Columns » Guest Column

Subscribe

In memoriam to J.F.K.

  • Print
  • •
  • •
  • Post a Comment
  • •
  • Favorite
  • •
  • Report an error Report error
    • Thank you for your submission.
      Error report or correction
      Contact name (optional) Contact phone/e-mail (optional)  
      Sending report
    • Close
  • •
  • Originally published November 20, 2009 at 7 p.m., updated November 21, 2009 at 10:35 p.m.

I still don't believe it, and no one else will either. That one man alone could kill him is unthinkable and unbelievable.

Coliseums do not crumble and crash. They crumble slowly and take years to turn to ruins. Time, not men, destroys coliseums. No one man could kill him. It would take at least a nation, conspiring, plotting, paying and planning a ploy to see him dead. They would draw diagrams in dark dens, stalking with stealthy tread to make him dead. Yes, I could believe a nation, but not a lone nut to kill him.

He could not be killed by a bullet made for murder, a steel, stupid shell that could kill a rat or a robber. Let him be killed by a sword hidden beneath a toga. Let him be felled from the sting of an asp or from a stone slung from a shepherd's sling. Afford him at least a stake and fire and martyrdom. But a 6.2 bullet - never could one man kill him.

When men burned books, they only lighted fires that spelled the darkness. When men built dams, they only controlled the waters, but they don't stop the rains or rivers. When men attempted to smother thought, they only sent it spewing off in new directions. One man, kill him, never. One man just made him immortal.

Let him live on like his immortal flame. It will take more than an announcement, a black-draped capital, a caisson led by a horse named Black Jack that pranced to those dreadful drums while family followed and son saluted to declare him dead.

For unlike the buildings and airports that bare his name, along with the coliseums of old that crumble in time, even time cannot kill him, much less one man.

 

Elaine Wheat is a regular columnist whose Oceans for Emotions column appears in the Faith section of the Advocate on Saturdays.


Sign Up
CLOSE

  • Print
  • •
  • •
  • Post a Comment
  • •
  • Favorite
  • •
  • Report an error Report error
    • Thank you for your submission.
      Error report or correction
      Contact name (optional) Contact phone/e-mail (optional)  
      Sending report
    • Close
  • •