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The city’s plan for commemorating the 50th anniversary of John F.
Kennedy’s assassination calls for the right ingredients: simplicity,
dignity and focus on the slain president’s memory.
And it places the program of Nov. 22, 2013, in the spot where, Dallas
has seen from experience, people will want to be.
Dealey Plaza, consecrated in national tragedy, evokes emotion like no
other place. On next year’s observance of that tragedy, the intensity of
that emotion will be like no other time, and it will exert a strong pull
on those who want to join in honoring Kennedy’s legacy.
Holding next year’s public memorial in Dealey Plaza is a good call, even
though it brings with it logistical challenges. The plan to limit access
to the area will ensure dignity for the presentation, which is
envisioned as lasting no more than 45 minutes. Organizers also want to
make sure it doesn’t become a VIP-only event.
After the memorial, conisisting of a few speakers and music, access to
Dealey Plaza will be unrestricted, which is the way it should be.
It’s clear there are a lot of details to work out, but this plan is on
the right track.
The fundamental starting point is sound: The commemoration will be
focused on Kennedy, whose memory still electrifies the imagination. The
fact that he was slain in the heart of Dallas has caused this city
decades of sorrow and shame.
Although the nation’s eyes will be trained on Dealey Plaza again next
Nov. 22, it is not a time for Dallas to seek its own catharsis. Instead,
it will be a time, as Mayor Mike Rawlings told this newspaper, for a
serious, respectful ceremony that honors Kennedy’s life and leadership.
Rawlings also made a good choice in asking civic leader and
philanthropist Ruth Sharp Altshuler to chair the commemoration’s
steering committee. With a heart for the city’s needs, through decades
of service leading boards and fund drives, Altshuler also has a personal
connection with the events of November 1963. She was among those
gathered for the Trade Mart luncheon to welcome the president — a
banquet room that reacted in horror as the awful news spread. She was
also a member of the grand jury that indicted Jack Ruby three days later
for the murder of presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
The broad-based committee draws on many other key leaders, including
vice chair Linda Pitts Custard, a longtime charity leader; U.S. Trade
Ambassador and former Mayor Ron Kirk; and attorney Ken Menges, chairman
of the Sixth Floor Museum board.
There is no subject of greater sensitivity that Dallas deals with on an
ongoing basis. It’s also one that stirs strong individual emotions. The
job of finding the right tone in commemorating that day and the nation’s
loss is a tough one, but the broad outlines are in place.
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