Today marks the twelfth anniversary of the premiere of the American Experience documentary JFK, first broadcast on PBS on November 11, 2013.
I remember attending a forum at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum two weeks and four days earlier that year, an event presented in collaboration with American Experience.
That same evening, I met Andrew Young, the civil rights activist and diplomat, and Robert Dallek, the historian and author of several presidential biographies.
Both were commentators in the documentary.
I had already met Harris Wofford, President Kennedy’s civil rights advisor, that August, and would later meet historian Evan Thomas in 2014 and Jean Kennedy Smith in 2017. They, too, were among the documentary’s commentators.
The film has remained one of my favorites because those encounters gave it a living connection. It is one thing to watch a documentary about history; it is another to have met some of the people whose voices shaped it. Their presence, even in memory, adds a kind of quiet warmth to the screen. Years later, I found a DVD copy of JFK at Newbury Comics in Cambridge in March of 2021.
Though I already have a digital version, I still keep the disc as something tangible, a reminder of how deeply the story has accompanied me through the years.
As I type this entry, I have the documentary playing on my laptop. Hearing it again after my recent pilgrimage to Hyannis gives the narration a new depth. The images of Cape Cod, the beaches, the Hyannis Armory, all of it now feels personal, familiar, and alive.
When the film reaches the moment of President Kennedy’s victory speech, I can picture myself standing outside the Armory, where he spoke those words:
“And I can assure you that every degree of mind and spirit that I possess will be devoted to the long-range interest of the United States and to the cause of freedom around the world. So now my wife and I prepare for a new administration and for a new baby. Thank you.”
Hearing those lines again, I see not just the black-and-white footage but the red brick and the November light. History breathes when you have stood where it happened.
The most moving part of my visit was seeing the Kennedy Compound.
I felt a little like Moses on Mount Nebo, able only to look upon the promised land from a distance. I imagined the family gathered there through the years, celebrating, mourning, and simply living their lives. I realized that these places were not just settings for history; they were homes filled with laughter, loss, and love.
When I visited the final resting place of Saoirse Kennedy Hill, I felt a quiet sadness.
She was only twenty-two years old, younger than I am now. I remember standing there with a sense of pity for a life that ended so soon, though I knew almost nothing about her at the time.
It was only after returning from Hyannis and reading White House By the Sea by Kate Storey that I began to understand who she was. Saoirse had never lived in the public eye. She was the only child of Courtney Kennedy Hill, and by all accounts she was warm, bright, and full of energy. The book describes her as having a “big personality,” the kind of presence people remembered. When she took clothes to a local seamstress, the woman asked if she was a Kennedy. While other cousins might have smiled politely, Saoirse answered without hesitation, “Yes, I am. I’m Ethel’s granddaughter.”
I once saw a photograph of her with her mother at the White House.
She looked so young, standing there where so much history had unfolded. I have often dreamed of visiting that same place myself. It moved me to realize that this young woman, who once stood on that red-carpeted drive, would later become a figure of quiet remembrance. It was not until she died that most of the public even knew her name.
Her story made me reflect on the many members of the Kennedy family who lived out of the spotlight, carrying the family legacy in ways that history rarely records. It also reminded me how brief and fragile life can be, even for those whose names are woven into national memory.
This trip, as well as the book, made me think about Jean Kennedy Smith with deeper appreciation.
I had seen places that she herself had visited. I may have been outside the Hyannis Armory, where President Kennedy gave his 1960 victory speech, but she was inside on the stage with her parents and siblings when her oldest surviving brother delivered it.
I may have been outside the Kennedy Compound, but she was familiar with its rooms and had precious memories of her time there.
Though much of White House By the Sea was tender, one passage unsettled me. After Ted Kennedy and Eunice Kennedy Shriver died in 2009, Jean, the last surviving sibling, stopped coming to the Cape, saying it was too painful, too heavy with their absence. I wondered if, when I met her in 2017, that ache still lingered, and if she ever considered visiting her childhood home one last time.
Only later did I realize another quiet truth about my journey. Joan Bennett Kennedy, who appears in the Kennedy family portrait taken just after President Kennedy’s election victory in November 1960, had died only days before I arrived in Hyannis.
By the time I walked those roads for the first time, every adult in that photograph had passed away. The houses, the church, the harbor, and the sea remained, but the world contained within that image now belonged entirely to memory. I think that realization gave the pilgrimage much of its emotional weight, though I only fully understood it afterward.
I have thought often about what this pilgrimage has meant to me. At first, it was simply a chance to visit the places where the Kennedys lived and walked, but I see now that it became something quieter and more inward. Walking through Hyannis was like walking through a mirror of my own life, a reflection of memory, faith, and time. I felt as though I had stepped into a space where the living and the remembered still shared the same air.
History has always been my refuge but being there taught me that history is not only a record of what has been. It is also a way of belonging. The Kennedys are remembered for their power and their tragedy, but what stayed with me most were the small things like the white clapboard homes, the sound of the sea behind them, the light falling across the church steps. These details reminded me that legacy is made not in moments of triumph but in how people live between them.
Each evening when I returned to my room, I wrote in silence. The words came slowly, as if I were trying to capture something I could not quite hold. The sound of distant traffic, the smell of salt in the air, and the hum of the heater became the rhythm of my reflection. I thought about the speeches I have read and the books I have collected, and how none of them can fully describe what it feels like to stand where a story began.
I realized that every pilgrimage, no matter how historical, becomes personal. It begins with admiration but ends with self-examination. I asked myself why I am drawn to this family, to these places. I think it is because their story holds the same questions that haunt all of us: What does it mean to live with purpose? How do we endure loss and still believe in hope? And what do we leave behind that might outlast us?
I think this trip has shaped my thoughts about what I want for the future. Hyannis is a quiet and modest town, but I grew to like it very much. Even now, as I settle back into my usual work and routine, I keep thinking about what life might be like if I lived there. I can picture myself in a small house with two or three bedrooms, all on one floor. On weekday mornings from Monday through Thursday, I would walk to a local CrossFit gym for the early class at five thirty. Those classes would help me meet people and become part of the community. Afterward, I would come home, shower, rest a bit, have breakfast, and then head out to work. Fridays would be lighter days, and I would spend the weekends walking around town and learning more about its history. I would hope to contribute to the Hyannis Public Library and the John F. Kennedy Hyannis Museum and make a meaningful and positive impact there. I might go into Boston once a month to visit the JFK Library or another historical site. I would also hope to contribute to telling the story of the Kennedy family to a new generation. I imagine that life there would feel peaceful, grounded, and meaningful.
The winters would be tough, but I would settle there because it would be home to me and I would make the best of it. I can imagine on very cold evenings, I would sit in my warm living room or warm home office reading and researching for papers or perhaps books for future publications. Though I would have no relatives nearby, my family could be the friends I have made on Instagram, though I know it would not be the same. I would also hope to find genuine, meaningful, and real love with someone special, hopefully with mutual interests as well.
I think I would visit the Kennedy Compound area only once a year, sometime in late October or November. If I lived there now, I would return on November twenty-second, the anniversary of President Kennedy’s death, to remember his life and legacy. I would view the house for a few minutes and then walk to the shore, sit on the granite rocks, and look out toward the sea. I would imagine him sailing his beloved Victura and think about the lands beyond the Atlantic that I have not yet seen but still hope to discover someday.
Sometimes I picture myself there again, walking along the same roads at dusk, hearing the gulls overhead, feeling the cool wind from the bay. The light would change, but the sea would remain the same. I imagine myself pausing by the memorial once more, not as a visitor retracing history, but as someone who has finally found a place to rest and reflect.
Hyannis, for me, has become more than a place on the map. It is a meeting point between memory and hope, a reminder that legacies are not only preserved in archives but in the quiet steps of those who continue to remember. Every journey there, whether by bus, by foot, or by page, feels like returning to a story that is still being written, one that asks not for grandeur, but for gratitude.
And on this Veterans Day, sixty-four years after President Kennedy spoke at Arlington National Cemetery, I want to conclude this entry with his words that still remind us of what remembrance truly means:
“Today we are here to celebrate and to honor and to commemorate the dead and the living, the young men who in every war since this country began have given testimony to their loyalty to their country and their own great courage.
We celebrate this Veterans Day for a very few minutes, a few seconds of silence and then this country's life goes on. But I think it most appropriate that we recall on this occasion, and on every other moment when we are faced with great responsibilities, the contribution and the sacrifice which so many men and their families have made in order to permit this country to now occupy its present position of responsibility and freedom...
On this Veterans Day of 1961, on this day of remembrance, let us pray in the name of those who have fought in this country's wars... that there will be no veterans of any further war—not because all shall have perished but because all shall have learned to live together in peace.”
