Remarks Of Senator Patrick Leahy On The Senate Floor
Tribute To President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
November 20, 2003

I would like to talk for a moment about a more personal matter. Here we are today, November 20, 2003, just two days away from November 22. I think back to 40 years ago on November 22, 1963. I was living in Washington, D.C., at that time, as a young law student. My wife, Marcelle, and I were living in a small basement apartment. She was working as a nurse at the VA hospital, then called Mount Alto, up on Wisconsin Avenue, where the Russian Embassy is now. I was going to Georgetown Law School downtown here in Washington.

They say that anybody who was old enough to remember on that November 22 remembers exactly where they were when they heard the news about President Kennedy's assassination. That is true of anybody I have ever spoken with.

I was in the law school library and one of my classmates, who was not a supporter of President Kennedy, came in and told me the President had been shot. I told him this was really not funny, and then I realized he was crying. He was a person who had never voted for President Kennedy but realized the enormity of what had happened. When I saw his tears, I knew it had to be true.

My wife and I did not own a car at the time. I went outside and hailed a cab to head back to our apartment. My wife had worked the whole night before, and she was home asleep. I did not want to call her. I wanted to tell her in person what had happened.

I think I probably got in the only cab in all of Washington that did not have a radio. You can imagine my frustration as we started through the Washington traffic. As we drove down K Street, where many stockbrokers have their offices, we could see the screen that normally displayed stock prices was blank. That was an obvious signal that they had closed the markets in New York.

I saw Mrs. Kennedy's brother-in-law. As he would be chauffeured in a Rolls-Royce to his brokerage house each morning, I would watch with envy from the bus as I went to work. I saw him running into the street, frantic, trying to hail a cab. I saw a police officer directing traffic with tears coming down his face.

When I got to our apartment, I banged on the door and woke up my wife. We turned on the television to see the now famous announcement by Walter Cronkite--taking off his horn-rimmed glasses, announcing the President was dead.

Just a short time before, President Kennedy had given a speech at American University, a speech that I thought laid out his focus for that term and what most people believed would be a second term. That was the speech in which he said, ``We must make the world safe for diversity.'' I would like to include a copy of this speech with my statement.

We should think about this quote these days. President Kennedy said, ``make the world safe for diversity.'' He did not say we should make the world an exact copy of the United States. If everybody knew they could follow their beliefs and they could follow their system of government, it would be a safer world. But that was not to be.

I remember the next day when my wife and I stood on Pennsylvania Avenue with a half a million people watching as the cortege went from the White

House up to the Capitol. It was silent. It was so silent that as we stood there, we could hear the traffic lights. Even though the street was blocked off, the traffic lights were still operating, and from eight lanes away, you could hear the click of the lights as they changed. This is with half a million or more people on that street.

Where we were standing, near the National Art Gallery, almost from the moment the cortege left the White House, we could hear the noise of the drums and the horses. I remember vividly the riderless horse, the boots turned backwards. It was a very spirited horse. I recall his name was Blackjack. He was skittering, his feet dancing on the pavement. I can still hear the click, click of his hooves. I remember a car going by with then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy in it, his chin on his hand, just staring straight ahead, not seeing any of the crowd. And, of course, I remember the coffin being brought here to lie in state in the Rotunda.

We heard the distinguished majority leader at that time, Mike Mansfield, a very close friend of John Kennedy, give a eulogy. He spoke of President Kennedy's and Jacqueline Kennedy's wedding rings. She took her husband's ring from his finger. It was 40 years ago, but I remember it so well.

I did not meet Senator Mansfield until more than 10 years later when I was the Senator-elect from Vermont. I got to know him well and realized the depth of his affection and his friendship for President Kennedy, with whom he had served in the Senate. It must have been so difficult for him to give that eulogy.

For two days, there were people--not just officials from Washington, D.C., but people from all over the country--who were stretched literally for miles, waiting to pay their respects. I can still see them huddled in their coats with frost from their breath in the air as they stood in line all night.

We stayed at our apartment to watch the funeral, because we were expecting our first child. We felt the crowd would have made it too difficult to go back downtown.

At the funeral, there were heads of state marching from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to St. Matthews. There were Prime Ministers, Presidents, Kings, Princes, and dictators. Someone came up with the idea of having the representatives march based on the name of their country. The head of France marched next to head of Ethiopia. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia marched next to Charles de Gaulle.

The interesting thing about this is the way the world came together. In fact, for a while there was a rumor that Premier Khrushchev might come. Remember, this was the height of the Cold War. This was when President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev had stared across oceans at each other during the Cuban missile crisis. Khrushchev was dissuaded from coming by security considerations. Instead, he personally went to the American Embassy to sign the book of condolences. This was the kind of unity that was felt around the world.

Actually, I cannot think of any time when we felt that kind of unity and support for the United States, until the tragedy, 38 years later, of September 11.

Everybody watched the television, listened to the radio, or stood downtown to watch the funeral. We saw on television planes fly by in a missing man formation followed by Air Force One tipping its wing in salute. We ran outside just in time to see the planes which we had seen seconds before on television fly over our heads.

Looking around, everybody else had run outside too. We stood there, neighbors and strangers.

At that time, there was so much optimism, so much hope, even though it was at the height of the Cold War, and even though we had just experienced the Cuban missile crisis. After the death of President Kennedy, we felt so much of this optimism was lost.

I saw the unity come back after September 11. I don't know if the optimism will ever came back fully. We were optimistic of many things.

In my lifetime, we have seen so many wonderful advances in science. When I was young, we had to worry about polio. Our children and my two grandchildren will never have to worry about those kinds of things. Our country has had many wonderful advances and much to be optimistic about. There was unity and support from around the world for the United States right after that event, as there was right after September 11. We are now in a time where that unity is missing. I hope it will come back.

I hope this weekend all Members of this body--most of us are old enough to remember that day--I hope we stop and think what is best for this country. It is time to start working together more closely, with more support for each other and the country, and it is time to help restore some of the optimism. We are a great country. We have survived world wars, civil wars, Presidential assassinations, and terrorist attacks. We can survive much more--if not for ourselves, for our children and for our grandchildren.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print President Kennedy's 1963 commencement address delivered at American University.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

Remarks of President John F. Kennedy, Jr. at American University, Washington D.C., June 10, 1963

President Anderson, members of the faculty, Board of Trustees, distinguished guests, my old colleague, Senator Bob Byrd, who has earned his degree through many years of attending night law school, while I am earning mine in the next 30 minutes, ladies and gentlemen:

It is with great pride that I participate in this ceremony of the American University, sponsored by the Methodist Church, founded by Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, and first opened by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This is a young and growing university, but it has already fulfilled Bishop Hurst's enlightened hope for the study of history and public affairs in a city devoted to the making of history and to the conduct of the public's business. By sponsoring this institution of higher learning for all who wish to learn whatever their color or their creed, the Methodists of this area and the nation deserve the nation's thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating.

Professor Woodrow Wilson once said that every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time, and I am confident that the men and women who carry the honor of graduating from this institution will continue to give from their lives, from their talents, a high measure of public service and public support.

'`There are few earthly things more beautiful than a University,'' wrote John Masefield, in his tribute to the English Universities--and his words are equally true here. He did not refer to spires and towers, to campus greens and ivied walls. He admired the splendid beauty of the University, he said, because it was ``a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see.''

I have, therefore, chose this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is to rarely perceived--yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace--the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living--the kind that enables man and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all of the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by the wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations unborn.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles--which can only destroy and never create--is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war--and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament--and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitude--as individuals and as a Nation--for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward--by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the Cold War and toward freedom and peace here at home.

First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many of us think it is unreal. But that is dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable--that mankind is doomed--that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade--therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable--and we believe they can do it again.

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