I was young, 15 years old, when those shots shook the world, so the ideas I formed came later, and yet the image of John and Jacqueline remains etched in my memory. He was a complex hero. An icon of progress in civil rights, his legacy prospers in the conquest of freedom and the loosening of the chains of discrimination, need and prejudice. He was also a symbol of an optimistic America confident of its future and, let’s not forget, he stopped the world at the brink of a nuclear holocaust. A man not without contradictions and at times the standard bearer of an insidious power. That 22 November of 1963 the light went out, but the “torch” John Kennedy lit has been passed from generation to generation and continues to light our path!
Jacqueline was magnificent in her role as First Lady – the Queen of Camelot, as the JFK entourage was known. An icon of elegance, glamour, incarnating that optimistic America, sure of itself as it sailed into the future, she was, however much more than a mere presence; behind that smiling façade there was a strong personality, a woman capable of living alongside a man of great charisma and not a few defects, and of maintaining great dignity in her pain. Jackie was also a very modern woman, not willing to remain a prisoner of her past, but able to turn the page and build a new life of her own choosing, and who became a model for many women to follow.
