The eternal memory continues

   We cannot let John Fitzgerald Kennedy die.
   Almost all of us in college today were not alive when Kennedy was shot in Dallas 40 years ago, but we all have studied the assassination as if it were yesterday.
   Everyone has his own views of the murder, and many believe the original ruling of the Warren Commission: Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone to kill Kennedy with a rifle fired from the School Book Depository in Dallas.
   Many Americans, however, believe the murder was the result of a conspiracy.
   We’ve all seen the Zapruder film footage. “The magic bullet started where and ended up where? Come on!”
   We watched the film JFK and wondered who among the usual suspects offered by Oliver Stone was actually guilty.
   We have speculated that the government was involved, that organized crime was involved, that Lyndon Johnson was involved, that the military leaders were involved, that Cuban dissidents were involved, that communist rebels were involved, that the CIA was involved.
   This crime shook the nation as much as 9-11 because then we were just beginning to lose our innocence to civil rights violence, the war against drugs, the Vietnam war, the atrocities of humanity and the assassinations to come for Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.
   With all that had come before, we were unprepared for the majestic Kennedy to be stricken down. This was a man from a family that was invincible. Since Nov. 22, however, we have seen how the tragedies have unfolded through the years for this family.
   The tragedies for the Kennedys continue; however, their charisma also continues as we have seen the Kennedy children come of age.
   This generation has been stunned by 9-11, but while we were not prepared for that event, we had grown used to the foibles of humanity. The gross injustices continue, and we have hunkered down and lived on.
   What 9-11 has done for this generation is to make us revisit the past and try to measure if anything could have been as traumatic as those days following the attack on the World Trade Center.
   Our generation would vote that 9-11 remains the single most terrifying incident in the history of mankind, but other generations would take time to ponder the question and think of other world events that have shaken us to our very cores.
   The media have been full of tributes to John Kennedy on the 40th anniversary of his death. But unlike other anniversaries of the assassination, this one is more reflective.
   While we still visit the theories of the assassination, we have moved slightly away from wondering who did it and now look at what kind of man this John Kennedy was.
   Most American families could bring out the special editions of magazines and newspapers following these tragedies that have happened in our lifetime. The media coverage of 9-11 is still fresh in our minds, but nevertheless, the image of the young John Kennedy Jr. saluting his father will never leave us.
   It is fitting that we never let John Fitzgerald Kennedy die; his eternal flame continues to burn in Arlington Cemetery just as his life continues to burn in our memory.