Barbie Perkins-Cooper, Author

Dearest Readers:

If you were alive on this date, November 22, 1963, do you remember what you were doing when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated?

I was just a little girl at the time, but I remember it significantly. Home from school due to the flu and asthma, I listened to the radio in my bedroom, hearing the news about the “President Has Been Shot in Dallas,” I crawled out of bed to watch TV. This was before the days of cable, MSNBC, Fox News and such, and before the days when every room in a house had television. I sat on the couch while watching the tv and the breaking news.

“How can someone shoot our President?” I asked my parents. They shushed me. Since I was so young and innocent, I learned two new vocabulary words on that date. Two words I shall never forget:

Assassination

Sniper

I loved learning new words, but when I looked these up in the dictionary, I discovered that our innocence in America was ending. “Assassination and Sniper are bad words to learn.”

I never forgot those words, nor did I forget their definitions.

Today, November 22, 2013, is the 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of President Kennedy. I fully believe he died the moment the bullet hit him. I believe he never felt any pain…just emptiness…gone in a moment.

Now older and much wiser, I have added additional words to my vocabulary, including terrorism, and other words of violence. I no longer dwell on their meanings. Our world has grown to become a world of such violence that I wish we could crawl back into time and find the peace and happiness again.

In less than one week, the USA will celebrate Thanksgiving. Many of us will celebrate with family and friends, sometimes bickering over heated discussions such as politics, ObamaCare, religion, and the Death of a President. Let us hope and pray that will ignore those topics this year, in hopes to make our visits with our families a happy time.

We must give thanks for what we have, who we are, and especially, we must give thanks to God for giving us life, prosperity and family times.

Today, let us remember the day of mourning, November 22, 1963, while recognizing that we must move forward to give thanks and appreciation to those we love. Please remember to keep our soldiers in your prayers and thoughts to. Without them and their dedication to duty, we, the United States of America, could not celebrate Thanksgiving. For today, let us unite to remember and to appreciate — LIFE! How quickly it can disappear.

Let us give thanks that we in America can agree to disagree; however, let us appreciate the beauty of life and family! After all, like President Kennedy, life is to live for the moment, in hopes for the future!