John F. Kennedy’s America answered a call to leadership no longer given voice
THESE ARE WORDS HARD TO IMAGINE WRITING, OR READING: John F. Kennedy was born a century ago. One hundred years is a meaningful milestone, a distance at which even youth seems somehow antique. The concept doesn’t square with the unlined Kennedy face, the chestnut hair, the saddle-shoed children, the fluorescent grin. Frozen in time by tragedy, forever young, Kennedy eludes the prison of the past to remain a vibrant symbol of a time when the U.S. felt strapping and full of purpose.
In another sense, though, the Kennedy centennial has arrived with impeccable timing. Although he lived to see less than half of it,
