100

Today, a day after the centennial of the birth of the late US President John F. Kennedy, I refuse to shed light on the “dark side of Camelot.”

For me, “Camelot” (which was how the Kennedy era is referred to, as his wife Jacqueline recalled that it was his favorite musical) will always be a beacon more than a damper, inspiring people more than disappointing them about politics as a means to a better world.

In 1964, Jackie said of her assassinated husband, “So now he is a legend, when he would have preferred to be a man.”

But legends can do wrong. They never get to comb gray hair or fade into the sunset.

In my eyes, JFK’s feet never turned to clay even when I read about Marilyn Monroe and all the other women. I was revolted by White House intern Mimi Alford’s account of her affair with him — but my admiration for JFK is intact, albeit with a hairline fracture.

In an article in a special commemorative edition of Vanity Fair marking the 50th year of JFK’s assassination in 2013, Todd S. Purdum wrote, “Fifty years on, the sheer glamor of Kennedy’s inauguration, the sense of possibility, and promise in the winter air, and the striking, even shocking youth of the principal players still shine bright in the country’s collective consciousness…”

In Vienna, across the St. Stephen’s cathedral, I was surprised to see a JFK marker,  one of many memorials to the fallen US president around the world.

Caroline Kennedy, his only living child and a former ambassador to Japan, recently paid tribute to her father on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, saying, “One hundred years is a really long time, but I think his legacy and these values are timeless and they live on.”

In the video commemorating the centennial of her father’s birth, she reminisces about hiding under the Oval Office desk when she was a young girl, and sailing with her father as he told her stories about sharks that loved to eat socks. “I miss him every day of my life. But, growing up without him was made easier thanks to all of the people who kept him in their hearts,” she added.

Kennedy told CNN that she could feel from others that he “was part of everyone’s life,” and recalled how many people would approach her and tell her they were in politics because he inspired them to make a difference in the world.

“I was looking at a speech that he gave right before he became president, and he said, ‘History will judge us by four qualities: Courage, integrity, dedication and judgment’,” Kennedy said. I wonder how JFK would have rated himself on those four counts.

One of JFK’s granddaughters, Tatiana Kennedy Schlossberg summed up JFK’s tenacious hold on people who never met him, didn’t live in his time, but idolize him nevertheless.

“One of the defining relationships of my life is with someone I’ve never met, my grandfather, President John F. Kennedy,” Tatiana said in the video. “But while my grandfather had reverence for the past, and the lessons it could impart, he also knew that America was a country where change was possible. That we aren’t bound solely by tradition if we understand the past with which we are breaking.”

In reading about him as a child, I found myself striving for his definition of happiness. On May 8, 1963, JFK said to a group of students: “The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.”

I had always believed we could conquer new moons in our lives as JFK had believed it was possible to put a man on the moon. After reading of JFK, I had always believed in Camelot, in “one shining moments,” in knights who would fight for what was right and just; in modern-day heroes who would save the world from nuclear annihilation (as he did during the Cuban missile crisis of ‘62). Kennedy made me believe in ideals, and that having one was not a waste of time.

He will forever be etched in history as a young and handsome man in the high noon of his life. His mother Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy lived to the ripe old age of 104, and who knows if JFK would have lived to 104, too, if he hadn’t insisted on a top-down car on the streets of Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963?

Happy birthday, Mr. President — wherever you are.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)