We are coming up on the anniversary of the death of John F. Kennedy. He was assassinated on November 22, 1963. I was five months old.
My mother always told me she had me in a car seat and she was outside hanging clothes when one of the neighbors told her, and she went inside to listen to the radio, forgetting I was there because she was so upset about it.
Sometimes I wonder what life might have looked like if JFK had lived. What if that motorcade in Dallas had rolled on without gunfire? Maybe the country would have kept its faith a little longer.
In that world, perhaps I would have grown up under a different kind of light. The 1960s would have been the decade of moonshots and peace corps banners instead of assassinations and riots on the evening news.
Maybe there never would have been a Vietnam War, and the adults around me would have seemed a little less weary.
By the 1970s, the headlines might have been about science and education instead of oil and scandal. The space program would have kept that glow of possibility, and the word government wouldn’t have curdled into something said with a sneer.
My first votes might have felt like joining something noble, not choosing the lesser of two evils. (My first vote for president was in 1984.)
Out here in the Blue Ridge, life would still have been slow. The cows would have still been in the pasture, neighbors would still wave, but perhaps the undercurrent of mistrust that seeps into small towns might not have taken root.
The post office would still be the post office, not a symbol of inefficiency. Roads would get fixed because that’s what government does, not because someone fought for a grant.
Perhaps I’d have started writing sooner, believing my words could find an audience that still listened. The newspaper business might have stayed strong, respected, instead of having to justify its existence to people convinced every reporter was out to get them.
And now, in 2025, I expect this same farm would still look much as it does today, with fields and fences, deer running through the land only to vanish in mist - but with a steadier hum underneath.
Perhaps broadband would’ve arrived years earlier, powered by public investment in rural areas. Health care would be universal, not a negotiation. Schools would teach civics with pride, not apology.
Maybe there wouldn't have been so many school shootings. So many young lives cut down before life even began for them.
It’s a fantasy, sure. As a former news reporter and an amateur historian, I have read enough back issues of newspapers to know that the U.S. has always had issues. We were awful on civil rights, women's rights, and there was a Cold War going on that maybe wouldn't have ended without Ronald Reagan and which would still be ongoing.
Still, I like to think sometimes of an America that never lost its balance, where intelligence is admired and compromise isn’t considered weakness. Maybe that sounds like a The West Wing rerun, I don't know.
But what I envision is not this world. Sometimes it feels close enough to touch, but it is always out of my grasp, even if I close my eyes and imagine the news breaking in with a headline that feels like progress instead of warning.
Regardless, I can go back to work or go outside to the fields that are still real. I can take a walk and think that, like Gandalf says in The Lord of the Rings, maybe the smallest acts of kindness are what changes the world. Things like listening, telling the truth, keeping faith with the land are what hold the line between the world we have and the one we lost.
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