Man.”

     Seven years ago, I wrote: “Much of it still applies. The legend of JFK — Camelot (Jackie, John-John and Caroline), PT-109, Navy and Marine Corps Medals, the Purple Heart, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” “Ask not …”, the challenge to put a man on the moon, the Peace Corps, the New Frontier, a limited nuclear test ban treaty — still far outweighs his failings, including extramarital affairs, hiding illnesses from us, escalation of the American troop presence in Vietnam and a reluctance to take a firm stance in the growing battle over segregation in America.

    “He is regularly rated as one of this country’s greatest presidents, a testament I believe to his ability to inspire hope, faith and courage in Americans, especially young Americans like me, at a time of grave danger. Much of that owes to his youth (he was 43 when elected president, the youngest ever) and his ability to eloquently deliver the words written for him by Ted Sorensen, a synchronistic match if there ever was one. But Kennedy, a Harvard graduate, was no slouch at writing either, having won a Pulitzer Prize for biography with “Profiles in Courage.”

    “… Kennedy’s (message) was unfailingly one of hope. We can do this. We are up to the challenge. We care. His average approval rating as president was 70 percent. He also ranked third, behind Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa, in Gallup’s List of Widely Admired People of the 20th century, according to Wikipedia.”

   The question I still ask myself is, what might JFK have done, what might he have meant to America and the world, if he had lived longer?

    In that column seven years ago, to my ever-lasting embarrassment on the Internet, I also said that I shared a birthday with another great communicator, Bob Dylan. I was off by five days (May 24). Belated happy 83rd birthday to the Nobel poet laureate anyway.

     On a positive note, I subsequently discovered that May 29 is also the birthday of Harry G. Frankfurt. The professor emeritus at Princeton University authored a 67-page essay entitled “On Bullshit.“ It was a New York Times best seller in 2005. And it also explained to me how a person like Donald Trump could say the things he said, flying in the face of other things he had recently said, none of which had any basis in reality, and keep doing it. It’s not lying, Frankfurt explains, it’s bullshit. The liar has to remember what he said. The bullshitter does not. He doesn’t care.

     Professor Frankfurt died July 16 of last year at 84. Like Kennedy, his message and memory will live on with me.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

    Once upon a time, in an America in which politicians discussed, debated, argued and compromised in order to pass laws for the betterment of the nation, a man named Robert F. Kennedy ran for president.

       He had previously served as attorney general of the country and was a key adviser to the president, who happened to be his brother, John F. Kennedy.

       President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and his brother, commonly called Bobby, eventually moved from Massachusetts (where his younger brother, Ted, would serve as senator for 47 years) to New York, where he was elected senator. Bobby served New York from 1965 to 1968, when he, too, ran for president.

       Life being sometimes cruelly unpredictable, Bobby Kennedy was also assassinated, being shot to death in a hotel kitchen while campaigning in California in 1968.

       Today, in an America in which one of the two major political parties has abandoned negotiation for fear, threats, lies and violence, Kennedy’s son, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., trading on the family name and legacy, is running for president. 

     Not as a Democrat, like his father and uncles, but as an independent candidate. Unfortunately, this apple has fallen far from the family tree. So far, in fact, that every member of his family has endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president and encouraged Americans not to vote for RFK Jr. 

      When I decided to write about Kennedy’s third-party candidacy, it was mostly because I was angry that he would likely take votes away from Biden, since many Americans, while pridefully long on opinions, are woefully short on actual information. I thought, they’ll see the Kennedy name, think progressive Democrat, and figure, what the heck, he’s a lot younger than Joe.

      Yeah, but he’s more like Donald Trump and the Republican Party, which has abandoned all traditional American political principles. A lot more like Trump, in fact.

     Kennedy is a conspiracy theorist. An anti-vaccine activist. He says he’ll put the country on Blockchain currency if elected president. He threw the environmental group largely responsible for reclaiming the Hudson River, not far from me, into turmoil when he decided he wanted to take it over.

   And he’s definitely anti-Democrat. In fact, Kennedy’s New York campaign manager specifically said Junior was running as an independent, knowing full well he has no chance of winning, in order to take votes away from Biden.

    But guess what? Life being, as I said, unpredictable, those annoying polls, which keep popping up with dubious information, have apparently started showing Kennedy taking more votes away from Trump than from Biden.

     Maybe it’s the same theory: What the heck, he’s just as nutty and he’s a lot younger than Trump.

     For what it’s worth, Trump never got more votes than his opponent and he truly cannot afford to lose votes to a third-party candidate. Much more so than Biden, So Republicans are worried about Bobby Junior, too.

      I don’t know and I really don’t think the pollsters know. I do know that no third-party candidate is going to get elected president and that Americans who are familiar with history and cherish democracy have a duty to educate others who are familiar only with the name, Robert F. Kennedy. Names can be deceiving.

      I saw and heard Bobby Kennedy campaign for the presidency in person. This is not that Bobby Kennedy.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

The following is a reprint of a column I wrote 10 years ago. I am re-posting it today on the 60th anniversary of the assassination of president John F. Kennedy because of its significance in my life and because of the times we live in. Would things have been different if Kennedy had lived to continue serving? I have no way of knowing. I’d like to think the answer is yes. Joe Biden is the oldest elected president this country has ever had. Kennedy was the youngest. They share the same dedication to protecting our democracy. I continue to celebrate Kennedy on the birth date I share with him and I honor his memory on the anniversary of the day he was taken from us. A day history was altered forever.

By Bob Gaydos

John F. Kennedy

 The first editorial I wrote for the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y., appeared on the 20th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I wrote the headline, too: “The measure of the man.” 
      Trying to “measure” the meaning of the life of a man who was literally loved and idolized by millions of people is no easy task, especially for a rookie editorial writer’s debut effort. But that’s what newspapers do and, in truth, I took it as a good omen that remembering JFK was my first assignment. He was a hero to me as to many young men my age when he was elected president. It was a combination of things: his youth, his wit, his easy-going style, his intelligence, his words, his sense of justice. Plus, we shared the same birthdate: May 29.
     As fate would have it, JFK would come to be remembered, not on his birthday, but on the anniversary of his death. And not so much for what Americans received for having him as president for 1,000 days, but rather for what we lost by not having him much longer.
     That first editorial said, in essence, that it would take more than 20 years to measure the meaning of the man. It acknowledged the things we had learned about JFK in the years since the shooting in Dallas — the flaws that made him human — as well as what I felt were his positive contributions. Thirty years later, no longer a rookie editorial writer — indeed, now retired after 23 years of writing editorials — with Nov. 22 approaching, I realized I had to write about JFK 50 years after his death (because that’s what old newspaper guys do). Before I started, I asked one of my reliable sounding boards, my son, Zack, what he knew about JFK. Zack is 19 and better informed than a lot of young people his age, so I figured his answer would provide me with a fair sense of what our education system had been telling kids about Kennedy.

   “He was the first Catholic president,” Zack said. Correct. “He had an affair with Marilyn Monroe.” Uh, correct. ‘There’s still some theories that there was more than one shooter.” Right. “Do you think the Kevin Costner movie (“JFK,” directed by Oliver Stone) was true?” Well, the people portrayed were real. “The Bay of Pigs didn’t go too well.” No, it didn’t. I took the opportunity to point out that Cuba was the site, not only of Kennedy’s biggest failure in global affairs, but also his biggest success.

     I was a little older than Zack is now when the world stood at the brink of a nuclear war over the presence of Soviet missile-launching sites in Cuba, aimed at the United States. I was a senior in college and knew full well, as did all my classmates, than no 2-S deferment was going to exempt me from what might happen if the Soviets did not — as Kennedy demanded — remove their missiles. Kennedy ordered the U.S. Navy to blockade Cuba to prevent the shipment of Soviet missiles and equipment. Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet president, who had initially denied the existence of the missile sites, sent a naval fleet to Cuba, loaded with supplies and armed for battle. As the world watched and waited and prayed, Kennedy and Khrushchev exchanged messages. Kennedy prevailed. The Soviet fleet stopped short of Cuba and turned around. I lived to write this remembrance. Kennedy was dead not long after.

     So here I am 50 years later, still looking to take the measure of the man and still wondering how that is possible. Kennedy had the gift of engagement. He appeared to be comfortable with whomever he was speaking. He had tremendous appeal to young people, being so different from the older, stodgier presidents who preceded him. He created the Peace Corps — a legacy that continues to this day with not enough fanfare. He made many Americans — and this is not a small thing — truly proud to be Americans. Not in an arrogant, flag-waving, we-know-better-than-you way. Just proud. And he cheated on his wife and kept his serious health problems a secret from us and sometimes needed to be prodded by his brother, Bobby (another tragic loss) to take the proper (courageous) stand on issues.

      So the question I still ask myself is, what might JFK have done, what might he have meant to America and the world, if he had lived longer? What did we lose at Dealey Plaza? Certainly, whatever innocence we still possessed. The wind was sucked from our sails as a nation and our domestic politics have slowly and steadily deteriorated into such partisanship that is virtually impossible for any president to speak to the minds and hearts of a majority of Americans the way Kennedy did. Maybe it would have happened even if Kennedy had lived a longer life and gone on to be an ambassador to the world of what America stands for. Or maybe not.

     It dawns on me in writing this that it is an ultimately frustrating task to try to take the measure of another man or woman. I know what JFK meant to me personally. I know a lot of others feel similarly and others do not. I know what history has recorded (he was also the youngest man to be elected president) and what the tabloids have told us. I have a sense of what I would like to think Kennedy would ultimately have meant had he not died so young. But it’s only speculation.

     The only man I can truly take the measure of is myself. It is 50 years since that morning when I was waiting at home to go to Fort Dix, N.J., to begin six months of active duty training. How do I measure up today? That’s a question I work on every day. It wasn’t always thus, but the years have a way of insisting on perspective. Maybe the answer will appear in some other writing. I have neither the space nor the inclination to do so here. I will say that, on balance, I’ll probably give myself a passing grade, but there’s still some stuff I’m learning. For now, I’m through trying to take the measure of JFK, as man or president. Let the historians have at it. I’m going to try to take his advice and ask not what life can do for me, but what I can contribute to life. And I’m also going to remember to honor him not on the date he died, but on the date we both were born. 

By Jeffrey Page

Walter Cronkite took a lot of heat over the years for what amounted to his 10 seconds of dead air. It was, of course, in the Kennedy story.

Did you tune in to CBS on Channel 2 in New York 50 years ago today? There was Cronkite in shirtsleeves, a dark tie in his button-down collar, and a pair of heavy black eyeglasses. CBS, like the other networks, had taken over the airwaves to announce that someone had fired on President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas and that the president was thought to have been hit.

For a few wretched minutes Cronkite could only report rumor and unconfirmed accounts of what had happened. He switched to a local reporter who was supposed to cover a luncheon where Kennedy would have spoken. Cronkite repeated several times that reports of the president’s death were rumors and that there was no official word yet. Then he said that Dan Rather, CBS’s White House correspondent at the time, was reporting that Kennedy was dead. But Cronkite was loath to report this as fact until officially confirmed.

And then it came. Someone handed Cronkite a sheet of paper. On went the glasses. Down went the voice. “From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time….

Glasses off.

“ … 2 o’clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago.”

Thus began about 10 seconds of dead air as Cronkite seemed to gasp for breath. Once or twice he pursed his lips tightly, perhaps trying to establish control over his mien. He looked away from the camera for a moment, then inhaled deeply, and finally continued his report, noting that Vice President Johnson would be taking the oath of office as the 36th president. As he spoke these words, his voice thickened and he sounded like a man speaking underwater.

Critics have railed for 50 years that Cronkite lost his objectivity in that report. But I think this has been just a bunch of words spoken by people who have no idea in the world how they would have reacted if they were at a news desk when the story broke.

In watching tapes of Cronkite’s report on You Tube this week, I saw an American shaken to his very core by the loss of his nation’s president – his president. You didn’t have to be a Democrat to feel the loss of John Kennedy. You didn’t even have to like him. You just had to have a soul and a concern about your country.

I remember the waiting in 1963, hoping Kennedy would be all right and somehow knowing that we had lost him, just as I remember the waiting in 1981, hoping Reagan would be all right after he was shot, and being relieved when word came that he was alive.

Are you supposed to be objective when some 35-cent Marxist like Oswald kills your president? Or when some lovelorn loser like Hinckley tries to prove his devotion to a movie actress and nearly kills another president?

I watched that footage of Cronkite again and saw him as a reporter in a flawed news medium I would never be part of. And I saw him as E.E. Cummings might have described him: a “human merely being.”

By Geoffrey Howard

Part 1: I was a 20-year old Peace Corps volunteer, newly arrived and just settling in to Kaolack, Senegal’s second-largest city and the generally acknowledged fly capital of the world. My job – I’m not making this up – was to be one of the national wrestling coaches of this 2-year old West African country.

We were four volunteers living together in one house, three English teachers and me. About 8 o’clock, just as we were finishing dinner, there was a timid knock at the door and this African kid, maybe 9 or 10, was standing there. We looked at him, he looked at us. No one spoke until he said in half French, half Wolof, “Le chef defa dey” The chief is dead.

None of us reacted because we had no idea what he was talking about. Then someone figured it out. Since the Senegalese thought all toubabs (whites) were French, the ex-colonial power that was still very present, there was an obvious explanation: “He must mean De Gaulle.”

The kid spoke no English, but he got the De Gaulle part and his response was emphatic: “Didit! [No!] Votre chef, Kennedy!”

Of course that made no sense – a kid we didn’t even know, how could he possibly be the bearer of such impossible news? Anyway, because none of us had a short wave radio, I was delegated to get on my motorbike and go to the nearby Senegalese army base to see if I could find out anything “official.” That turned out to be a very easy task. The sentry guards confirmed it: “Votre president, il est mort, assassine.” And that’s how I got the news. 

Part 2: I went back to the house and shared the sad news with Ralph, Pat, and Barbara. I don’t recall if we cried or continued with our that-just-can’t-be-true denial, but we all got on our motorbikes and went down to the single French-run hotel in town where we knew they had a big short wave set and that the patronne, a formidable colonial era hanger-on who had been there for decades, and who, the one time Ralph and I had stopped in for a biere, had made it clear that she had little use for Americans.

Well, the four of us walked into the standing-room-only bar – wall-to-wall French – and everyone was listening, transfixed to that radio. Heads swiveled as we entered and before we could even say a word or ask a single question, Madame shooed four regulars off their bar stools and made it clear that we were to sit at the bar near the radio. Then, again without our asking, four beers appeared and someone switched the radio to the Voice of America. We had many beers that night, all on the house. And that’s how the tragedy sank in.

Part 3: The next morning, a truck pulled up from the Lycee de Kaolack, where we all worked. The Directeur got out, accompanied by a work crew that began unloading and setting up chairs in our small courtyard, maybe 30 in all. While that was going on, the Directeur explained to us what would happen. He was dressed in a dark suit and told us to change into “appropriate” clothes. We did.

Very shortly thereafter, people began drifting in, mostly men, but some women as well. The men were dressed in their grand boubous – long, elegant robes – that signified an important occasion. (The Senegalese are famously tall and slender; their second president Abdou Diouf, at 6’10” was the only head of state in the world who could dunk.)

We knew none of these people and yet they came up to us, silently shook hands with each of us as we stood in a line, and then took seats. There was no talking. They would stay for maybe two or three minutes, then rise silently and leave. Not a word, just respect.

* * *

After his two years in the Peace Corps, Geoff Howard had a 35-year career as a management consultant and trainer. Now retired and living in Warwick, he is the chair of Sustainable Warwick and treasurer of Community 2000. 

By Glenn Doty

I was a young sportswriter at The Times Herald Record in 1963. Politics, to which the late editor Al Romm introduced me a few years later, really didn’t mean a whole lot to me then.

Sure, I voted. That’s something several college classes suggested was important, and I voted for Dwight Eisenhower when I turned 21. The General – that’s how I thought of him – just seemed like the right person. After all, he was a pretty successful military man.

And then 1960 arrived and a Navy man, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a PT boat commander, wound up with the Democratic nomination, not that the party meant much to me, although my mom and her dad were both Democrats.

Funny, it really didn’t sink in that Kennedy was from a very rich and influential Massachusetts family. I do remember stories that his time as a U.S. senator was less than auspicious. But he was Catholic, and that’s how I was raised. If elected he’d be this country’s first Catholic president, and I think that meant more to me than his political party affiliation.

It also meant that my kids, if they decided on a political life (and none did), could aspire to the White House.

So, sports aside, I followed Kennedy’s march to Election Day 1960 and I couldn’t wait to vote for him. Wow! He won a tight race.

Funny, down through the years since, inaugural speeches haven’t been that important to me, although after Jimmy Carter I really wanted to hear what Ronald Reagan had to say.

But the Kennedy speech in 1961 was important. And he started the day the right way – with Robert Frost, who was my favorite poet, delivering a prophecy that everyone, I think, hoped would be true.

As for Kennedy’s inaugural speech, it probably ranks right up there, but it’s his forever-to-be-quoted conclusion that has stayed with me: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

I seem to remember a little moisture around the eyes then. And every time I hear or read those words, that moisture returns.

There were mistakes during his short term. The Cuba invasion fiasco was one, but he did get Russia’s missiles out of there.

But there was Jackie, and then they had Caroline and then John Jr. And despite some of his problems, including getting us deeper into the Vietnam war, he looked like he might well be the Democrats’ nominee for a second term, which is what led him to Texas in November of 1963.

The great never-to-be-answered JFK question: Would he have continued our Vietnam involvement?

I don’t remember much more about Nov. 22. It was one of those days when I went to the office early – probably there were basketball games scheduled for that night. But then, a little after noon, the United Press International wire machine bells sounded and I had to see what was up. The bulletin: The president’s been shot! My God, the anger I felt: Who in hell would do that? And then, a few minutes later: The president is dead.

Tears? There weren’t many of us in the newsroom that early in the afternoon, but there were tears – and disbelief. And anger. Who would do that?

It’s been 50 years. We’ve learned a lot about JFK, and not all has been good. But he was a hero to many of us and the memory of that afternoon? It still produces tears.

* * *

Glenn Doty is a former managing editor of The Times Herald-Record and former editor of the Legislative Gazette.