Today, our 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, would be celebrating his 95th birthday were he still alive. After all, he was born on May 29, 1917. So what's wrong about what I just said? I mean, JFK WOULD be turning 95 today, right?
If Kennedy were turning 95 today, then it would be his 96th birthday as his first birthday occurred on the day of his birth, when he was zero-years-old. His second birthday would be when he turned one, and so on. But nevertheless I hear this error regarding celebrities' birthdays all the time on TV, don't you?
John F. Kennedy was the first president I actually remember being president, although I was born during the Eisenhower administration. His tragically-shortened tenure in the office was tumultuous, to say the least, with external Cold War tensions and internal Civil Rights conflicts testing his performance and judgement almost on a daily basis. I thought he handled it all beyond what anyone could reasonably expect, and that he was a great president. I don't know or pretend to know what would have happened in our history had he escaped his assassin's bullets on that sad day of November 22, 1963. Would we have stayed out of Vietnam? Would the Civil Rights movement have been slowed down? We really don't know. But I still think we would have been a stronger people and more cohesive as a nation had he survived...
I wrote this article to try to change the emphasis from JFK's 11/22/63 deathdate to his 5/29/17 birthdate. It shouldn't be that hard for people to remember, as it is always very close to Memorial Day (which was yesterday). Hey, I have an idea: while honoring our fallen soldiers, why not also pause a few moments and honor our fallen president, John F. Kennedy, on his birthday?
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