The JFK Memorial in Dallas is Awesome.

Here is Why You Need to Visit it NOW!

One of my earliest memories is of my mother watching TV and crying “They shot him. They shot him.”

I would have just turned two at the time Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated JFK, so I am pretty sure she was watching a retrospective a few years later.

No matter. The memory grew as I did and, as I learned more details, I became a bit obsessed with all things related to Kennedy and the assassination.

Did I think that he and his presidency would have done anything to avert the course that America took to bring us to this point?

Not necessarily.

Did I believe in any of the conspiracy theories that abounded then, or do I believe in any that continue today? No, especially as new conspiracies overshadowed it and showed the progenators of new ones showed their anger, angst, social and personal paranoia, and other mental illnesses.

But details of the assassination held my attention into my adulthood. In an odd way, Kennedy’s trip to Dallas and then his final trip, to Parkland Hospital and, a few days later, that long slow procession down Pennsylvania Avenue to Arlington National Cemetery, became a memory of my mother and her ability to love on a personal and national level.