Fly me to the moon, this day in history a nostalgic memory of 1963

Carol Forsloff --This day in history, September 21, 1963,  the nation had a young President John F. Kennedy proposing joint space ventures with Russia, while love was in the air but also political strife.  



While contemporary Americans, of both political parties, claim John F. Kennedy as their hero, his tenure as President brought a rush of exuberance about the possible but at the same time entrenchment in the past about political enemies within and without.

The Red scare was fully alive, with the fear of missiles in Cuba aimed at the U.S. while black folks lined up for voting privileges and the right to attend school in places where many people violently opposed the idea.

Kennedy was that young fellow whose office was bought by his father, who was called a socialist, a Commie sympathizer, someone imposing virtual martial law over the country in forcing integration on white Americans who felt their culture would be damned forever as a consequence.

But life moved on, without Kennedy, of course, his death from an assassin's bullet that left him no longer a target of hate but a hero in decades later.

It was an era where turmoil came in waves following Kennedy's death, where Lyndon Johnson, the heir, was never a match for a young, handsome man whose image remains untouched in its forever young, forever wonderful way.



Fly me to the moon was the Kennedy dream, when men would conquer speace and come together in the adventure, as Kennedy proposed on this day in 1963, even as the space programs today are back-shelved in a recession of an uncertain future.  Space exploration is no longer the symbol of optimism and hope but a past of achievement, of nostalgia instead.

But there are those who remember when adventurous notions were made real, when a young President, despite vilification, set standards that years later people seek to emulate.   Fly me to the moon speaks of the ultimate love, as flying to space was man's ultimate dream and remains that way, decades later.