Where were you 60 years ago?

There are those days in history that most people remember where they were, what they were doing when they heard the news or witnessed the history-changing event. Among those days that live in our memory — the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001; the crash of the airplane carrying the OSU basketball team on Jan. 27, 2001; the Challenger shuttle explosion on Jan. 28, 1986; the Murrah Federal Building bombing in OKC on April 19, 1995; Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon on July 21, 1969; and, if you’re old enough, when Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

So where were you 60 years ago on Nov. 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas?

John F. Kennedy

I was in my third-grade classroom in Kansas, Okla. (Bonnie Johnson was my teacher). I remember we went to the cafeteria for our milk break, and there was a black-and-white TV broadcasting what had happened. I don’t recall necessarily understanding the importance of it all, just that it was something out of the ordinary. After all, To be sure, at least in Delaware County, it was a simpler time.

Myriad conspiracy theories followed soon after the Dealey Plaza shooting, and have continued for most of the past 60 years. Despite the findings of the Warren Commission, the number of shooters and the role of the grassy knoll remain in doubt.

Then came the coincidences, if not urban legends, that tied Kennedy to Abraham Lincoln, despite them being separated by 100 years.

Those coincidences — both of them being elect- ed to congress in ’46, both elected president in ’60, both married in their 30s to women who were in their 20s, both concerned with civil rights, both assassinated on a Friday, both of their successors named Johnson — are intriguing. Then add the connection that surfaces at this time of year — Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on Nov. 19, and Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address — just 272 words in length and delivered in less than three minutes — usually tops the list of all Presidential addresses, a list that includes:

• FDR’s “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” (March 4, 1933, inaugural address) • FDR’s “a date that will live in infamy” (Dec. 8, 1941, request for a declaration of war)

• JFK’s “ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country” (Jan. 20, 1961, inauguration speech)

• JFK’s “we choose to go to the moon and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard” (Sept. 12, 1962, space effort speech) Delivered 160 years ago on Nov. 19, 1863, at the site of the Civil War’s bloodiest battle, the Gettysburg Address — originally intended as a few perfunctory remarks from the president, but later enshrined as one of the most important oratories ever — was to commemorate a new National Cemetery at Gettysburg.

The Gettysburg Address is one of the most influential speeches of its time and is still so regarded today. Lincoln was able to convey a message of hope and determination when it was hard to have either. He spoke of the principle on which our country was founded, and embodies everything for which we stand as a country.

“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” Lincoln told those gathered for the event.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

“But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

As we remember those who have come before us — great leaders as well as those dismissed as being of little consequence — we humbly stand on their shoulders, enabling us to see farther and build on their hard work.

We are part of their legacy.

Who will be part of our legacy?

Who will stand on our shoulders?