Another Anniversary

It is not a milestone one, but yesterday, November 22, was the 62nd anniversary of the assassination of JFK. I've learned to remember the date because I think of paired numbers 2 and 2 making 22. Works for me.

The calendar for November 2025 is almost identical to the one in 1963. The assassination was on the Friday before Thanksgiving. In 1963, like 2025, Thanksgiving, celebrated on the fourth Thursday in the month, has a late date. 

I wrote about the 60th anniversary two years ago, and my own memories of that Friday in 1963. I've seen no published reminiscences surrounding the 62nd anniversary. And why would you? In 2023 there were only 17% of the population that was alive in 1963. Now, in 2025, there has to be an even smaller percentage. It cannot grow.

Think of it. Someone born in 1963 could now be collecting early Social Security benefits.  Caroline Kennedy has a bit of a goof-ball son, Jack Schlossberg, who wants to run for a plum congressional seat in Manhattan vacated by Jerrold Nadler. Jack is not the only one who has announced. If the rate of announced candidates keeps up, it may top the 17 Republicans who wanted to be president in 2016. Will there be another stage big enough to hold them?

And just this weekend, based on a Saturday story in The New Yorker, Tatiana, another of Caroline's three children, announced she has a terminal form of myeloid leukemia and has less than a year to live. It's enough for a newspaper to run a full column of events they attribute to the "Kennedy curse."

Which of course there isn't one. They are just an extremely large family in the public eye that have things happen to them that happen to many other families. (Bar the assassinations). Things just get concentrated around the Kennedy connection. We just read about it.

A reporter who covered the assassination by being in Dallas when it happened, just passed away. Sid Davis, Reporter Who Witnessed Johnson's Swearing-In, Dies at 97. Mr. Davis was one of three reporters who were on Air Force One when Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office. Mr Davis reported:

"Johnson placed his wife on his right side and Mrs. Kennedy on his left. The plane’s interior was hot, and Johnson asked for a glass of ice water. He gulped it down. Judge [Sarah] Hughes told him to raise his right hand and put his left on a Missal, a Catholic Mass prayer book, and she administered the oath. Afterward, Johnson embraced Mrs. Kennedy and kissed his wife. Mr. Davis noted the time, 2:38 p.m., and said the ceremony had taken 28 seconds. 

'I have lived a year since this morning,' Johnson said." (The white arrow in the upper right of the photo shows Mr. Davis, mostly obscured by another attendee.)

Ninety-seven is how old an adult has to be now who was connected to the events that day in Dallas. Probably everyone in the above photo has passed away.

But that's just the way it is. We don't find history. It finds us.

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