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During his Jan. 20, 1961 inauguration as the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy encouraged civic engagement by declaring “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
Thirty-four months later, the 46-year-old commander in chief had his quest to give personal validation of that instruction cut short when, according to the Warren Commission, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated him in Dallas. With tomorrow marking the 50th anniversary of his slaying, millions are reliving their grief while also entertaining what-might-have-been scenarios and addressing what the loss has meant to America’s identity.
“There was a silence all over,” Anthony Visco, then a sophomore at Father Judge High School, said of his neighborhood after residents had learned of the Democrat’s death in the Texas capital. “Nobody really knew how to process anything immediately, but I came to know we would never be the same after that.”
The resident of Broad and Christian streets experienced much novelty during the brief presidency, as the Kennedy campaign for the Oval Office in ’60 had given him his initial exposure to anti-Catholicism owing to the then-Massachusetts senator’s faith and the gruesome occasion resulted in the country’s first presidential casualty since William McKinley’s death in ’01. With so many broadcasts detailing the Kennedy motorcade’s fateful trek to Dealey Plaza, Visco and others had copious questions and believed answers would come through the arrest of Oswald.
“And then he ended up gunned down,” the Bella Vista dweller said of his demise two days later at the hands of Jack Ruby, an event he viewed on live television. “Oswald’s passing kick-started a conspiracy theory binge I don’t think we’ll ever escape.”
Visco feels Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s vice president who became the nation’s next leader two hours after the act of violence and who established the aforementioned commission that determined in ’64 that Oswald had acted alone, a finding that he refutes, might have been involved in a plot to eliminate Kennedy. As many citizens have used recent polls to claim a layered scheme existed, one may never know who orchestrated the murder or what motivated the aggression. No matter if such knowledge surfaces, Visco will never shake a common theme among those for whom Nov. 22, ’63 remains a key historical date.
“We parted with our president and our innocence the same day,” the artist, who has honored Kennedy in his work, said. “The assassination happened without warning and from within. It had a very profound effect on so many people, with the need to ask ourselves what sort of decisions we should be making with our lives. To say the least, it was a powerful day.”
Having defeated Richard M. Nixon in ’60, Kennedy entered the White House the following winter as a greatly revered pursuer of social change. That advocacy for progressive politics yielded many enemies, too, with many presumed foes, including Cuban and Soviet officials, the CIA and the Mafia, factoring into conspiracy theories on who made him the fourth president to die by an assassin’s bullet, joining Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and McKinley.
Owing to the extremely sensitive nature of the execution, Johnson, who had taken the oath of office aboard Air Force One with Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, by his side, sought to quell suspicion a week later by tabbing Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren to head an investigation. In ’78, though, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations offered its contention the assassination was probably a conspiratorial event.
“I’m sticking with the commission,” Ron Tempesta, of the 2600 block of South Warnock Street, said. “Nothing has convinced me otherwise. There was likely more than one shooter, but Oswald’s the guy.”
Then 9 years old and a student at Epiphany of Our Lord School, now Our Lady of Hope Regional Catholic School, 1248 Jackson St., the Lower Moyamensing denizen had become “very used to Kennedy” through television appearances, especially those that interrupted his cartoons, with the leader’s Roman Catholicism a vital component of his neighborhood’s affinity for the president. Reflecting back on the autumn afternoon when Kennedy’s earthly life ended, Tempesta recalls heavy emotions marking most interactions over the next few days.
“There had been a sense of danger anyway, with nuns telling us to beware of Communism,” he said of a chief piece of the frequent hostility between American and Soviet culture. “That day, though, wow, I felt so bad for him and for us.”
Like Visco, Tempesta saw Oswald’s assassination and similarly acknowledged the complexity of the entire ordeal might never breed more responses to pressing questions. Despite there being much bewilderment surrounding the matter, he knows it counts as one of his lifetime’s two most obvious examples of irrefutably powerful and educational occasions, the other being 911. The former solidified the loss of innocence he had already suspected, with the latter affirming the constant struggle between rectitude and hate.
“That’s what every act of violence in this world does to us,” Maureen Fratantoni, of the 1900 block of South 11th Street, said of consequences of Kennedy’s death. “It chips at the very core of us.”
She registers the assassination as all she can recall while a 3-year-old. Learning of the shooting when among relatives, Fratantoni observed gloom come over her kin and sensed evil had conquered the day.
“In the eyes of a child, I knew that something really bad had happened and that the world would never be the same,” she said.
Visco stressed people should avoid trivializing the death and that regardless of political or social stances, all should see that day a half-century ago as a call for comprehension.
“We’ll only ever know so much or be told so much,” he said. “That day, though, exposed our vulnerability. I hope we’ll fix that soon.”
Contact Managing Editor Joseph Myers at jmyers@southphillyreview.com or ext. 124.
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