In late November 1963, shortly after the state funeral of John F. Kennedy, a World War II veteran sat down and composed a condolence letter to Jacqueline Kennedy. His letter, like hundreds of thousands of others written after the assassination, evokes a by-gone era but it also reminds us how powerful the ingredients of hope, idealism, and a sense of shared purpose -- even amid great social upheaval -- can be in a democratic society. A Marine who had served in the Pacific, Harry Emery introduced himself to Mrs. Kennedy by noting that "I never met your husband but I have always felt a deep bond of friendship and brotherhood toward him because we served in the same theater of war." Born to a Kentucky coal mining family, Emery nonetheless profoundly identified with Kennedy, one of the wealthiest of American presidents. "No one could have been prouder than I when your husband was elected President," he wrote in his note of sympathy. "I watched his Inaugural Address and when he said: "The Torch has been Passed" I had tears in my eyes. I have had tears in my eyes for the past five days and hope some of them can in part pay for your own. My sorrow is deep for I spent most of my life in the South and in Chicago. I have seen hatreds of all three kinds: Racial, Religious and Color."
Like many American citizens, Emery offered praise for the "courage and dignity" displayed by Mrs. Kennedy. "I hope you will pray," he continued, "for the same dignity to be bestowed on the rest of our nation." The United States, he reflected, had "bled through many wars to protect" its liberties. But "we are still in the midst of prejudice and bigotry and misunderstanding. I am only an average American as far as education is concerned but I am an American who believes in the dignity of man." Kennedy, Emery believed, shared these values and had been working to advance them when he was struck down. "I am proud to have been privileged by God's Grace to have lived in the same generation as you and your husband," he noted in closing.
The 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy now lies on the far end of nearly a half century. And yet it remains one of the most searing historical memories lodged in the collective consciousness of many adults living in the United States today. The shock, outrage, grief and soul searching of Americans from every walk of life, every region of the country, from every social and economic class, and across the wide range of political sentiments is captured vividly in the tens of thousands of surviving condolence letters to Jacqueline Kennedy stored in the John F. Kennedy Library. So too is the character of the country itself revealed in a time marked by soaring expectations, horrific tragedy and in a period when Americans struggled to address the on-going torment of racial segregation in their society. To read these letters written in 1963, as I have spent much of the past year doing for the book "Letters to Jackie," is to see a snapshot of the country. The portrait is faded by time but the landscape remains familiar despite the passage of nearly a half century.
Much, of course, has changed in the lives of those Americans and the United States since 1963. Many of school children who raced home on that Friday in November to discover grieving parents are grandparents today. The "new generation" of World War II veterans Kennedy's election brought to power has now reached old age. The President's two younger brothers, Senator Robert F. Kennedy -- himself a victim of assassination in 1968 -- and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, are both buried near JFK in Arlington National Cemetery. War have been fought. The scourge of legalized segregation has been repudiated. Access to fundamental political and civil rights has widened immeasurably. Fashions and mores of all kinds have changed. And yet for many Americans, a filament of recollection easily brings back the early 1960s when the nation appeared in some ways as bright and full of promise as its youthful, vibrant President.
In those years before the war in Vietnam escalated into the conflagration that would divide a nation, and before Watergate cast doubt -- perhaps forever -- on what now seems a kind of innocent faith in the chief of state, many believed they witnessed in an instant profound historical change. On November 22, one young man observed, history "jumped up out of history books." A single irrational act of violence altered forever, or so many believed, not only the country itself but the lives of those who endured those terrible days. "The irrationality of life will never be more clearly set down for us," one young man wrote to his parents shortly after the assassination. "I grieve for John Fitzgerald Kennedy." Another college student confessed in his letter that what made Kennedy's "death disquieting to me beyond reason" was his feeling that the events in Dallas brought about "the death of an ideal." "To understand the Kennedy experience," a writer predicted, "Americans are going to have to go beyond the examination of events and happenings, and go to a land of ideas and dwell there for awhile. Kennedy's personality was so strong that he tempered the environment of a nation very quickly. . . . I innately comprehended a political force speaking to me in a language I could understand. I now feel lonely without it." A bus driver in Illinois put it more starkly: "I hope you will live your loss down," he wrote to Jacqueline Kennedy. "I don't think the country will ever be able to."
These sentiments -- profound, honest, deeply felt -- have been largely obscured by decades of political change and historical revisionism that have dismantled -- appropriately -- the hagiography constructed in the first months and years after President Kennedy's death. The idealism expressed in these letters may seem antiquated to contemporary Americans. The worth of the writers' expectations of President Kennedy will remain disputed. Still, these documents remind us of a moment when hopes soared, politics energized the young, and extremism -- in its many guises -- cost the country dearly.