JFK files: Reopening of old wounds

BABE'S EYE VIEW FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

- AMBASSADOR B. ROMUALDEZ

It was the early morning of Nov. 23, 1963 when my mother—a conservative closed Catholic or "cerrada Catolica" as they say in Spanish—woke me up saying with fervent urgency: "reza tu para el presidente de America" (pray for the president of the United States).

JFK was a Catholic himself—in fact, the first Catholic president of the United States—perhaps the reason why it is not surprising many Filipinos continue to remember JFK to this day. For many reasons, the assassination of John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 has always been etched in my mind, even if I was only in my teens when it happened.

When I visited an aunt in Washington, DC during the summer of 1972, she brought me to the late president's gravesite at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. After I became ambassador to the United States in 2017, we opened our new Philippine consulate in Houston, Texas. I then had the chance to pass by Dallas and visit the Dealey Plaza Museum (formerly the Texas School Book Depository). I went up to the sixth floor and peered from the southeast corner window where the sniper fired shots at the open presidential limousine slowly traversing Elm Street with JFK, his wife Jackie and Texas Governor John Connally.

It was really poignant to see the exact spot on Elm Street—marked by an "X"—where an assassin's bullet ended the life of the president whose term in office was retrospectively referred to as the "Camelot era," marked by the youthful idealism and high hopes associated with the Kennedy administration.