By Senator Jacab Javits at a
Senate Memorial Service (1963)
Mr. President, hundreds of thousands of
words have been published, and hundreds of thousands more have been
spoken into the microphones of the world since John F. Kennedy was
struck down in Dallas, but none of them were really adequate. Words
never are in the face of senseless tragedy.
Words cannot describe how the American people felt when they lost their
president. Not until the vacuum of disbelief was filled with the horror
of comprehension did any of us realize how much we identified
ourselves, even apart from personal friendship, with the president --
this intellectual, vigorous young man -- and he would have been that if
he were eighty -- expressing the very essence of the youthfulness of
our nation. It seems of little consequence now that there were
political differences, or objections to this or that legislative
product, though as far as I am concerned there was a very large measure
of agreement. What matters is that feeling of loss -- that personal
sense of emptiness -- that all Americans feel because their president
was cut off in the prime of life. As a nation, we have lost a president
who understood the institution of the presidency, gloried in its
overwhelming responsibilities, and discharged his duties with dash and
joy, which were an inspiration to the youth of our nation.
But John F. Kennedy was more than that. He was a man filled with the
joy of living. He was a husband, a father -- and my friend.
For myself, I remember coming to Congress the dame day he did. We were
sworn in together on the same January day in 1947. A photograph on my
office wall shows that we two, returning veterans, looked a little
uncomfortable at the moment in our civilian clothes. It shows us
looking at the Taft-Ellender-Wagner housing bill, and it recalls the
first job we did together when we called on the National Veterans
Housing Conference of 1947, which we had organized, to back this bill.
It was the beginning of an association which extended throughout our
careers in the House and Senate. We collaborated in many bipartisan
matters, as is not unusual in the Congress. Indeed, in our service
together in the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, we worked
closely -- as did Senator Morse and others -- on the minimum wage bill,
the Labor-Management Disclosure Act, and other similar measures which
were major aspects of Senator Kennedy's legislative career.
I am a personal witness to the fact that he was resourceful,
optimistic, and creative. He became and was my friend, and this is a
deep source of gratification to me and to Mrs. Javits and our
family.
Mrs. Javits, too, knew President Kennedy well and admired him greatly.
She will, I know, always think of the president's graciousness and the
warmth of personal friendship which he exuded.
Only a week before his tragic passing, I saw him in the Oval Room at
the White House when he accepted the report of the Advisory Committee
on Medical Care for the Aged, in which Senator Anderson and I joined,
and issued a statement offering encouragement and help.
He was vigorous and healthy and smiling and friendly -- a complete
human being, concerned about other human beings who were no longer as
vigorous and not quite as healthy as they used to be.
This concern for the unfortunate by a many with all of the social
graces and all the social status and as much power as America allows
one man was what made him so much the symbol of the youth of our
country. His wife, Jacqueline, who has given Americans so much reason
to be very proud of her and of all American womanhood as she reflected
in it, in these last mournful weeks, in the way she carried herself,
has said the most beautiful tribute -- that John F. Kennedy had the
"hero idea of history," and that she did not want people to forget John
F. Kennedy -- the man -- and replace him with some shadowy figure in
the history books.
She need not fear that. There are already thousands upon thousands of
people in the world working to keep his memory alive. I have been
privileged to join with many others in this body in cosponsoring a bill
to rename the National Cultural Center and make it a living, vibrant
memorial to this vibrant man who loved the arts. And with Senator
Humphrey, I have joined in a bill establishing a commission to ensure
that only the most appropriate memorials be created in his honor.
These are well-meaning, deeply sincere tokens -- necessary, but still
tokens. In reality it will be John F. Kennedy's youthful freshness in
his aspirations for our country that will keep his memory fresh.
In a real sense we, his former colleagues in the Congress, are the only
ones with the power to write words which can transform these
aspirations into memorials with meaning. We can write legislative acts,
like a meaningful civil rights law, which would consecrate and
perpetuate John F. Kennedy's love for personal and national dignity. We
can exorcise from our country -- and the American people are doing that
even now -- those extremes of hatred and disbelief in public affairs
which create a climate in which terrible acts become much more
likely.
Acts such as these will be his final memorials. It is within our power
to establish them. Perhaps his noblest memorial is that he would have
wanted such memorials almost as no others.
So, in common with my colleagues in this solemn service -- and that is
what this is today -- I bespeak for Mrs. Javits and my children -- and
I would place their names in the Record, so that as they read this
Record when they grow up, I hope they will read their names in it and
see that their father spoke with deep sympathy -- Joy, Joshua, and
Carla, to Mrs. Kennedy and the children, and to the president's father
and mother and his brothers and sisters and their families our deepest
sympathy on this terrible bereavement, for our nation and for all
mankind, and in the deep expectation that flowers will grow from his
grave for the benefit of man.
