President Kennedy

Thirty-nine years ago today, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dallas. America felt itself changed forever. The president was going to deliver a speech at the Trade Mart in Dallas, and to look at that undelivered address today is to look at a nation preoccupied with its security and the Communist threat - a time that at first appears so much simpler, but of course was not. Today, we are preoccupied with other threats from other parts of the world, and President Kennedy's words of calm resolution are perhaps as compelling now as they would have been then.

Kenneth O'Donnell, aide to President John F. Kennedy, stepped into a small cubicle at Parkland Hospital, where Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson nervously waited with his wife and several aides to learn the condition of the president. Kennedy had been shot as his motorcade made its way through downtown Dallas on a sun-splashed November autumn afternoon. "He's gone," O'Donnell said to Johnson, who through an assassin's hand had become the 36th president of the United States. It was 1:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, Nov. 22, 1963.

After 40 years it has become a tired truism that anyone old enough to remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy can remember clearly where they were and what they were doing when they first heard the news from Dallas. For Dr. Robert G. Grossman, this "flashbulb" is not just a vivid personal recollection. It is one of acute professional and historical significance. On Nov. 22, 1963, Grossman was a 30-year-old neurosurgeon in Dallas. He had been on the staff at Parkland Hospital there for just five months when a telephone call - which he and his colleagues at first suspected was a particularly bad joke - summoned them to Parkland's Trauma Room 1. President Kennedy, they were told, had been shot.

PAUL B. 'RED' FAY JR., 91 Confidant of President Kennedy's Paul B. Fay Jr., a confidant of John F. Kennedy's from their service together during World War II to his tenure as a high-ranking Navy Department official in the Kennedy administration, died Sept. 23 of complications from Alzheimer's disease at his home in Woodside, Calif. Mr. Fay, a San Francisco businessman after his years as Navy undersecretary during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, got to know Mr. Kennedy in the fall of 1942, when Mr. Fay was a Navy ensign assigned to the PT Boat School in Melville, R.I. Both men were dispatched to the South Pacific, where they were part of the same squadron - Mr. Kennedy as skipper of PT 109, Mr. Fay as executive officer of PT 174 and subsequently captain of PT 167, based at Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.

3/8 TC WASHINGTON -- As a sultry spring breeze rippled the eternal flame she lighted 31 years ago at another moment of national grief, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was laid to rest alongside the grave of John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery.The former first lady, who died of cancer last Thursday at age 64, was hailed by President Clinton in a brief graveside service yesterday as a woman who handled great gifts and bore great burdens "with dignity and grace and uncommon common sense."

IN THE PIVOTAL scene in Oliver Stone's comic-book movie, "JFK," a military man named "X" is sitting on a park bench in Washington and unraveling the plot to kill John F. Kennedy.The murder, "X" tells Prosecutor Jim Garrison in the film, was masterminded by Pentagon generals and the CIA to scuttle President Kennedy's plans to pull out of Vietnam."Don't take my word," says "X." "Do your own work -- your own thinkin'."Many moviegoers did their own thinkin' and shrugged. Yeah, probably happened that way. Most believers seemed to be young; half of Americans weren't alive when JFK was killed in 1963.

COCOA BEACH, Fla. -- Col. James B. Swindal, the Air Force One pilot who flew President John F. Kennedy's body back to Washington in the hours after his assassination in Dallas, died April 25 at a hospital here. He was 88. The cause was heart failure after suffering complications from a broken hip, said his son, James L. Swindal. Colonel Swindal became the commander of Air Force One - the designation for any plane carrying a president - at the beginning of President Kennedy's presidency.

WHATEVER it was, John F. Kennedy Jr., had it, just like his dad -- that certain "je ne sais quoi" that you can't put your finger on, but you know it when you feel it.The same mysterious qualities that drew so many people, African-Americans in particular, to President Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy also rubbed off on John Jr.While media coverage did not fully capture it, many African-Americans were deeply touched by the recent deaths of Mr. Kennedy, his...

C. Douglas Dillon, 93, a Wall Street investment banker and diplomat who served as secretary of the treasury in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, died Friday in New York after being hospitalized for several weeks with an infection. Mr. Dillon was picked by President-elect John F. Kennedy to head the Treasury Department after six years as U.S. ambassador to France and nearly two years as undersecretary of state for economic affairs under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. As an original member of President Kennedy's Cabinet, he was one of its two high-profile Republicans -with Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara - surrounded by Democrats.

PAUL B. 'RED' FAY JR., 91 Confidant of President Kennedy's Paul B. Fay Jr., a confidant of John F. Kennedy's from their service together during World War II to his tenure as a high-ranking Navy Department official in the Kennedy administration, died Sept. 23 of complications from Alzheimer's disease at his home in Woodside, Calif. Mr. Fay, a San Francisco businessman after his years as Navy undersecretary during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, got to know Mr. Kennedy in the fall of 1942, when Mr. Fay was a Navy ensign assigned to the PT Boat School in Melville, R.I. Both men were dispatched to the South Pacific, where they were part of the same squadron - Mr. Kennedy as skipper of PT 109, Mr. Fay as executive officer of PT 174 and subsequently captain of PT 167, based at Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.

COCOA BEACH, Fla. -- Col. James B. Swindal, the Air Force One pilot who flew President John F. Kennedy's body back to Washington in the hours after his assassination in Dallas, died April 25 at a hospital here. He was 88. The cause was heart failure after suffering complications from a broken hip, said his son, James L. Swindal. Colonel Swindal became the commander of Air Force One - the designation for any plane carrying a president - at the beginning of President Kennedy's presidency.

WASHINGTON - Fred Dutton, the all-around adviser and strategist for leading Democrats since the John F. Kennedy era who died Saturday at 82, was a rare breed. He walked comfortably and influentially among two customary adversaries - politicians and the press. Mr. Dutton combined a keen knowledge of the inside workings of Washington with an optimistic, jovial personality that made him a valued counselor to such varied figures as the Kennedy brothers and, in more recent years, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's longtime ambassador to the United States.

WASHINGTON - I can't imagine what Sen. Edward M. Kennedy must feel. I mean, I know it's traumatic to see your brother shot in the head and killed. But what must it add to your pain to see that tragedy become a video game? It happened last week. The game, available online, is called JFK Reloaded, and it was released to coincide with the 41st anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Download the game at a cost of $9.99 and you find yourself on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.

THE 2004 presidential campaign begins in earnest this month, and I'm still looking for a candidate. The entire field - President Bush and his would-be challengers - leaves me cold. I'm still looking for a candidate who draws us together rather than hardening the divide between us, a candidate who calls us to a cause greater than ourselves rather than appealing to our selfish interests, a candidate who inspires us to overcome our fears rather than give in to them. I haven't found such a man or woman.

WILLIAMSPORT -- Nobody finishes the John F. Kennedy 50 Mile race, Mike Spinnler likes to say. They complete it. It's hard to argue with the race director's logic when you look at a field of nearly 1,000 runners. The roster is filled with athletes who have competed multiple times, some with consecutive streaks that would make Cal Ripken envious. For them, the JFK is always unfinished business. Yesterday, with rays from the rising sun lighting the way, 770 men and 185 women pounded up the hill out of Boonsboro at the start of the 41st annual event -- the oldest ultramarathon in the country.

JOHN F. KENNEDY'S family plans to mark this day quietly, privately, as it usually does, visiting his grave at Arlington National Cemetery but otherwise calling no attention to the anniversary of his passing. His loved ones prefer to go public on the 35th president's birthday in May, in hopes of focusing the nation's memories on the man, and his life. Their challenge is that even 40 years later, JFK is most often viewed in terms of his assassination, and what it meant to everyone else, particularly the generation for whom Nov. 22, 1963, was a defining moment.

Was there a conspiracy to murder President John F. Kennedy? The new Oliver Stone movie -- "JFK" -- argues that there was, involving the Secret Service, the CIA, the FBI, the military-industrial complex and just about every other element of the 1960s establishment. Why did they want to kill President Kennedy? Because he had decided to turn soft on communism in his second term, pull out of Vietnam, ease up on Fidel Castro, make friends with Nikita Khrushchev -- in other words, throw the Cold War.The cold, hard fact is, there is no credible evidence of such a conspiracy.

WASHINGTON - I can't imagine what Sen. Edward M. Kennedy must feel. I mean, I know it's traumatic to see your brother shot in the head and killed. But what must it add to your pain to see that tragedy become a video game? It happened last week. The game, available online, is called JFK Reloaded, and it was released to coincide with the 41st anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Download the game at a cost of $9.99 and you find yourself on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.

After 40 years it has become a tired truism that anyone old enough to remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy can remember clearly where they were and what they were doing when they first heard the news from Dallas. For Dr. Robert G. Grossman, this "flashbulb" is not just a vivid personal recollection. It is one of acute professional and historical significance. On Nov. 22, 1963, Grossman was a 30-year-old neurosurgeon in Dallas. He had been on the staff at Parkland Hospital there for just five months when a telephone call - which he and his colleagues at first suspected was a particularly bad joke - summoned them to Parkland's Trauma Room 1. President Kennedy, they were told, had been shot.

ARLINGTON, Va. - On election night, 1960, I watched the returns trickle in to Huntley and Brinkley on a black-and-white TV set at an American University fraternity house in Washington. I was an almost 18-year-old college freshman, and Dwight Eisenhower was the only president I had been aware of. The results would not be determined until the next day, but when they were (and even with the tampered ballot boxes in Cook County, Illinois - the "hanging chad" scandal of that day), John Fitzgerald Kennedy was declared the winner over Vice President Richard Nixon.