(The following is an update of a column I wrote 13 years ago. I am re-posting it today on the birthday 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 was the oldest elected president this country has ever had. Kennedy was the youngest. They shared the same dedication to protecting our democracy. I continue to celebrate Kennedy on May 29, the birth date I share with him — synchronicity — and I also 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, 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 was 19 at the time 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 22 years  old 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, that 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 63 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, like many others, has been erased by the current administration. 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 it 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 nearly 63 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 still 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. That’s a lesson in itself. 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 continue to contribute to life. And I’m also going to continue to celebrate him not on the date he died, but on the date we both were born.

By Bob Gaydos

The defiling of The Kennedy Center.

    He slapped his stupid name on The Kennedy Center. The *@*%+#*ing Kennedy Center! Are you kidding me? The master of sloth, pride and lust had to remind us of his penchant for envy?

    Of course it’s illegal, but honestly, it’s obscene. The John F. Kennedy Center is not only a cultural landmark in Washington, D.C., it is a memorial to a slain president. Yet Trump slapped his name above Kennedy’s on the memorial to Kennedy, a president loved, admired and respected by millions of Americans, a true patron of the arts. And a war hero to boot.

   The new, handpicked-by-Trump board of directors supposedly voted unanimously to change the name of the center, apparently to reflect the tackiness and total lack of class he has brought to the institution. Having also named himself chairman of the board, he has transformed it from first-class to no class with the ease and skill of a onetime reality TV show host. 

    No, he’s no Jack Kennedy. Mr. Bone Spurs undoubtedly never saw the movie or read “PT 109,” a book about Kennedy’s military service in World War II. In fact, a lot of Americans today probably aren’t familiar with the story, so here’s Google AI’s summary:

    “PT-109 was an 80-foot Elco motor patrol torpedo boat famously commanded by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy (the future 35th U.S. President) during World War II. The vessel is best known for its sinking in the Solomon Islands on August 2, 1943, after being rammed by a Japanese destroyer.

• The Collision: While patrolling Blackett Strait at night, the radar-less PT-109 was struck and sliced in half by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri, which was traveling at high speed.
• Initial Loss: Two crewmen, Harold Marney and Andrew Jackson Kirksey, were killed instantly in the collision and explosion.
• Heroic Swim: Kennedy and the 10 remaining survivors clung to the floating bow for hours before swimming 3.5 miles to a small, uninhabited island (Plum Pudding Island). Kennedy famously towed a badly burned crewman, Patrick McMahon, by a life jacket strap clenched in his teeth.
• The Rescue: The crew survived for several days on various islets by eating coconuts. They were eventually discovered by two Solomon Islander scouts, Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, who were working with an Australian coastwatcher.
• The Coconut Message: Kennedy carved a distress message into a coconut shell, which the scouts delivered to the coastwatcher, leading to the crew’s rescue by other PT boats on August 8, 1943.”

— A life jacket strap clenched in his teeth.

— Navy and Marine Corps Medal.

— Purple Heart

— Pulitzer Prize for book, “Profiles in Courage”

— Youngest person elected president, at 43

As president:

— The goal of putting a man on the moon and returning him.

— The Peace Corps

— The Cuban Missile Crisis

— “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

   In his 1961 inaugural address, Kennedy, a cum laude graduate of Harvard University, famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” 

The law creating the memorial, signed by Lyndon Johnson.

   Trump, whose words mostly serve as fodder for comedians, has been bleeding this country for every dollar he can get ever since he set foot in the Oval Office, both times. Putting his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is not only obscene and illegal, it is an affront to the office of president, an insult to Kennedy and his family and a sorrowful reminder to Americans (like me), who lived through the Kennedy years and in 1963 mourned his assassination, of the pitiful depths to which Trump has dragged this nation.

     When this chapter in our history is done (the sooner the better), Trump’s name must be ripped off the facade of the defiled memorial/culture center and that garish, golden ballroom, if it ever gets built, torn down. Day One.

     If you’re around, that’s what you can do for your country. 

By Jeffrey Page

Close to 2 million people gathered in Paris on Sunday to condemn the murderous attacks on the staff of Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher supermarket that resulted in the deaths of 17 people. One of those attending the march was David Cameron, the British prime minister. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as there. So was Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi were there as well.

Oh, and Jane D. Hartley was there to represent us. Hartley is the United States ambassador to France, and probably known to as many Frenchmen and women as the French ambassador to the United States is known to Americans. You know; whatsisname, Gérard Araud.

But President Obama couldn’t make it. Nor could Vice President Joe Biden. Nor could Secretary of State John Kerry. Apparently nobody from America could make it, so we sent Jane D. Hartley.

And in doing so, Obama revealed an insensitivity not worthy of a world leader. France, after all, is America’s oldest ally, and you just don’t treat old friends quite as shabbily as Obama has with France and its people.

While President Obama may have been too busy to travel to Paris, his counterpart, François Hollande, took the American disrespect gracefully and, speaking through a spokeswoman, declared that he had not been offended. “President Obama supported France in their common struggle against terrorism,” he said.

As though imitating a Ringling Bros. clown stepping into a bucket, Obama caused further embarrassment to himself by giving some of his sharpest critics a free ride for a couple of news cycles.

–Sending Jane D. Hartley to the Paris march was “beyond crass, even for this administration,” said Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

–“Our president should have been there,” Senator Ted Cruz wrote in Time Magazine.

–Obama is “a failure when it comes to fighting Islamic jihadists,” said Mike Huckabee.

–“Skipping this rally will be remembered as a new low in American diplomacy,” said Rick Perry.

–“There’s a plethora of people they could have sent,” said Senator Marco Rubio.

They’re right.

No one would remember “Ich bin ein Berliner” if John Kennedy had ordered some deputy assistant secretary of state no one ever heard of to deliver it. Nor would anyone recall “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” if it had been uttered by anyone but Ronald Reagan.

Sometimes the messenger is the message.