A Measure of Courage

(Editor's Note: JFK 50 Years: Celebrate the past ... An Idea Lives On; both videos are from JFK Presidential Library and Museum. See Postscript below with an excerpt from Jaqueline Kennedy's note to Marie, the widow of J.D. Tippit.)

By Doris O'Brien

November 22, 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's untimely death. Those of us who have survived the intervening half century can likely still remember where we were when we heard the shocking news of the president's assassination. JFK's White House Photo

I was 30 years old and about to give birth to my first child. At the time, I lived in Fort Worth, Texas the last city which JFK visited before his fateful motorcade to nearby Dallas. I watched his brief Fort Worth speech on television, timing my labor pains in the process. For me, at least, the rest of that long day was a crazy mix of joy and sadness: the death of a young, charismatic president, followed a few hours later by the birth of a beautiful baby girl. Through a haze, I remember my doctor remarking that his medical colleagues at Parkland Hospital in Dallas told him Kennedy was dead on arrival there, contrary to press reports.

Since then, many other tragic events have struck at the heart of our great nation: the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King; the treacherous toppling of the Twin Towers on 9/11; and the Boston marathon bombings among them. None of these horrific happenings plunged our nation into greater grief than the shots that rang out across a grassy knoll in downtown Dallas on a bright fall day in 1963. There may be anger around the edges of all tragedies, but JFK's untimely death was indelibly marked by a profound, heart-breaking sorrow. Our country was in mourning. Everywhere across the land, Americans — regardless of their politics — openly wept.

As the milestone anniversary of JFK's death approaches, much will be said and written about him. And in all probability, the conspiracy theories of his assassination will be resurrected. When he was a US Senator, Kennedy wrote a book called Profiles in Courage. The authorship is still suspect — it was a generally felt that speechwriter Ted Sorenson had composed most of the text — but the subject matter remains important to this day.

Chapters of the book are devoted to eight US Senators throughout our history and from all shades of the political spectrum. They were a diverse lot, and a few were even relatively obscure. But the uncommon thread of personal courage united them all.

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A Measure of Courage

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