Nov. 22, 1963 was an unusually warm day in Pittsburgh. My mother, who had just learned she was pregnant with me, took advantage of the weather to wash the windows of our house. She leaned out of one just as our neighbor Peg burst out her front door screaming, “The president has been shot.”
They huddled together and watched the day unfold. I heard that story countless times growing up, because that day is etched permanently into the memory of anyone who was alive when it happened.
Like most people my age, I grew up with President Kennedy as a mystical figure. By the age of six, I was obsessed. I could name every president in order, including their middle initials. My first book was called Meet John F. Kennedy, part of a series about famous presidents. I carried it everywhere. My second-grade teacher took me to the corner drugstore to buy presidential “baseball” cards. Once I got President Kennedy’s card, I didn’t need her to take me anymore.
My grandfather kept busts of President Kennedy and his brother Robert on a shelf in his home. I was in awe of them. One Christmas, he gave me my own, of President Kennedy. I treasured it.
Serendipity continued to follow me. My first job out of college was working on Capitol Hill as a press secretary for my congressman from Pittsburgh. My roommate worked for Sen. Ted Kennedy. My congressman partnered with Sen. Kennedy to get the minimum wage bill through Congress in 1989, which President George H. W. Bush signed into law in the Oval Office.
I was there, along with my boss, Sen. Kennedy, House and Senate leadership, and Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole. I was there to write the press release that would accompany the photograph I took. I remember thinking, “This is where President Kennedy sat.”
After moving to New York City, I was walking through Central Park when I saw John F. Kennedy Jr. I ran over to meet him. His good looks were distracting. I’ve interviewed Shirley MacLaine a couple of times. She knew President Kennedy well, and she told me his good looks were distracting too.
After JFK Jr. was tragically killed, I was standing at the Estée Lauder counter at Bloomingdale’s, one morning before Christmas. Caroline Kennedy was beside me. I told her how sorry I was about her brother.
Every time I return to Washington, D.C., I take long runs through the city. I always, always do a lap around the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Every time, the building rekindles my memories and my love for President Kennedy.
I have always considered myself extraordinarily lucky to have had so many brushes with the Kennedy legacy.
So I think I speak for many who idolize the slain president when I say how heartbroken I was to see Donald Trump’s insidious name placed above — above, no less — President Kennedy’s name on a building, a monument, that exists solely to honor him.
There is no end to the anger I feel when Trump does something obnoxious, revolting, unconstitutional, dangerous, or stupid. But seeing those letters, spelling the most corrosive name in American history, appear next to one of the most revered names made me profoundly sad. A tear comes to my eye even writing this, thinking of President Kennedy, how much he meant to me, to all of us, and how Trump has the gall to besmirch his name.
President Kennedy will always be more magical, more important, more revered, and more loved than Donald Trump could ever hope to be.
Kennedy represented hope, equality, courage, empathy, and the future.
“For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”
There is no retribution in Kennedy’s soaring prose like that.
“Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.”
Trump treats children as disposable inconveniences.
“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
Trump habitually flips Kennedy’s most famous line.
And most applicable of all, especially to why the Kennedy Center bears his name:
“If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.”
The world was an infinitely better place when John Fitzgerald Kennedy represented America.
“Ich bin ein Berliner,” he told half a million Germans.
“Céad Míle Fáilte,” he said in Ireland to hundreds of thousands.
“Viva Costa Rica, arriba Costa Rica, y muchas gracias,” he told students in Costa Rica.
At home and abroad, Kennedy was monumental, and there are monuments to him around the world. At Runnymede in England, a JFK memorial stands as a symbol of Anglo-American democracy. In Jerusalem, Yad Kennedy rises from a forested hill. In Galway, Ireland, a statue honors his ancestral roots and the speech he gave there. From London to Montreal to Central America, Kennedy’s legacy is etched into the landscape.
I live in New York City. I fly out of Kennedy Airport. In New Jersey, I run along John F. Kennedy Boulevard, with its breathtaking view of Manhattan. And I still have my John F. Kennedy bust.
Kennedy still lives within us. He surrounds us globally. He is permanent.
Donald Trump is temporary.
His name will end up in the trash bin of history. And the letters spelling his name on John F. Kennedy’s memorial will come down, and they, too, will end up where they belong.
- John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her “Best 25 of 2025.”
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