Camelot — Life Is Better On The Road

There are certain historical moments that seem to stop time in its tracks. Most recently the question is often where were you on 9/11? In the past, it was where were you when your heard that President Kennedy was shot? I was a baby, presumably in my crib being ignored by my mother’s sobbing. Perhaps because I was born in 1963, perhaps because history has always fascinated me, I have studied the Kennedy years extensively. I watched the films and the news reels and saw him die more than once. The movies that speculated on the conspiracy theories? Sure, I watched those too. When his son died in an airplane crash I was inconsolable. Why? The short answer is youth cut short. Promise that was never able to be fulfilled. The longer answer is that post Kennedy, our country has suffered numerous scandals and a cultural shift that gives us more information about our leaders’ personal lives than ever before. Kennedy was the promise of a new future. The Peace Corps, Civil rights, adventures in space.

His museum in Boston is a tribute to that hope, that idealism, that innocence that seems to have been lost, inevitably I suppose. His burial site in Arlington, which we visited, brings back memories of little JFK Junior saluting his father’s casket, as well as a stoic Jackie.

Urban legend has many coincidences between JFK and Abraham Lincoln. They were both assassinated, of course. Lincoln’s secretary was named Kennedy, and Kennedy’s secretary was name Lincoln. They were both succeeded by Southerners named Johnson, etc. None of them are terribly significant, and they don’t mention the greatest similarities of all. Both men were patriots who supported civil rights, and were assassinated for those beliefs.

The museum is easy to visit. There is a free parking lot at the University of Massachusetts, and even easier on the metro line. There is also the Museum of the Commonwealth right across the parking lot that is worthy of a visit. Camelot. Or as Jackie said: Now, I think that I should have known that he was magic all along. I did know it — but I should have guessed that it would be too much to ask to grow old with and see our children grow up together. So now, he is a legend when he would have preferred to be a man.