On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode through Dealey Plaza, also know as “The Front Door of Dallas.”
Since Presidents Day 1989, The Sixth Floor Museum has created a permanent exhibit to chronicle Kennedy’s life, death and legacy.
The museum is located in the former Texas School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald took the fatal shots that killed the president. Evidence suggests the shots were fired from the sixth floor.
Inside, behind glass walls, a replica of the crime scene showcases how the boxes of books were stacked to create a rifle nest in front of the window the shot was taken from.
“Even though I’ve been here several times, that corner still gives me chills when I look at it,” 65-year-old Dallas resident Gene Harris said.
The rest of the sixth floor is filled with all-things-Kennedy, from his campaign trail and inauguration to some of the challenges he faced in office, such as the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Signage, pamphlets and circulars on the walls also show anti-Kennedy sentiment from Americans of the time.
“Not everybody was a Kennedy supporter,” said Ron Derrek, a 32-year-old accountant from North Carolina visiting Dallas on business. “Its cool that they show both sides and not just Kennedy supporters.”
The seventh floor of the museum houses temporary exhibits. Currently a 17-foot Texas School Book Depository sign is on display. The sign originally hung on the building in the ‘60s and has been in storage for more than 30 years, making this the first time it has been seen publicly since the late ‘70s.
Liza Collins, public relations and the museum’s advertising manager, said it’s a great place for people of all ages to come and experience.
“The best thing about the museum is that this is where history took place,” she said.
"The message of Christmas- the message of peace and good will towards all men- has been the guiding star of our endeavors."
President Kennedy, 1962
Holiday Cards to the Kennedys
Every December, the White House received holiday cards from all over the world. Each card was carefully saved by White House social staff, and is now housed at the JFK Library. At left is a card from Princess Grace and Prince Rainier, III, of Monaco.
During a speech before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, Kennedy famously told the largely skeptical gathering, "I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic."
You are invited to join Caroline Kennedy and The Honorable Ray Mabus, United States Secretary of the Navy, for a very special celebration of President John F. Kennedy's birthday this Sunday, May 29.
During this historic celebration, Secretary Mabus will officiate at the Naming Ceremony for CVN 79 - a United States Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carrier - to be built in the coming years and christened in 2018.
This inspiring and colorful celebration will include remarks by Caroline Kennedy and other dignitaries; a video presentation of President Kennedy's August 1, 1963 Address to the U.S. Naval Academy; the Presentation of Colors; music by the Navy Band; and the formal announcement by the United States Secretary of the Navy of the name to be given to the nuclear powered aircraft carrier CVN 79.
The Ceremony will take place in the Stephen Smith Center beginning at 12:00 noon. The U.S. Navy has requested that guests arrive by 11:30 a.m. dressed in either Business Attire or Service Uniform.
Humility is a rare presidential trait; the effort of will required to win the office and then hold it does not ordinarily allow for much self-awareness, much less self-criticism.
This April marks the 50th anniversary of an episode at once humiliating and instructive: the failed American-backed operation against Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs. Humiliating because the attack was a disaster; instructive because President John F. Kennedy realized he had made a terrible mistake — and he pledged to learn from it.
He was candid about the scope of the mess. “How could I have been so stupid?” he asked himself and others in the aftermath. Fifteen hundred men had been sent to the beaches; later estimates suggested it would have taken a whole division — 15,000 men — to successfully conduct an amphibious operation of this scope. To a CIA officer he admitted, “In a parliamentary system I would resign.” Kennedy learned official-seeming presentations from officers wearing what he called their “fruit salad” of ribbons were not always reliable.
Yet he took responsibility in public, understanding that in politics, as in life, to whom much is given, much is expected. Kennedy said, “There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan… I am the responsible officer of this government.”
The curators at the American History museum delve into the archives to show artifacts from the 1960 election, when Sen. John F. Kennedy branded pins, hats, bumper stickers and more with family name.
Produced by: Ryan R. Reed, Beth Py-Lieberman and Brian Wolly Special thanks to: Larry Bird and Harry Rubenstein
TAMPA - Everyone can pinpoint a moment in life we wish we could change; details we often dwell on.
Three United States Secret Service Agents have this in common. Their regrets start in Tampa in November of 1963.
"It was sunny outside,” Blaine remembers. "We had 28 miles of motorcade. We had an appearance at Lopez Field, which has been replaced by the Steinbrenner family and also the National Guard Armory."
Agent Gerald Blaine was working the President's Secret Service detail that day along what was once called Grand Central Avenue.
"All the sudden he looked over his shoulder and saw the agents riding on the back of the car. He tapped the agent-in-charge on the shoulder and said "Have the Ivy League Charlatans drop back to the follow-up car,'" according to Blaine. "The President said essentially, 'look, my political style is to be with the people and if I have agents hovering over me, it detracts from that.'"
The President's orders, given to Agent Blaine and Secret Service Agent Chuck Zboril, along what is now Kennedy Boulevard, set the stage for the tragedy that unfolded 100 yards after a slow turn onto Elm Street in Dallas, Texas.
"We had the top off because the weather conditions were such that it was a beautiful day,” said Hill. He says there were a lot of people hanging out of windows and on balconies.
Agent Clint Hill's Secret Service detail was to protect Mrs. Kennedy. His regrets are he couldn't do more.
"I heard an explosive noise from the right rear," recounted Hill. "What I saw was the President grabbing his throat. So I jumped off the follow-up car, ran toward the Presidential vehicle,” he said. "The driver accelerated, the car starting moving forward, causing me to slip. I regained my foothold but before I did a third shot rang out."
Agent Hill has spent nearly fifty years dissecting those six seconds.
"I was the only one who was in a position to do anything,” Hill said. "If I had been a second and a half faster, quicker, I'd a been there in time.”
Agent Zboril was in Tampa, but not Dallas, and still shoulders guilt.
"My shift was on-duty that day and I had the temporary assignment to go to Atoka and I thought if I had been there maybe history would have been a little different,” said Agent Zboril.
"That was the terrible thing when he was assassinated, we all had the guilty feeling about it and felt that we had failed," Agent Blaine told us.
These three Secret Service Agents still dwell on these details, the kind that changed them -- and history.
"It never gets any easier," said Agent Hill.
The Secret Service Agents will be signing copies of their book "The Kennedy Detail" Friday night at 7 PM at the Carrollwood Barnes and Noble on North Dale Mabry.
Editor's Note: Some images used in the video are courtesy of the St. Petersburg Times archives.
Copyright 2011 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address Inspired a New Generation of Statesmen
By HUMA KHAN
Fifty years ago on this day, a young, dapper American president rose to the podium and delivered an inaugural address that would resonate for decades to come.
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country," said John F. Kennedy in a riveting call to service. "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."
For those who witnessed it, Kennedy's inauguration day was anything but smooth. A snowstorm wreaked havoc in Washington, nearly cancelling the inaugural parade.
The U.S. Army was put in charge of clearing the streets and former president Herbert Hoover missed the swearing-in ceremony because he couldn't fly into the city. When the ceremony did start, a lectern caught fire during the invocation, which some complained was too long, and Vice President Lyndon Johnson fumbled his words during his swearing-in.
Yet the mood surrounding the event was one that Americans hadn't felt in years.
"There was this tremendous sense of vigor and yes, hope and optimism. It was also a time when we were entering a huge economic boom," remembers ABC News contributor Cokie Roberts, a college freshman at the time who was unable to make it to the inauguration because of the snow.
"A lot of people who are the senior statesmen of today were the kids in that era who came because of Kennedy, and they came because they were asking what they could for their country," she said.
Kennedy's uplifting inaugural address, remembered by some historians as one of the best in the nation's history, challenged Americans to serve their country at a time when the Cold War simmered overseas and the civil rights struggle grew at home.
"The inaugural address was certainly incredibly well-received. And the whole gravity, the credence and the whole business of the torch has gone forth to a new generation, that was absolutely true," Roberts said. "The visual image of the turnover from Eisenhower to Kennedy, it was very striking -- a man who was a general in World War II versus this man who was the second youngest president, who was a kid on a PT boat."
Kennedy's election marked many firsts for the United States. At age 43, he was the youngest president to be elected. Teddy Roosevelt came to the White House at 42, but he replaced William McKinley, who was assasinated. Kennedy was also the first, and to this date, the only Catholic elected as commander-in-chief and he brought a sense of excitement among American Catholics that hasn't been seen since.
Those close to him also remember him as an amiable, funny president, a marked departure from his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
"President Kennedy, the first time he met you he asked your name and he never forgot it. The second time, he asked your wife's name and your children's names, and he was personable with the agents and very much a free spirit compared to President Eisenhower," said Gerald Blaine, a Secret Service agent in Eisenhower and Kennedy's security detail and co-author of the "The Kennedy Detail: JFK's Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence."
"It was such a contrast because he was so young and was totally different."
Kennedy also brought youth and intrigue to the White House. His fashionable and glamorous wife, Jackie Kennedy, and two young children, captured the fancy of Americans in a way that no other first family had done before.
"To have that after the years of Eisenhower and Truman and Roosevelt, suddently to have this young energetic family was just a complete shot of adrenaline into the city, and tons and tons of young people came to town to participate in government," Roberts said.
Kennedy ascended the White House at a time of great economic prosperity, but his presidency wasn't without its challenges. He had to deal with the Cuban Missile Crisis and growing racial tensions that would eventually turn very violent.
Much of the hope and optimism felt during Kennedy's inauguration 50 years ago resonated two years ago at the same time this year, when President Obama -- the first African-American president to be elected -- took his oath of office.
The optimism of the Obama White House, however, has quickly faded amid economic discontent and political partisanship.
Though it was a different era, historians say the parallels between now and then are not widely different.
"It doesn't seem like the political environment was as caustic but it was still quite difficult. There was a definite political schism between what would be called liberal and what would be called a more military conservative version, but it was different than it is now," said Don Lawn, author of "The Memoirs of John F. Kennedy: A Novel." "The schism has gotten a lot nastier and it's becoming a lot more difficult to talk about and discuss anything."
It may have been over a lifetime ago, but there are still lessons to be learned from that time.
"The idea of public service is not as valued as it was back then. It was almost a popular position to be someone who give their life over to public service, the Peace Corps for instance," said Lawn. " It was quite a different attitude then and he was trying to promote that. He had been a public servant his whole life, he didn't have to. He was pretty rich but he chose a pretty daunting environment to challenge his stability."
