John F. Kennedy left this world fifty years ago. The U-2 shoot down, Cuban Missile Crisis, Bay of Pigs and what would be the defining moment of the US Civil Rights Movement, the Birmingham Campaign were recent history. I had no idea how much the young president, only 46 at the time of his assassination, had had to face during his 20 months in office (January 1961 – October 1963). I would, later in life, come to appreciate my parents support and personal engagement in the Civil Rights movement, why my father followed the call and left the private sector and joined the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and why Kennedy was revered both then and now.

It can be summed up in one word: Hope.

I was in the first semester of third grade at the Department of Defense school in Ankara, Turkey. My father’s work had taken us to Turkey where he worked for the USAID. To be kid in Ankara at that time was heaven, and while not all the populace agreed with US foreign policy, on October 22, 1963 it seemed tears were flowing from all in that nation. But what I remember most were the tears of my parents. They too hailed from Massachusetts, they too had worked hard to get Kennedy elected, and they too had changed their lives to answer the call, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,”

That call shaped my family, it defined service to nation and others. It is my parents legacy. A legacy my sibling and I have embraced going forward. Demonstrating, the response to President Kennedy’s admonishment is:  We can do much more than we think we are capable.

On this day, the 50th anniversary of your death, all we can say is, Johnny, we hardly knew ye.