Friday / Weekend Open Line


In this month, there falls the 50th anniversary of one of the most unsettling events in U.S. history: the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The fourth president to be slain in a span of under 99 years and the sixth to die in office in that time, Kennedy left a vast archive of film, video and audio recordings that sustain his legacy in American consciousness. But his place in history is also upheld by living memory. In a population of some 317 million people, about 98 million Americans, or 31 percent, are age 50 and older. The number age 55 and above, that is, those that might remember the death of the president, is some 76 million, or less than a quarter of the population. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.