50 Years

Getting out of the hospital and walking with a cane (as I just did to get the mail) would have me feeling old today anyway, but then I have just reminded me that it has been fifty years since the JFK inaugural, January 20, 1961.



I remember it vividly. We watched it at an assembly at Seventh Street Elementary School. It was especially meaningful for me as a Catholic boy--seeing a Catholic become POTUS.

Memorable too was Robert Frost reading "The Gift Outright."

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become. [my italics[