It has been fifty years, but for Americans coming of age at the time President John F Kennedy was shot dead, the memory of that fateful day has hardly faded. "I had just arrived in Bamberg, Germany with my battalion and we were on the train when we received news," said John Montgomery, 73, tearing up in Arlington National Cemetery as he gazed at the "eternal flame" that crowns Kennedy's grave in the US capital's historic military burial ground.
The youngest US President ever voted into office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot in the back of the head on November 22, 1963 while touring through Dallas, Texas in an open limousine with his wife Jacqueline Kennedy. He was 46 years old. In his three short years as President, Kennedy steered the country out of imminent crises with Cuba and the Soviet Union, kick-started the Apollo moon-landing project and sent the civil rights bill to Congress. He is still considered one of the most popular presidents in US history, according to a poll commissioned by the University of Virginia.
Montgomery, a former lieutenant, says he visits Kennedy's grave, which overlooks the Lincoln memorial and the Washington monument, every year around Thanksgiving - November 28 this year - without fail. Another visitor from Michigan paying her respects to the grave said she remembers being at work the day that JFK died. A coworker who had been listening to the radio came in and told her the news.
"The rest of us in the room said, 'That's not a funny joke,' because that's how we all felt- that it was not a possibility," said Mary Jane Wallace, 71, remembering the sadness and confusion she felt in the aftermath of the tragic event. The sniper Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from a nearby building, an investigation commission later found. Oswald was shot dead the following day by strip-club-owner Jack Ruby, sparking public speculation about a conspiracy.
Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn into office hours after Kennedy was declared dead. Conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy's assassination started to swirl in the wake of his death. Many Americans believed Oswald was a pawn in a larger murder plot that potentially involved Ruby himself, the Cuban and Soviet governments as well as the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For supporters of the iconic president, Kennedy is remembered most for his strong sense of character.
It was Kennedy's charismatic traits and his strong public speaking skills that prompted many political pundits to compare President Barack Obama's leadership style to Kennedy's. The image was reinforced when Kennedy's only surviving child, Caroline Kennedy, made a rare venture into the political realm to endorse Obama in his race against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2008. Sixty-year old Maggie West also sees parallels today to the commander-in-chief of fifty years ago. "He's similar in the sense that everything surrounding Obama, like Kennedy, is a symbol of hope, for something fresh, and of an impact for the positive," said West, who was in a California classroom when Kennedy was shot. "But also [similar] because both remind us that there are limits to what one person can do to affect change - and there's a sadness about that," she said, looking up the hill towards Kennedy's gravesite.
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