After a rushed greeting when the children woke, and stiff complaints from Caroline about John-John ‘messing up all her stuff,’ as she phrased it, their dad needed to be presidential and get to work. As he kissed Jackie and wished her a good day, a tear glazed his eye with thoughts of Arabella and Patrick. Such a large family they should have been, if only…


Growing rumblings of civil rights movements monopolized the morning as new information came regarding a rumored follow-up to the August 28 march on Washington, D.C. A quarter of a million rabble-rousers turned the city, nay the nation, on its heels. With pursed lips, Kennedy read the report and the hot-button issues it presented. These people wanted fair employment with decent jobs. His brow furled when he read about their cries for “Freedom” and how they tossed that word around with little concern for what it might hit. ‘Ask not…,’ he mused.


A swelling number of decent, hard-working Americans were taken in by the protesters’ demands to end segregation, regulate fair wages, and promote economic justice. For a government supposedly ‘of by and for the people’ to work, the president considered their call for voting rights, education, and long overdue civil rights protections had some merit. If they only found less annoying and obtrusive ways to do it, he would have happily considered their cause.


Other more weighty matters took center stage, though not always casting him in a favorable spotlight. This had been a remarkable year, keeping the U.S. president busy with a trip to Berlin and the situation in Vietnam steadily worsening. And that damned new British band named after an insect looked to be the ruination of modern society. Thinking Civil rights might have to wait, he shoved that file to the side of the large pile spilled over his desk.


The next brief caught his eye and stole all the glimmer from it. For weeks, Kennedy had wrestled with deciding how far to take the United States’ commitment in Vietnam. President Diem had refused his offer of safety—contingent upon his resignation—and was assassinated. Now someone had tried to kill the Commander in Chief of the United States. He pondered that coincidence with a grimace and had to leave it for later. The report in his hand topped all previous updates on the situation in East Asia. 


All U.S. military personnel, including over 1,500 military advisors in South Vietnam, have been killed. No confirmation has yet been possible as to the identity of the perpetrator or perpetrators of this heinous action and some speculation is ruminating about the use of chemical weapons.


The manila file folder hit the arm of the chair, toppled, and crashed to the floor, splaying sheets of paper over the plush rug. Names flashed over his rambling thoughts, mental photos of friends he sent in the detachment to settle the volatility in that region. 


“How did this happen? Who is responsible?”


“No one knows, Mister President. They all just… dropped dead.”