I was in Dallas on business last week. One afternoon I wandered over to Dealy Plaza where President John F. Kennedy was murdered 51 years ago. The last time I was there was in 1983 close to the 20th anniversary of the assassination. Even then it seemed like old history. Not much has changed since then. The Texas School Book Depository is now a museum.
You can see where the shooter set up on the sixth floor. I didn’t visit the museum. It wasn’t open when I was there but I wouldn’t have visited it anyway.
And last year a new memorial was set up with an excerpt from a speech Kennedy was going to give later in the day.
And somebody has taped a couple X’s near where the shots hit.
Tourists dash out there to get pics of themselves with the X’s and run off before the Dallas traffic runs by.
A block or so away one of the most banal memorials I have ever seen, a cenotaph that honors President Kennedy. It was designed by Philip Johnson and was originally supposed to be marble but somebody made the decision to use precast concrete instead. I didn’t like the memorial last time I visited and I still don’t like it.
I remember the day he was murdered. I was just an elementary school student in Price, Utah and I didn’t understand why it happened but I sensed that the whole world had changed. I’m getting pretty old now and I still don’t understand why he was killed and I still feel that somehow the world changed that day.
