Yesterday we observed the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas. The culprit from all evidence is one Lee Harvey Oswald, a naïve and skewed individual who held strong Marxist beliefs. Oswald purchased through a mail order catalog a rifle that had been used in WWII. It was an Italian Carcano and included a scope. Oswald was a trained marksman from his days in the Marine Corps, and was familiar with the gun which he had also taken to target practice and was observed doing so by a father and son.
The cost of the gun -- $12.78. That same $12.78 is worth $96.49 today. Money his wife and children surely could have used while staying with a kind woman who reached out to a Russian woman and her children. Money Oswald earned at the Texas Book Depository filling orders, and the building he used as a sniper's post in order to kill the president.
The cost to John F. Kennedy's family -- two children were fatherless, a wife was left a widow, a mother left without yet another son, brothers left without an elder brother. Sisters left without their brother.
The cost to our country -- this is just me talking here but I've been thinking a lot about this lately and in all honesty, nothing has been right since. I've been going along more or less pretending that we could have that optimism again, that someone would inspire that kind of hope and belief in something bigger than ourselves, that service to our country was noble and worthwhile. There have been a few little flickers but it's never been the same. I was starting to get hopeful again as a senior in college when Robert Kennedy was running. He was definitely different than his older brother but his message resonated with me. He was a unifier. And then one morning in June 1968, when the clock radio went off in our room at 707 Beall Hall, something was clearly wrong. They were talking in the past tense about someone very famous, and slowly I began to realize that it had happened again. This time, it was a hand gun and the perpetrator was one skewed individual who from his writings would appear brainwashed.
The cost to the world -- John Kennedy was probably the greatest goodwill ambassador we've ever had. His trip to Berlin, for example, drew thousands and thousands. The founding of the Peace Corps was yet another way for America to help others in faraway places help themselves. At a speech yesterday given by Dallas' mayor, he noted that after the president's death a little girl in Nigeria recited the president's entire inaugural address from memory and her father sobbed. His funeral was a who's who among the leaders of the world, who after finding out that Mrs. Kennedy would walk the funeral route, said they would do the same.
We so need a leader who can bring us together, who can help heal some of the wounds, and who can be that bright light of inspiration that President Kennedy was. There are many people today whose lives took a different course because of what he said when he was inaugurated. The Christian principle of living for something bigger than us -- for giving rather than getting. For working hard for the cause of peace.
Today I'm going to pray that such a leader is out there and that God will help all of us respond to his call.
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