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| People gather before a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Friday, Nov. 22, 2013, at Dealey Plaza in Dallas. President Kennedy's motorcade was passing through Dealey Plaza when shots rang out on Nov. 22, 1963. |
DALLAS (AP) -- It was the same time, 12:30 p.m., Friday, Nov. 22. It was the same place, downtown Dallas.
But
50 years later, the thousands of people who filled Dealey Plaza weren't
there to cheer but to remember in quiet sadness the young, handsome
president with whom Dallas will always be "linked in tragedy."
The
solemn ceremony presided over by Mayor Mike Rawlings was the first time
the city had organized an official Kennedy anniversary event, issuing
5,000 free tickets and erecting a stage with video screens.
Somber
remembrances extended from Dallas to the shores of Cape Cod, with
moments of silence, speeches by historians and, above all, simple
reverence for a time and a leader long gone.
"We
watched the nightmarish reality in our front yard," Rawlings told the
crowd, which assembled just steps from the Texas School Book Depository
building where Lee Harvey Oswald fired from the sixth floor at Kennedy's
open-top limousine. "Our president had been taken from us, taken from
his family, taken from the world."
Two
generations later, the assassination still stirs quiet sadness in the
baby boomers who remember it as the beginning of a darker, more cynical
time.
"A new era dawned and another waned a
half-century ago, when hope and hatred collided right here in Dallas,"
Rawlings told the crowd that gathered under gray skies and in
near-freezing temperatures. The mayor said the slaying prompted Dallas
to "turn civic heartbreak into hard work" and helped the city mature
into a more tolerant, welcoming metropolis.
The
slain president "and our city will forever be linked in tragedy, yes,"
Rawlings said. "But out of tragedy, an opportunity was granted to us:
how to face the future when it's the darkest and uncertain."
Historian
David McCullough said Kennedy "spoke to us in that now-distant time
past, with a vitality and sense of purpose such as we had never heard
before."
Kennedy "was young to be president,
but it didn't seem so if you were younger still," McCullough added.
"He
was ambitious to make it a better world, and so were we."
Past
anniversaries have been marked mostly by loose gatherings of the
curious and conspiracy-minded, featuring everything from makeshift
memorials and marching drummers to freewheeling discussions about others
who might have been in on the killing.
On
Friday, the mayor unveiled a plaque with remarks the president was
supposed to deliver later that day in Dallas. Rawlings' comments were
followed by a mournful tolling of bells and a moment of silence at the
precise time that Kennedy was shot.
In Dallas,
the dreary weather was far different from the bright sunshine that
filled the day of the assassination. But that didn't stop crowds from
lining up hours before the ceremonies began.
Drew
Carney and his girlfriend, Chelsea Medwechuk traveled from Toronto to
attend the ceremony. Like many of those in attendance, they wore plastic
ponchos to ward off the rain.
At 25 and 24,
respectively, they were born a quarter-century after Kennedy died.
Carney, a high school history teacher, said he became intrigued with
Kennedy and his ideals as a teenager.
"It filled you with such hope," he said.
Elsewhere,
flags were lowered to half-staff and wreaths were laid at Kennedy's
presidential library and at a waterfront memorial near the family's Cape
Cod compound.
Shortly after sunrise, Attorney
General Eric Holder paid his respects at Kennedy's recently refurbished
grave at Arlington National Cemetery, where a British cavalry officer
stood guard, bagpipes played and a flame burned steadily as it has since
Kennedy was buried.
About an hour later, Jean
Kennedy Smith, 85, the last surviving Kennedy sibling, laid a wreath at
her brother's grave, joined by about 10 members of the Kennedy family.
They clasped hands for a short, silent prayer and left roses as a few
hundred onlookers watched.
In Boston, Gov.
Deval Patrick and Maj. Gen. Scott Rice of the Massachusetts National
Guard endured a heavy rain during a wreath-laying ceremony at the
Kennedy statue on the front lawn of the Statehouse. The statue,
dedicated in 1990, has been largely off-limits to public viewing since
security procedures put in place after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But
the area was opened to visitors Friday.
Both
of Kennedy's grandfathers served in the Massachusetts Legislature, and
in January 1961 the president-elect came to the Statehouse to deliver
one of his most famous addresses, which came to be known as the "City on
a Hill" speech, just before leaving for his inauguration in Washington.
The tributes extended across the Atlantic to Kennedy's ancestral home in Ireland.
In
Dublin, a half-dozen Irish soldiers toting guns with brilliantly
polished bayonets formed an honor guard outside the U.S. Embassy as the
American flag was lowered to half-staff. An Irish army commander at the
embassy drew a sword and held it aloft as a lone trumpeter played "The
Last Post," the traditional British salute to war dead.
More
than a dozen retired Irish army officers who, as teenage cadets, had
formed an honor guard at Kennedy's graveside gathered in the front
garden of the embassy to remember the first Irish-American to become
leader of the free world.
Together with Irish
Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore and embassy staff, they observed a moment
of silence and laid wreaths from the Irish and American governments in
JFK's memory.
