A Road Trip to Arlington
An essay about two American tragedies
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated sixty years ago today. I wasn’t alive then, but I have a memory related to the tragedy. It happened in November of 2001, two months after the September 11th attacks.
I was 22 years old. I attended college in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA. The man I was dating and I decided to take a road trip to Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington is two hours from Gettysburg. We drove by the Pentagon on the way there. The building was damaged after the September 11th attack. It looked like a giant shark took a bite out of it. I’d seen pictures of the Pentagon on TV, but it was different to see it in person. It was a sobering moment to see the damage. A total of 189 people died there– 64 people on the hijacked plane and 125 in the Pentagon. I felt the weight of the moment as we passed.
We arrived at Arlington shortly after and walked to JFK’s grave. It was drizzling, and the sky was gray. It was so quiet. There were a few people at the Kennedy gravesite. No one spoke. The mood was somber…
