Nice locomotive JFK. I wonder if the original stickers are still on the back. :O:

http://i.ebayimg.com/08/%21B41vF3wBW...Q%7E%7E_35.JPG

Kennedy apparently read Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, which kept him mindful of doing Stupid Things during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not escalating the crisis and possibly preventing a nuclear World War III would easily make him the greatest President, ever, IMHO. Of course, you can't prove a negative, etc.

I remember going on watch at midnight on November 22nd 1963 and hearing the torpedomen talk about how good a president Kennedy had been.

I said, "What do you mean saying that he was a good president"?

That's when they told me that he had been shot and died in Dallas.

I was just 19 years old, a sonarman on the USS Salmon SS-573 ten miles off the coast of Russia watching for test firing of their missiles so our spooks could copy the code the missile sent back.

We all thought it was over that Russia had done the dirty deed and that we were going to war.

I was just less than a month shy of my 13th birthday on 11/22/63; I was in class, in a Catholic school, when the Mother Superior came on the public address system to announce, first, Kennedy had been shot. She asked us to pray for him. A short while later, she came back on to announce Kennedy had died of his wounds. School was dismissed and I went home to spend the next few days watching all that took place afterwards.

Five years later, I was a volunteer in the Bobby Kennedy presidential campaign in Los Angeles during the California Primary in 1968. At the last Bobby Kennedy public function in Los Angeles, before the California Primary, at the Olvera Street Plaza downtown, I got to meet and shake hands with Bobby. I remember how small he seemed but also how so much power and confidence flowed from him. I also noted that he had a bit of an air of sadness about him and I later wondered if, perhaps, he felt it should have been John meeting the crowds and accepting the accolades...

While I was very young, I remember the pictures in front of me, :yep:

Now I find that quite fascinating...living history :sunny:

An amazing testinmony, that must have been a worrying for Americans. I know there was much concern in the UK, but the missiles where't in Ireland, thanks.:up:

Should be required reading on college. Pretty much any of Tuchman's books should.

Interestingly, tell more.....about your experience.