It’s time to look to the unity of the past
By Alonzo Weston
When Nov. 22 rolls around on the calendar I can’t say it affects me the same way it does when Sept. 11 comes up. It is in no way a matter of importance but rather due to how I experienced both events.
When John Kennedy, our 35th president, was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, I was a third-grader at Horace Mann Elementary School. When terrorists struck the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, I was an adult working as a reporter for the St. Joseph News-Press.
Looking back, in retrospect I see how the world seemed to change dramatically after both incidents. Both were viewed as times when “America lost its innocence.”
Kennedy’s death marked the end of an age of youthful optimism about our country. After 9/11, we felt less secure about our safety and our way of life.
People born after 9/11 never knew a world without terrorist threats at home and abroad. The sense of normalcy and security enjoyed by Americans before the attacks was erased.
The same can be said after the JFK assassination. Before, our president and our country were seemingly invincible and impervious to any attacks.
As a child in 1963, I was aware enough from gauging the moods of the adults around me that there was a sense of malaise and discomfort following the Kennedy assassination in regards to the gains in civil rights his administration embodied. He was to be the great unifier and equalizer. What would the person who followed him do in those regards?
Post 9/11 finds us battling each other and casting civil rights to the wayside. We are no longer united. We’ve become a nation of rights with no obligations and concern for our fellow man.
It doesn’t really matter who is our president. We with our lack of compassion, empathy and common sense are destroying our own country from within. What would JFK think of us today?
I found it ironic years later that Christian apologist C.S. Lewis died the same day as JFK. We lost two voices of reason and understanding that day. Are we going to continue to cast about hopeless and full of hate and anger for each other? Ignorance isn’t the same as innocence. We willfully choose ignorance and stupidity today over any sort of innocence and compassion.
We have to learn the lessons of the past.
