Forty years ago I was a senior at the University of Maine in Orono. It occurred to me the other day that in four decades I haven’t come very far, because I’m still a member of the senior class – different senior class, but still the senior class!

October 19, 1963, promised to be a red-letter day on campus. It was a Saturday. In anticipation of the great event that was going to happen, some of us wanted to get in the proper frame of mind, so we visited a local establishment in the town the night before, known as “Pat’s.” Pat’s is to Orono as the tables at Maury’s are to New Haven. And in our youthful zeal we hoisted a few too many steins, and somehow I ended up in the Stillwater River. I assure you, it was not to be baptized! And after that, briefly, in the infirmary, where they were mightily impressed by my blood pressure.

Obviously, the next morning I was not in very good shape, but we got up early nonetheless, because we wanted to get a good spot. I managed to get up right next to the snow fence which had been erected for crowd control. I was rather bleary-eyed, and we knew they’d be coming in from the east, so we had to stare into the rising son, which was no fun. I looked and I looked and I didn’t see anything, and finally somebody said, “Look! Look! There they are! There they are!” Sure enough, on the horizon these three small specks appeared, about as big as flies. And eventually as they got larger and came closure you could hear that unmistakable “Whoomp – whoomp – whoomp” of helicopters. They approached, hovered over the field, kicking up leaves and dried grasses. They settled softly and the engines were cut, the rotors drooped, the door opened on the lead craft.

The first to step out, as I remember anyway, was Senator Ed Muskie, very popular Maine Democrat, followed by military aide Major General Ted Clifton, and when Pierre Salinger emerged, the crowd roared with delight! Then the Pershing Rifles, part of the ROTC drill team, looking smart in their berets and bloused trousers, snapped to attention, and the band struck up “The Ruffles and Flourishes.” And just as “Hail to the Chief” started, out into the golden autumn sunlight, looking every inch a god who had descended from the heavens, stepped John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Now the speech and the obligatory honorary degree happened at the other end of the field, far from us. I don’t even think we heard the speech; it was later billed as a major foreign policy address. But we could tell after the speech that the President was going to reach out to the people, for the cheers kept coming closer and closer up the line. And then when they got really close, suddenly the crowd surged behind me, and the fence and I ended up at about a 45° angle to the ground. It was scary, but it happened so fast I didn’t have time to get scared. Somehow the security people in front pushed back and got us upright, and when I regained the vertical, there standing directly in front of me was the President of the United States.

He was as fair a human being as I have ever looked upon. I have never seen a photograph that has done him justice. Paintings, yes. What I especially remember was that his hair, and especially his eyebrows, were so sandy, so very, very sandy. Of course I was dumbfounded. He shoved his hand into mine, and I looked down at the hand and was amazed at how much thicker his hand was than mine, and of course deeply tanned. And someone, perhaps wanting a picture, shouted, “Jack!” and he turned to his left and smiled that million megawatt smile, and then just as quickly was gone, ascended once more into the heavens.

The next month I was walking across the campus, coming from a class in Russian history, when I saw people listening to their car radios, and of course the news that the President had been shot. Later we spent the entire weekend in mourning, mourning our friend. “Johnny, we hardly knew ye.”

Well, the cold and sober truth is that, in the usual ranking of presidents, John Fitzgerald Kennedy does not rank among the great. Nevertheless, he is able to transcend that usual ranking, and occupies a very special place in our pantheon of gods. I can visualize him on Mount Rushmore, right next to Teddy Roosevelt. In my mind, it would look very natural to see him there,. There are two reasons that he is in the pantheon of gods. We are able to project on him, because he embodied many of the archetypes of the collective unconscious: Joseph Campbell wrote about heroes, and JFK was a genuine hero, in PT 109; he was a martyr, another archetype; puer eternis, the eternal child, he never grew old, he would be 86 today. We never see him more than he was in 1963. And of course, all of those mythological undertones. I didn’t realize it, but I looked it up. December 3, 1963, a month after the election and a month before the inauguration, a new musical opened on Broadway that told of the legend of King Arthur and Lady Guinevere, and the knights of the Round Table. “Don’t let it be forgot that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.” The lyricist, Alan J. Lerner, after November of 1963, could never listen to those words again or hear them sung. That’s one reason.

The other reason was noted by columnist Dan Schribman. Kennedy achieved what he ascribed to Winston Churchill, “He mobilized the English language.” Kennedy gave voice to American idealism, and perhaps, says Shribman, “It is not too much to say that the glow from that fire can still light the world.” He argues that Kennedy’s greatest deeds were his words. And why not? He never wanted to be a politician, he wanted to be a writer. But when his brother Joe Junior was killed in 1941 in the war, it became clear that it would be up to John now to follow a political career that the father, Joe, had intended for the brother. He did grow into the role, but he always kept the dreams and visions of a writer. He did not think in politician’s categories of either/or, but the historian’s categories of “on the one hand, yet on the other.”

You remember, no doubt, from your religious education, the prophet Amos, that humble part-time dresser of sycamore trees from the little village of Thecua. Well, Amos had visions, and the third vision he had was of his God, Yahweh, standing beside a wall that had been built straight and true with a plumb line. “And the Lord said to me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A plumb line.’ Then the Lord said, ‘Behold, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel.’” (You know what a plumb line is, I assume.)

Let us set JFK’s vision as a plumb line in our midst in order to measure how far out of plumb the nation of America has become. Let’s begin with war and peace. On June 10, 1963, the President concluded a speech entitled “A Strategy of Peace.” Near the end were these words, “The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.” Sadly, to our discredit, the world now knows that the United States will start a war, it would seem anywhere and anytime it damn well pleases. Sadly, in the eyes of far too many of the world’s citizens, the Red bully on the block has been replaced by the bully in red, white, and blue.

Calling peace the most important topic on earth, Kennedy asked, “What kind of a peace do we mean? What kind of a peace do we seek?” And he answered, “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” Is that not precisely what we and the world are being force-fed in these days?

In these days of an evil empire and an axis of evil, how about this for a plumb line? “No government or social system is so evil that it’s people must be considered as lacking in virtue.” That’s the Unitarian Universalist principle of inherent worth and dignity. And Kennedy ascribed that to everyone on this planet. He found Communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity, but he said “we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture, in acts of courage.” Can you imagine that being said of the North Koreans today? “And if we cannot end now,” he went on, “our differences, at least we can help make this world safe for _____.” You fill in the blank. What do you think he said? What would you expect? Would you expect “democracy”? To make the world safe for democracy? No! JFK said, “We can make the world safe for diversity.”

For him, peace was a process, a way of solving problems. He knew that war never solved problems, it just creates a different set of problems. He knew this because he was well acquainted with the classics. He knew about the judgments of history. He took the long view, because he knew there was a long view. And that’s why he was such a firm believer in and strong supporter of the United Nations and the International Rule of Law. In the inaugural address, he called the United Nations “our last, best hope.” “We renew our pledge of support to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.”

Kennedy was one of our more literate and literary presidents. He invited Robert Frost to read a poem at his inauguration. Well, the week after I shook his hand, he participated in the dedication of the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College, a small private college in Massachusetts. And noting that private colleges drew 50% of their students from the wealthiest 10% of the nation, the President said, “46% of the labor force in this country has not completed high school.” He went on to state, “Not only is there inherited wealth, there is inherited poverty. And unless the graduates of this college and other colleges like it, who are given a running start in life, unless they are willing to put back into our society those talents – the broad sympathy, the understanding, the compassion – unless they are willing to put those qualities back into the service of the great republic, then obviously the presuppositions upon which our democracy are based are bound to be fallible. What good is a private college or university unless it serves the great national purpose?” How refreshing.

And in these days, when the value of art and the contributions of the artist are questioned, or trivialized, or dismissed, or denigrated, let us heed the words of the president who himself was an artist, a creator, a writer, “The nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost’s hired man, the fate of having ‘nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.’ I see little of more importance to the future of this country, of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.” You notice he used that “c” word – civilization! Not only “country” was important, but “civilization” was important. He was able to look beyond the confines of narrow nationalism, even though we were running neck-and-neck in very many ways with the Soviet Union.

In honoring Robert Frost, he said that the college was honoring a man whose contribution was “not to our size, but to our spirit, not to our political beliefs, but to our insight, not to our self-esteem, but to our self-comprehension.” He noted that Frost had a deep faith in the spirit of human beings, and that it was no accident that Frost coupled power with poetry. For he saw poetry as a means of saving power from itself. When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concerns, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve us as the touchstone of our judgment.” Can you imagine any statement such as that being made in these days? “For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.”

“Men who question power,” said Kennedy, “make as indispensable a contribution as the men who create power, for they determine whether they use power, or power uses us.” Don’t let it be forgot, that even though the President is gone, his vision, like the vision of Amos, his God holding the plumb line, lives on. It is as eternal as the flame which burns this very moment at Arlington.