A HISTORICAL LOOK AT A SERIES OF EVENTS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD AND MAY WELL DO SO AGAIN

At the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, the  entire Korean Peninsula came under the control of the Japanese Empire and was swiftly and forcefully assimilated as a province of Japan itself. All aspects of Korean life from language to religion were brought into commonality with those of Japan.

Manchuria lay Immediately to the north, separating Japanese Korea from Russia. In 1931, Japan invaded and quickly occupied Manchuria in order to establish a buffer state from its former enemy.

Six years later, in July 1937, and to secure access to needed raw materials, agricultural products, and effectively, slave labor, the expansive minded Japanese Empire, invaded China itself.

America and its European consorts, long supporters of the corrupt Chiang Kai-shek governance in China, protested but to no avail.

Reacting to the invasion of China, the US State Department in 1938,  directed banks in the US, both domestic and international, not to extend credit to Japanese businesses.

In 1939, with still no end to the conflict, the United States nullified its 1911 commercial treaty between the United States and Japan, leading to an American embargo of airplanes, spare parts, machine tools, and aviation gasoline.

One year later, this embargo was expanded to include oil, iron and steel scrap, and similar commodities that Japan needed for its on-going war with China.

This hit Japan's economy particularly hard because 74% of Japan's scrap iron in 1938 as well as 93% of Japan's copper came from the United States.

Not wanting to be left out and having mutual interests in the Far East, Great Britain and the Netherlands soon signed-on to the economic embargo.

To further strangle Japan’s ability to trade, the Panama Canal was blocked to Japanese shipping, effectively depriving them of markets in Europe, South America and the Caribbean.

In early 1941, Japan, faced with inevitable industrial collapse, occupied southern Indochina, with the consent of the pro- German Vichy government in France. Not only did this give Japan rubber and agricultural products and the ports to ship them, it also threatened British Malaya, Borneo and Brunei, as well as the Dutch East Indies, all of which contained critical manufacturing elements that Japan needed.

Reacting to the Indo-China invasion, the U.S. froze Japanese assets on July 26, 1941, and within a week further established a total embargo on oil and gasoline exports to Japan. Once again, America was joined by the British and the Dutch.

The oil embargo was an especially strong response because oil was Japan's most crucial import, and more than 80% of Japan's oil at the time came from the United States.

Faced with the foreseeable collapse of its economy and its very life as a nation, Japan girded for war, war with the European and American powers who stood in their way, and denied what it believed was its unmistakable destiny, control of Asia and the Western Pacific, inaugurating a regime of Japanese dominance.

In December 1941, little more than three months later, Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, Britain at Singapore and Malaysia, and the Dutch in the East Indies (Indonesia) and Borneo.

The apocryphal dogs of war had been released.

The point at issue now is: Dare we substitute Iran for Japan in the above treatise?

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

George Santayana (1905) 

Reason in Common Sense, p. 284, volume 1 of The Life of Reason

Vaccines Are For All Of Us

Americans are largely attentive to the use of vaccines in children but many do not recognize that the need for immunization continues through adulthood.  The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases estimates that illnesses that could be prevented by vaccines account for 50,000 adult deaths a year, more than breast cancer, HIV/AIDS and traffic fatalities combined.

Millennia ago, the Greeks knew that people who survived an outbreak of diseases we now term “infections” frequently became protected from further incidents and there is evidence that Middle Eastern and Asian cultures employed a form of “vaccination” long ago.  But as the Victorian anthropologist, Sir Francis Galton avowed: “In science credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not the man to whom the idea first occurs.”

Looking Back

Preparations that can provide immunity for different diseases may not have been new but they were first introduced into western medicine in the late 1700’s when the major terror was Smallpox.

In a well-documented study, British physician Edward Jenner, observing the disease’s similarity with cow-pox, scraped samples from sores on the hands of milkmaids and transferred these to an open wound on a young boy he had purposely exposed to Smallpox.

To the surprise of many but not Jenner, the lad did not develop the disease and the era of vaccination had begun.  Today Professor Jenner would surely be in jail for doing this experiment.

Smallpox vaccine quickly became widely used and not unlike today, there was resistance from some claiming its mandatory use was a violation of civil liberties, showing once again that nothing is really new.  Perseverance however prevailed and in 1979, Smallpox became the first contagion to be fully eliminated world-wide.  Skeptics aside, no further cases have been identified.

Vaccines Emerge

As scientific understanding grew, new vaccines joined the list:  Rabies, courtesy of Louis Pasteur in 1880’s and by the end of WWI, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough were not the inevitable killers of the generations previous.

Some other illnesses proved more difficult. Professor John Snow had cleverly (but illegally) established the source of cholera but a century and a half later a long-term defense still eludes us, as sadly we have seen in Haiti these past few years.

Some attempts (Plague and Yellow Fever) have been less than optimal.

Vaccine scientists have challenged Tuberculosis, Scarlet Fever and Malaria but with marginal results to date.  Thankfully, we do have antibiotics and other remedies to treat patients while efforts continue.

Simultaneously we are now confronting diseases that were once limited to faraway places: Rift Valley Disease, Dengue and Chikungunya Fevers, three illnesses all transmitted by the same genus of mosquito that is also the vector for Yellow Fever.

Clever little bugs aren’t they?   And there are no vaccines.

Clever does not describe what certain bacteria and viruses accomplish:  they mutate, creating changes in their genetic material, sometimes spontaneously.  These modifications may at times appear random yet other times appear outwardly pointed to counter efforts at treating the diseases they cause.

Going Forward

The time-frames for these viruses to alter varies greatly.  Polio immunization was introduced in 1955 and no mutation was identified until 2014 and it was not widespread.  Other viral-caused diseases are known to mutate quickly and often.

There are currently five recognized classes of Hepatitis (A through E) and there are similar groups and sub-types in the viruses that cause HIV.

On the good side, Measles, Chicken-Pox, Mumps and Rubella are no longer seen as “normal childhood diseases,” a term that is certainly incongruous.

To the credit of Doctors Salk and Sabin, the dreaded scourge of Polio was defeated in most of the world and by the end of this decade should go the way of Smallpox: eradicated.

Recent progress had led to vaccines for Hepatitis A and B, Influenza, Meningitis, Rotavirus,  Pneumococcal Pneumonia and Human Papillomavirus.  Now Shingles has yielded to a new preparation.

Logic dictates the elimination of a threat and thus the basis for vaccine research remains the eradication forever of diseases which maim and kill so many.

This goal is achievable and vaccines are among the principal weapons of choice.

Somewhere Jenner and Pasteur are smiling.

by Thomas Ignatius Hayes

Published in ACT TWO Magazine

October 2015
http://acttwomagazine.com

Twenty First Century Detention Camps In America

A week ago I attended a conference on immigration issues at the University of South Florida (St Pete) and learned about a law that I found very troubling.

Under a congressional mandate enacted in 2007, 34,000 people must be maintained in custody at all times by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a component of the Department of Homeland Security. A legislated and mandated quota of people to be held in custody, something that seems at first glance to be impossible but it is real.

Are those being detained dangerous? The original intent was that holding orders (detainers) were critical for ICE to be able to identify and ultimately remove criminal aliens currently in federal, state or local custody. That sounds like a good idea. If someone is convicted of a criminal act and is found to be in the country illegally he or she should indeed be deported as soon as possible.

That might be the intention but the application is very different. What has emerged is a situation where the majority of individuals being held are simply un-documented immigrants who may or may not be subjects for deportation. The process has evolved whereby individuals arrested for a suspected violation of law and who for any reason cannot prove at that moment their legal status find themselves reported to ICE. The agency then issues a detainer application to keep the individual in custody for 48 hours pending a determination by ICE as to deportation status. Often the detention period is extended by local authorities until ICE makes a decision.

The suspected violation that started all this can be as marginal as using someone else’s name to get a job or a traffic violation like driving without a license (in Florida only citizens or registered immigrants get licenses). Once ICE takes custody of the individual they become detainees, subject entirely to the processes of that agency and in general not given the benefits that are normally provided by established legal process.

Why would ICE even bother to take such seemingly draconian steps? They had an interested partner. The Congressional appropriations language covering ICE’s detention budget includes a statement that “funding made available under this heading shall maintain a level of not less than 34,000 detention beds.” The problem arose when ICE, encouraged and urged-on by some members of Congress, chose to interpret the language as “maintain and fill not less than 34,000 beds.” Thus, we have the situation at hand.

To a universe of law enforcement agencies, the concept of legislatively mandated detention quotas is a major deviation from long-held practices. Additionally the actual use of holding orders (detainers) rightfully raises serious constitutional concerns of depriving individuals of freedom without due process of law, of their right to a speedy trial, and at times cruel and unusual punishment. All this and in many cases without probable cause for the original suspected violation.

Rather than help ICE, the bed quota prevents the agency from exercising discretion and expanding more efficient alternatives to detention (ATD’s) that would allow individuals who pose no risk to public safety to be released back to their families while awaiting immigration court hearings. Criminal justice systems in many states use such measures as an effective and far less costly methodology than detention. 

The blame for this appears to rest not in DHS the cabinet parent of ICE but within the halls of Congress. It is they who have made the rules and who have over the years voted to let these measures continue.

The bottom line is that despite all efforts to remedy the unusual harsh interpretation of the law, the fact remains that thirty four thousand individuals are in fact incarcerated at all times. That number is not a target; it is an absolute minimum. This was evidenced when the Homeland Security Committee Chairman in the House of Representatives advised ICE officials that they were “in clear violation of statute” when the reported detainee population fell to  less than 34,000 after 2,200 were released to save money.

The logical question: why did Congress take such actions? The easy response is that politically it is beneficial to tell the folks at home that we are keeping pressure on deporting people who are here illegally. Even if this were the case and recalling the well-documented overcrowding of jails, where do we keep these supposed threats to our national security?

The answer was stunning: they are housed largely in privately run units managed by companies such as Corrections Corp. of America, Geo Group Inc. and other for-profit prison operators. These are companies who actively lobby congress and who generously support congressional re-election campaigns. That also gives reason for measures to remedy the situation failing to garner sufficient votes.

What is the cost of all this? The budget report shows a daily amount of $120 per detainee, or $4 million a day. Annually that amounts to a staggering $1.5 Billion. Still, that figure does not include the administrative costs within ICE that is needed to supervise the program. 

ICE reports indicate about $2 billion annual spending on detention, dollars principally allocated to those politically powerful high donor companies who provide the needed detention facilities. Two billion dollars to detain 34,000 human beings, most of whom who post little or no threat at all and none of whom can challenge their status quo.

Eliminating the bed mandate would not eliminate all immigration detention nor would it eliminate the mandatory detention provisions in current immigration law. ICE would still detain individuals where it can show that they have not complied with hearings and/or final orders. In the absence of a mandate, the agency would be able to shift its resources to community-based ATD’s reducing the disruption and harm that detention causes to families and communities and by doing so saving the taxpayers billions.

There is hope: a number of law enforcement departments have taken the position that unless the ICE can provide probable cause, such as a warrant or legal deportation order, the individuals will not be held but rather released back to the community as would normally occur.

But the mandate is still the accepted law of the land and as such 34,000 of our fellow human beings who do not know what the next day or week or month will bring and who have little chance of being heard remain in detention camps.

I wonder if when this is finally over whether we will someday apologize as we did to the thousands of Japanese we housed in detention camps in the 1940’s.

Thomas Ignatius Hayes

St Petersburg FL

7 March 2015

A Tale of Two Naval Bases

Formerly the East Prussian city of Königsberg, the city-state of Kaliningrad was deeded to the USSR at Potsdam when East Prussia was divided between Poland and the USSR. Most of the indigenous German population either fled to what was then called Western Germany or were forcibly driven out in the 1950’s. It currently has a population of one million.

In the past transit to the Russian heartland through Soviet dominated Poland or Lithuania was not an issue. That has changed. Since the fall of the USSR and the emergence of the independent Baltic States there is no land-link between Russia and Kaliningrad. The surrounded Russian enclave has only land or air connection to the “Rodina”, Mother Russia.

Why does Russia hold on to it? For good reason. It also is the only year-round ice-free Russian naval base on the Baltic and thus strategically important especially to its nuclear submarine fleet needing access to the Atlantic.

And then there is Crimea. The distance between the recent Anschluss-like occupation of the peninsula and the rest of Russia is now the source of increasing concern i.e. the perceived need for a land-bridge to connect Crimea to Russia, hence the increasing unrest on the Eastern Ukrainian border with Russia. Crimea after all assures Russia sole control of a major naval port on the Black Sea with access to the Mediterranean. Sound familiar?

So why has not a similar insurgence happened to secure similar access to Kaliningrad. Perhaps because both Poland and Lithuania are NATO countries and such a move would on principle bring a reprisal from NATO's member nations. Is there any other logical reason for Putin not sending his forces across those international borders to join the two lands?

The “Sudetenland” reasoning voiced by Russia’s leader and state controlled media need to be met not only by economic sanctions by the US but by military assistance from European countries for Ukraine similar to what occurred during the Kosovo crisis. 

Failure to do so sends a message to Putin that for sure the Poles and Lithuanians do not want.

The World Is Watching Us

The world has been looking not at Ferguson, Missouri but at our country.  Twenty Four Hour news cycles do just that.

The thought that a human being irrespective of race, age, gender could be left on the street in the heat of a summer day for hours after being shot by the police is indefensible and irrespective of whether the shooting was warranted or not. In fact it does the opposite as it looks to many that it was to give the local police time to circle the wagons and to get their stories matched.

Even worse was the initial statement made by the Chief a full day later at 10 AM that began with what has been shown to be disconnected with the shooting, I.e. the incident in the convenience store. By this time the chief certainly knew this was smoke-screen and was trying to give a cause and effect that was a non-starter. In the afternoon statement he admitted that that the suspect was indeed stopped for walking in the middle of the street and gave no reason for why he had prefaced his earlier comments as he did. But the harm had been done.

For many people around the world, the image from the over-reaction by the local police was not dissimilar to one a decade-plus ago. Then the world looked in horror as military assault vehicles were brought in to control public demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Now they saw similar actions, not in China, but in a country that prides itself as living under a constitution which gives all its people the right to assemble and protest. 

The mere concept of what we saw in Ferguson makes one think (momentarily) that the fears voiced by survivalists in their mountain redoubts might actually have merit.

This morning I listened to a governor of one of the east-coast states who was adamant that weaponry such as what we saw used in a town of 25,000 or even a city should only be maintained by the state police or national guard and its use only authorized by a chain of command: police chief – mayor – governor - state police and if needed, the national guard. That made sense to me.

Even the military does not maintain quick access at bases within the US except when ordered by higher authority. Just ask the OD at your local base if he has the authority to order out body armored troops in APC’s and armored Humvees.

When I saw that 96,000 machine guns had been transferred from the military to local police units I cringed. The number is staggering when you try to figure out where these went and what size village or local community now has these. One has to ask as well what level of training locals receive and more important how they are secured. Scary to think of Barney Fife with a 50 caliber air-cooled on top of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

We have no problem when e.g. the CDC is called in to assist in an outbreak of Flu of Hepatitis as their expertise would far outweigh local healthcare providers. Why then is it not the same for civil protests like this. The answer is it the two scenarios are alike or better put, should be viewed and acted-on in the same manner.

The Justice Department was called in when local justice found everyone innocent of killing or terrorizing civil rights workers.  Calling them in there was the right thing to do. 

Jus as then, the final judgment must be made by a jury of people who must be able to look objectively at all the elements.  The knee-jerk reaction by the authorities in Ferguson foretells that would not be the case. Using State and Federal resources was surely the correct approach.

What Is Driving Up the Cost 0f Healthcare in America?

A bit simplistic perhaps but should we not also consider the corresponding growth of earnings (profit) in critical providers of services: the pharmaceutical industry, for-profit hospital companies, healthcare insurance groups. 

Bottom line is that we have morphed the multifactorial healthcare enterprise from one in which many of its components were previously focused on providing necessary and at times critical services and products for public good to one of providing profits for shareholders. 

A number of pharmaceutical companies were once family owned or directed by a foundation; hospitals were community owned and managed; many insurers were not-for-profit. Our healthcare system was based on reacting to the needs of sick people; now it is reacting to Wall Street and what it “expects”.

Can we not try to understand that there may well be some components of our economy that should not be viewed from a venture capital perspective? If not, then we must accede that the cost of healthcare will continue to increase because it must; that is the premise of how both publicly traded companies and those managed by private investors operate

. 

The main objective of all such companies is to provide a return for their investors notwithstanding the means that may need to be employed to achieve their projected earnings. Healthcare is no longer a concept or an ideal; it has become a product no different in the eyes of the investment community than any other product based industry. The result is that profit has replaced quality as the primary goal. 

One only has to ask why we have the highest cost of healthcare in multiples over other developed nations and yet the non-business related outcomes, i.e., the overall quality of patient outcomes as reflected by long established standards such as life expectancy and infant mortality falls far short. 

We continue to be told that our healthcare is the finest in the world. That simply is not the case if looked at across the whole of our nation. We mandate education for children and have laws to compel parents to enroll their children in schools and provide the schools for that purpose. We do not provide the same access for healthcare. It comes with a price tag. 

We see education as an entitlement as it is appreciated as critical to the future of the country. We do not see healthcare in a similar manner with the result that the same children who are afforded education often do not have adequate healthcare provision.

The why is simple. We fail to recognize healthcare as a basic right of citizenship and rather see it as a benefit that may or may not be provided. No other developed country holds that belief. 

Can this conviction be changed? The question must first be is this even feasible in America with the increasing dominance of publicly traded healthcare groups and the influence they ostensibly exercise over elected public officials from State Houses to Washington DC.

A Letter To My Grandchildren

It is 50 years since John Fitzgerald Kennedy was taken from us. Fifty years that those of my generation have asked ourselves the permeating question:

“What if….”

I wanted my grandchildren to hear about him; to experience, albeit vicariously, what it meant to their grandfather and to millions across the world when he was assassinated.

Two of my grandchildren are teenagers and would be ‘learning’ about this terrible event from TV and media and,  hopefully,  from their parents.  But fifty years is a long time and even their parents were not alive in 1963. 

Nevertheless, it is to their children I address this letter. I expect with their parents help they can understand of what I write. My youngest grandchild is but three and her mother has promised to keep it until she is old enough to grasp what I intended to portray.

My amour-propre hopes that all the letters will be preserved. Rousseau would understand that. For they are my recollections and feelings about what happened 50 years ago and assuredly I will not be here fifty years from now.

I remind myself that 50 years before I was a teenager was still a full decade before what my father termed Mr. Wilson’s War.  I knew that my ability to understand those times would be most difficult without hearing of the issues from someone who lived them.

That is my raison d’être.

My Dear Grandchildren:  

You’re probably wondering why I am writing a letter to you. Good question. 

Our world today appears to thrive on instant communication but often what we text or post is fleeting: deleted from our phones or somehow lost in cyber space. Letters are different as they can be kept; tucked away in a safe place perhaps to be read at another time.

Maybe this letter will be one you keep. I hope so. That is why I wrote it.

There is an anniversary this week and no doubt you will hear a great deal about it. I wish there was a better word than anniversary as it denotes a yearly event and certainly this is more than that.

Fifty years ago President John Fitzgerald Kennedy died. 
 
This simple declarative sentence will be re-stated innumerable times and like many other messages will likely pass from your minds over the course of days.  That is not meant to be a criticism. It is difficult for any of us to “remember” persons and/or happenings that occurred long before our time. A song writer once called it “Living the moment”.
 
That is why I am writing to you today. For the majority of my peer group, the assassination of our President was a seminal occurrence; something that affected all of us and not just in America but across the globe. 
 
Each generation has one, or occasionally more than one critical events. There are personal instances of course like marriage or the birth of a child but events that truly affect people across the world are few. By their very nature they are sudden and sadly, most often tragic. The do not wait for history to define them; they are burned into our consciousness.
 
They are the rejoinder to the question: Where were you when….?
 
For my parents, your great grand-parents, it was the day Pearl Harbor was attacked and the world as they knew it was propelled into a global war that took sixty million lives.
 
For those of your parents’ contemporaries, it is arguably the attacks in New York and Washington, DC on September 11, 2001. The world was stunned by the vision of collapsing buildings. Yes, there were some across the globe who celebrated. Such is not uncommon in global experiences.  Your parents can better speak to you about that day and its aftermath.
 
Writing from my remembrances, let me try to describe for you what Friday, 22^nd November meant to me. Surely the people of Africa and Asia would have different reactions but by definition the fact that they had any reaction defines the very nature of a critical happening.
 
A half century from now, the year 2063, President Kennedy will be remembered again; it will be called the centennial. You will be there; I will not. My confidence hopes that on that day you will remember this letter and tell your children and theirs what I now write.
 
Now it has been 50 years since that terrible day in Dallas. From my perspective those years have elapsed very fast.  And so, I write to you about a unique man, a man who I hope you will come to know as more than a mere name in a history book; and much more than a name on a list of past Presidents.
 
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was known by many names: Jack to his family and friends, Lieutenant to his crew on PT-109, Congressman to the people of Boston, Senator to the people of Massachusetts and ultimately, Mr. President, a title even his parents and siblings applied.

To the world and perhaps because of his long name newspapers preferred the shortened sobriquet: JFK. It fit the headline space. I suppose that compares to texting of “ur” or “bff” today.

Who was this man who we remember this week? He was an Irish-Catholic, born into a privileged family. His mother’s father was Mayor of Boston; his father an exceptionally successful son of a saloon keeper.  JFK was the second son in a family of nine children.

You can read about his time at Harvard, his life in England, the books he published, including a Pulitzer Prize winner. No other President has done that. You need to read of his war-time heroics and how they left him with injuries that would last all his short lifetime. His life was altered by this and further transformed by the death of his older brother who was killed in combat.

They say politics comes easy to the Irish. Maybe it does but carrying that to a national level was a first. Many men with his family’s prestige and wealth would have chosen a life of luxury; he chose a life of public service culminating with his election to the Presidency in 1960. You can decide whether it was family pressure or self-absorbed fame that drove him. I think it was probably both and if either one was not present, his success could not have been attained.

It was a wondrous time. I was 18, just out of prep school and now a freshman at Fordham. Just two months into my academic year, the President was one of us. He was young, 42, with a wife only 31. The Presidents we had known were of our parents and grand-parents’ experience. Good men, yes, but they were of a past that for us was history.  Here was a man who looked and acted like an older brother. And importantly he was Catholic; and for some of us, that meant an Irish Catholic. To others who opposed him he represented two minorities. He knew that and relished what it meant.

No Catholic had ever been President. To you the importance of that might be elusive. I understand that. But to Americans in 1960 it was wonderful for some and intimidating for others. President Kennedy exposed and dispelled the widely-held misconceptions about Catholics and proved that what Jesus said was indeed true: Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Let us pray that legacy stays with us. Our religious freedom encompasses everyone and it is precious.

It was a terribly cold day for the Inauguration back in January 1961. Our Poet Laureate, 87 year old Robert Frost, had written a poem for the occasion but the winds on the platform blew away his papers. No Teleprompters then. He looked up, his white hair blowing, and began to recite verbatim a verse he had penned 40 years before: The Gift Outright.  It fit the moment perfectly. Look it up and read it.

And then, the swearing-in; the traditional cannon fire; Hail to The Chief and finally President Kennedy took to the podium. He stood there for a moment and then began an address against which all subsequent inaugurals have been vetted and found lacking.

It ranks with Lincoln’s Gettysburg address as the two best presidential speeches. As with Mr. Lincoln’s it was short, a mere 14 minutes. JFK sought out input from many but wrote it himself and to the amazement of President Eisenhower, made changes to it while riding in the limousine to his swearing-in. The scribbled copy in his library in Boston proves that.

The address resonates with prose and poetry; with optimism and reality; and with hope. Read the address. Better still listen to it on your computer and watch him as he speaks.

He praised and warned us:  “For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life”.  And admonished us that: “the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God”.  Do we believe this today?

He paraphrased his former enemy, the commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy, reminding us: “Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside”. 

He prophetically stated: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”  Have we forgotten that?

Think of the politics today and listen to him articulate “civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.”  Simple to write and hear but living by these words has become difficult.

All of us remember: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country”. I ask you to look at his following entreaty: “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

My Grandchildren, I cannot even try to explain how I felt hearing those words.  He told to the country and the world: “The torch has been passed to a new generation”.

We knew it was us to whom he spoke and we welcomed and grasped the torch and the obligations that meant. History will tell you if we met what he asked of us. History shows us what he did.

He was our President during that week in October 1962 when the very future of every species of life on our planet was at risk. I was an ROTC cadet at the time and we were ordered to wear uniforms to class and be ready to board buses should military action commence.  He had listened to the advice of the generals and admirals but then did the unexpected. He personally contacted the head of the Soviet Union and together they formed an agreement to take us back from the brink of total destruction.

He fought for the rights of our fellow citizens in a way that had never been seen before. Governors of several states publicly stated they would not abide by laws calling for racial integration of their schools. They thought he would back down as he would need their votes in the next election. They were wrong. The universities were integrated and we are a better country for that.

With a stroke of his pen, he issued an executive order prohibiting discrimination in the sale or lease of housing that was financed by federally guaranteed loans or owned by the federal government. Why? Because the immorality of segregation was everywhere and change needs a starting point.

You cannot imagine today what segregation was like. It was not only in the south; our very national capital, Washington DC was segregated. Too many people of color were disenfranchised from voting by state legislation that today you would find hard to believe. President Kennedy put forth the Civil Rights Act and The Voting Rights Act. They became the law of the land but he did not live to see that.

He told us we would go to the moon and successfully return two years before we had even sent a man into orbit around our planet. In 1969 America did go to the moon and back but he did not live to see it.

He started the Peace Corps and to-date, a quarter of a million Americans of all ages have served in over 130 countries. It remains a beacon for democracy and a helping hand for those who need it most.

At the peak of the Cold War, he secured a limited nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union, a first step in mutual dismantling the nuclear arsenals that so threatened the world the year previous.

It ended a mere thousand days after it began. It ended in Dallas in a place called Dealey Plaza with a single deranged man firing three shots with a cheap rifle and taking away the life of the President of the United States and the hopes and dreams of millions around the world. We ask ourselves: What if President Kennedy had lived?  To that there can be hope and dreams but objectivity, no.

Everyone in my generation knows exactly where they were the moment they heard the terrible news.  I was walking across campus and saw a man with a bull horn near the Victory Bell shouting something I could not understand. Entering the dining hall all was silent but for a radio broadcaster relating what had occurred. For a long moment there was silence and then the dreaded news. He was gone from us.

Walking back to the Pharmacy School Building, I met the Dean and told him what had occurred. He broke down in tears and asked me to go tell the classes that were in progress. One of the Professors told me that if that was a joke I would be expelled. I think the look on my face proved it was true.

Like many that day I walked around the campus and without a conscious thought of direction found myself outside the University Church. It was full of students and faculty. It was silent. It was not an organized vigil; it was young men (no women at Fordham in those days) kneeling in silent prayer.

On the Sunday after the assassination, I was in Washington for the procession from the White House to the Capitol for his lying in state. I remember the slow beat of the drums, no music, just the drums and not a sound from the thousands gathered to watch, no sound but for their sobbing.

The leaders of the world came to Washington, Kings, Queens, Emperors, Prime Ministers and Presidents.  They came to pay their respects and to mourn. They walked as a singular group following Mrs. Kennedy and the horse drawn coffin. They returned home; lives resumed.

But in America, it did not. Thanksgiving was soon upon us as it is this year. We tried to be thankful but we had just lost much more than just a single man. We had lost our innocence and with it a degree of the hope that he had given us.

That loss is still with those of us who remember those days. We try to recollect the happiness of young children in the White House and then we remember a little boy saluting the casket of his Father.

So, I ask you to look at who and what this man was. Did he have flaws? Of course; we all do. I ask you to look at those and measure them against what he did in just those short thousand days. This is not the place to do that and nor can I be impartial on the matter. You make the decision.

Mrs. Kennedy called her time in the White House: Camelot. In our memories it was as echoed by the words of King Arthur: Don't let it be forgot, That once there was a spot, For one brief shining moment, That was known as Camelot!

Our world, our country and for sure the Presidency is very different today. Maybe we should ask our leaders of today to remember what he said that cold January day: “Civility is not a sign of weakness”

Sometime in your life, a person or an incident will be your answer to “Where were you..?”

Mine was 50 years ago. I still seek the response to the un-answerable: ‘What if he had lived”

God Bless the memory of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. God Bless all of you.
 
Your Grandfather