[Oe List ...] ST Nov. 21 from Jaime

[wangzhimu2031 at aol.com]

JFK 1963


 
It was four years later after President John F. Kennedy wentdown by the grassy knoll across the downtown book depository when I firstwhiffed a lungful of Big D's arid air. We had taken exception to the irrelevant type of theological reflectionwe encountered in the backwoods of Kentucky in '65, and since we were notinclined to join the denominational services of religion, I quit perusingThomas' tome! 
 
Before heading back out to the Orient, however, a friend inChicago told me to get in touch with a former Manila missionary who was thenin-charge of students' affairs at a Theology School in Dallas, Texas,reportedly more open-minded than the warm-hearted but parochial one I had westof the Appalachia.  
 
Having been lured into the Protestant chapel by the likes ofJohn A. T. Robinson's invitatory Honestto God, and the fresh winds of biblical scholarship and practicalspirituality offered by theologs (sorry girls, church patriarchy of the 60s wasfirmly in place) like the NT scholar Rudolf Bultmann, the evangelical DietrichBonheoffer, the urbane Paul Tillich and the New England ethicists, the Niebuhrbrothers, with collegial welcome from Vatican II, Hans Kung and the venerablePierre Tielhard de Chardin, I was not inclined to master the litany ofclassical pat answers as I was eagerly intent in sharpening realistic andauthentic life questions. 
 
In the Dallas of '67, I was shocked to find out that JFK wasstill one of Dallas' least-favored Presidents; there were some who actuallyheld Lee Harvey Oswald as some kind of a folk hero!  A block from my dorm was home to the JohnBirch Society.  To their credit, themembers did look like children of the washed and well off, clean-shaven andneck-tied.  My anticolonial third worldpolitical orientation was not one of their favored homebrew.  The school, in spite of its laissez fairscholastic tradition was still a denominational school for pastors of localcongregations, and some drove wearing wide brim hats in pick-ups to the schoolyard displaying a rifle rack behind the driver's seat.
 
We remember this because November 22 marks the 50th year ofthe assassination of JFK in Dallas, an occasion that brought tears to ourinnocent teenage eyes while we as a part-time working college student DJ'd andread news at a local radio station in the Cagayan valley in '63.  
 
Huff Posts recently carried an article with a JFKhand-written speech that was to be delivered in Austin, Texas on the evening ofthe fateful day.  The speech's ending,addressed to the Democratic Party in Texas, went:
 
Neither the fanatics nor thefaint-hearted are needed.  And our dutyas a Party is not to our Party alone, but to the nation, and, indeed, to allmankind ... So let us not be petty when our cause is so great. Let us notquarrel amongst ourselves when our Nation's future is at stake ... determinedthat this land we love shall lead all mankind into new frontiers of peace andabundance.
 
Thevoice of America's Camelot was stilled that day before it had the chance toutter those words.  
 
TheIvy league look of our Methodist-related school by Central Expressway onHighland Park belied its vaunted progressive credentials as children offamilies dripping in crude drove their V-8 guzzlers on campus from spreadsdotted with derricks and cattle in the range. The studentry showed more frenzy in fraternity and sorority traditionsthan the scholastic virtues of academé. Like the manicured lawns in the surrounding homes, University yards werekept trimmed, the buildings swept clean, and residences maintained by southernblacks and Mejico Tejano servants who appeared properly cowed still wearingimaginary white gloves to do their chores.
 
Itdid not take long before our youthful gait joined the parliament of the street,holding vigil by the flagpole with a professor prayerfully protesting the warin Vietnam; we also walked with placards in front of a Washateria near theHilton that displayed a sign: "For Whites Only."  As a foreign student, a mendicant monastic ina sea of privilege and wealth, I was tolerated but was socially kept at adistance.
 
Theworld that snuffed JFK's breathe was alive and well in Lyndon Johnson's widesprawl of '67 when I tally-hoed into Highland Park.  A decade later, primetime TV chronicled thelives at Big D's Southfolks.  A few yearsinto the series, I gave up my "JR" nickname when the character J. R.Ewing played by smirk-faced Larry Hagman became the poster boy for Texasdrawl's smarts and cunning!
 
JFK'shope for new frontiers of peace andabundance, in his view, from a nation of immigrants to one poised to send ahuman to the moon, continued as thenation's metaphor to justify military expansion, its arrogance rudely awakenedby the collapse of the twin towers of NYC one fateful day in September.  The shot that felled JFK in Dallas turnedinto a booming crash in New York with repercussions haunting corridors ofpowers that do not tire in spit-polishing Uncle Sam's uniformed soul. 
 
Fiftyyears later, the nation struggles with its undocumented immigrants.  A message we saw on a young boy's t-shirtwould have made JFK smile: there are no immigrants on planet earth! 
 


Jaime Vergara
wangzhimu2031 at aol.com

yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!

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