Killing Kennedy: Times That Led to the Tears of a Nation

President Kennedy gives his inaugural address.  Photo Credit:  U. S. Army Signal Corps photograph in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

On January 20, 1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy assumed the office of President of the United States of America.  It was during his Inaugural Address that he spoke the famous words, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."   What many have come to think of as America's Camelot Presidency was about to begin.

Whether you remember exactly where you were when the unthinkable happened, or whether you weren't even born yet, this is a book you should read.  

Yes, it's a history book, but it's far from dull.  If you're looking for clarification or validation for one of the conspiracy theories that's still around after all these years, you won't find it.  What you will find is a historical account of the 'Camelot' years that doesn't particularly read like history.  You won't find a lot of white washing, either.  There are details of the activities of the Kennedy clan that weren't reported at the time.  (They would have ruined the image.)  But, it's not a flame job either.  It just is.

You'll be reminded of things you'd forgotten or, if you're young enough, learn things you never knew. 

As any good history should, it puts the event into the context of the times by thrusting you into the world that led up to that awful day.   

Those times were America's age of Camelot.  The shots fired in Dallas on November 22, 1963, took Jackie Kennedy's husband away from her, Caroline and John-John's daddy away, and smashed Camelot to pieces for an entire country. 

It's history that will hold your interest, about times and an event that we NEED to remember.  

Get it the way you want it - it's available in hardcover, Kindle edition or on Audio.  But just get it.  Read it.  Then pass it on to a friend.

President Kennedy's caske

t, with Black Jack following (pubic domain, via Wikipedia)

At 12:30 pm (Texas time) on November 22, 1963, shots rang out, a President died, and and entire nation just stopped.  The country felt like it was in a strange sort of paralysis.  Schools dismissed, businesses paused or closed, and people wept in public.

Three days later every soul who wasn't urgently needed elsewhere was in front of a television set, watching the state funeral.  I watched along with everyone else.  

It was an unbelievably sad event, that funeral.  For me, perhaps the most gut wrenching part was seeing the President's casket on a caisson, with a horse following along behind.  The horse, black and riderless, with empty boots in the stirrups, turned backwards, symbolic of a fallen leader, tore at my guts.  

It was a symbolism so glaringly obvious that no explanation was necessary.  It was a sight so gut-wrenching and poignant that the only possible reaction was tears.  Somehow, there was a sense that Black Jack, the horse,
represented something even more than a fallen leader.

I cried.  My parents cried.  A nation cried.  The words may not have been said yet, but deep inside we all knew we were living the in the death of an era.  Our Camelot had been shattered.

We didn't know what would come next, but we sure knew a light had been extinguished.