With flags fluttering at half-mast, bells tolling and children singing, the United States pauses on Friday to remember President John F. Kennedy on the 50th anniversary of his assassination.
It was a singularly dark turning point in the nation’s history, one that many still remember vividly.
Across America people will reflect upon the words of a charismatic man whose soaring rhetoric and call to service continues to inspire.
‘Today, we honor his memory and celebrate his enduring imprint on American history,’ president Barack Obama wrote on Thursday.
Across the Atlantic, Kennedy will be remembered, too. A wreath laying ceremony is planned in the Berlin neighborhood where Kennedy gave his famed Cold War-era ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech to a rapturous crowd. At the Tate Modern art gallery in London, the only known contemporary painting of the assassination will go on display.
In a proclamation ordering flags be lowered to half-mast at government buildings and even from people’s homes, Obama recalled Kennedy’s leadership in the Cuban Missile Crisis, his speech in Berlin and his drive to advance the rights of African Americans and women in the United States.
‘Today and in the decades to come, let us carry his legacy forward,’ Obama wrote. ‘Let us face today’s tests by beckoning the spirit he embodied -- that fearless, resilient, uniquely American character that has always driven our Nation to defy the odds, write our own destiny, and make the world anew.’
Former French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing said his nation, too, was stunned by the killing of Kennedy and what his death brought to a halt.
‘When a dream is killed, it is not just the person who is killed. The dream is killed with him,’ he told French radio.
Kennedy’s voice still echoes through history to so many Americans. ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,’ he urged Americans at his inaugural address on 20 January, 1961.
Cut down in his first term at the age of 46 as he was driven through Dallas, Texas in an open-top limousine on 22 November, 1963, Kennedy’s unfulfilled promise has become a symbol of the lost nobility of politics.
He was a president who enlisted the nation in lofty goals -- like putting a man on the Moon -- ‘not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’
The anniversary has sparked a prolonged period of national and media reflection on the unfinished tenure of the nation’s 35th president, his tragedy-stricken family and the evocative period in the early 1960s when his political star illuminated the world.
It was a singularly dark turning point in the nation’s history, one that many still remember vividly.
Across America people will reflect upon the words of a charismatic man whose soaring rhetoric and call to service continues to inspire.
‘Today, we honor his memory and celebrate his enduring imprint on American history,’ president Barack Obama wrote on Thursday.
Across the Atlantic, Kennedy will be remembered, too. A wreath laying ceremony is planned in the Berlin neighborhood where Kennedy gave his famed Cold War-era ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech to a rapturous crowd. At the Tate Modern art gallery in London, the only known contemporary painting of the assassination will go on display.
In a proclamation ordering flags be lowered to half-mast at government buildings and even from people’s homes, Obama recalled Kennedy’s leadership in the Cuban Missile Crisis, his speech in Berlin and his drive to advance the rights of African Americans and women in the United States.
‘Today and in the decades to come, let us carry his legacy forward,’ Obama wrote. ‘Let us face today’s tests by beckoning the spirit he embodied -- that fearless, resilient, uniquely American character that has always driven our Nation to defy the odds, write our own destiny, and make the world anew.’
Former French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing said his nation, too, was stunned by the killing of Kennedy and what his death brought to a halt.
‘When a dream is killed, it is not just the person who is killed. The dream is killed with him,’ he told French radio.
Kennedy’s voice still echoes through history to so many Americans. ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,’ he urged Americans at his inaugural address on 20 January, 1961.
Cut down in his first term at the age of 46 as he was driven through Dallas, Texas in an open-top limousine on 22 November, 1963, Kennedy’s unfulfilled promise has become a symbol of the lost nobility of politics.
He was a president who enlisted the nation in lofty goals -- like putting a man on the Moon -- ‘not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’
The anniversary has sparked a prolonged period of national and media reflection on the unfinished tenure of the nation’s 35th president, his tragedy-stricken family and the evocative period in the early 1960s when his political star illuminated the world.