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<xml><p>Volume : SIRS 1991 History, Article 02
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Subject: Keyword(s) : <ent type='PERSON'>KENNEDY</ent> and ASSASSINATION
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Title : A Remembrance of <ent type='PERSON'>Kennedy</ent>
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Author : <ent type='PERSON'>Jim Henderson</ent>
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Source : <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent> Times Herald (<ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Texas</ent>)
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Publication Date : Nov. 20, 1983
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Page Number(s) : Special Sec. 1+
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</p>
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<p>
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. . . Reprinted with permission from
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<ent type='ORG'>DALLAS TIMES HERALD</ent>
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(<ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Texas</ent>)
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Nov. 20, 1983, Special Section, pp. 1+
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</p>
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<p>
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A REMEMBRANCE OF <ent type='PERSON'>KENNEDY</ent>
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by <ent type='PERSON'>Jim Henderson</ent>
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Staff Writer
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</p>
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<p>
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'Let the word go forth from this time and place...that the torch
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has been passed to a new generation of <ent type='NORP'>Americans</ent>--born in this
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century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace,
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proud of our ancient heritage.'
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</p>
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<p>
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After 20 years, the events seem as compressed as a leanly
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edited videotape.
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</p>
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<p>
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A sunny day, a dark convertible, a steady din rebounding
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from the canyon walls above a crowded street, three cracks from a
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rifle in a sniper's nest, a scramble below, engines racing, a
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sobbing black woman outside Parkland Memorial Hospital, a
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policeman shot across town, a pronouncement of death, a scrawny,
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handcuffed suspect in a corridor with <ent type='PERSON'>Jack Ruby</ent>'s .38 exploding
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in his belly.
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</p>
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<p>
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The nation was stunned by the images that were transmitted
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from <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent>--hard images formed in terse, teletype prose and more
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vivid ones fashioned from bits and pieces of celluloid.
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</p>
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<p>
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<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> paused to watch the newsreel.
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</p>
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<p>
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A new President quickly sworn in and airlifted into command,
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a bloodstained widow never far from the coffin, a change to
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black, a bewildered daughter kneeling before a flag-draped box in
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the Capitol rotunda, the wintry streets of the capital, a dark
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riderless horse with empty boots facing backward in the stirrups,
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a slow-moving caisson, a young boy saluting the honor guard
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carrying his father to <ent type='ORG'>Arlington National Cemetery</ent>, the lighting
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of the eternal flame.
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</p>
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<p>
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On the day John F. <ent type='PERSON'>Kennedy</ent> was buried, <ent type='PERSON'>Alistair Cooke</ent> wrote:
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"He was snuffed out. In that moment, all the decent grief of a
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nation was taunted and outraged. So along with the sorrow, there
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is a desperate and howling note from over the land. We may pray
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on our knees, but when we get up from them, we cry with the poet:
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Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the
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dying of the light."
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</p>
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<p>
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It is only in memory that the howling note from those four
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days flits past. Behind the newsreel, the hours were agonizing
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and interminable. For many, particularly in <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent>, time moved as
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slowly as a motorcade or a horse-drawn caisson.
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</p>
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<p>
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Erik Jonsson, then-president of the <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent> Citizens Council,
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would recall the anxiety he felt when the President did not show
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up on schedule for a luncheon at the Trade Mart. What's going on?
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he asked himself over and over as the wait, only a few moments in
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duration, seemed endless.
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</p>
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<p>
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After 12:33 p.m. Nov. 22, 1963, the time the first news
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bulletin notified the republic that its President had been shot
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in <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent>, the city stood motionless and helpless, waiting for
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the firestorm of scorn. It came in searing, overlapping bursts.
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"Are these human beings or are these animals?" <ent type='PERSON'>Adlai Stevenson</ent>
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had asked moments after he escaped from a violent crowd in <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent>
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a month earlier.
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</p>
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<p>
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The world looked again at <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent> with the same question. It
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would seem, in the slow-motion drift of events, that the answer
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would never come. <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent> mourned the assassination as the rest of
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the nation mourned it, as a deeply personal tragedy.
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Schoolteachers wept as they broke the news to their classes. Men
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cried in public. Rage and shame and guilt and dread melted into
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one great immobilizing glob of emotional turmoil.
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</p>
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<p>
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An eternity, two hours and 20 minutes, passed before the
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truth would be known. Kennedy's assassin was not of <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent>, was
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far removed from the nation's perception of the city and the
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city's own worst fears of itself.
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</p>
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<p>
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In time, the world, as well as <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent>, would believe the
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city was merely caught in one of history's inscrutable warps,
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that it was only by chance that the light passing through the
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long prism of that era intersected in Dealey Plaza.
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</p>
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<p>
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The howl that was heard through the dark night of those
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times had the tone of a primal scream, a victim raging against a
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felon. In truth, it was a cry of national doubt, of the sense
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that <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> would not be the same. More than mere innocence was
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lost that day in <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent>. With it went the cable that anchored the
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nation to its sense of order.
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</p>
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<p>
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To the historians who define eras in terms of events rather
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than years, the decade of the '60s was born in <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent>.
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</p>
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<p>
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In a great, shuddering spasm, the fragile floodgates that
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had held back the reservoir of a restless social movement was
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punctured by the bullets that rained down from the <ent type='GPE'>Texas</ent> School
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Book Depository.
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</p>
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<p>
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Within months, <ent type='GPE'>America</ent> would experience the first of her
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long hot summers, just the beginning of another newsreel: the
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dogs and fire hoses of <ent type='GPE'>Birmingham</ent>, the first smiling <ent type='NORP'>Marines</ent>
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marching into <ent type='GPE'>Vietnam</ent> and returning in body bags, campus radicals
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occupying the administration building at <ent type='GPE'>Columbia</ent> University,
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rioting outside <ent type='ORG'>the Democratic National Convention</ent> in <ent type='GPE'>Chicago</ent>,
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the fires of <ent type='GPE'>Watts</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Newark</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Detroit</ent>, Dr. Strangelove,
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<ent type='ORG'>Apollo</ent> 11, <ent type='GPE'>Woodstock</ent>, <ent type='PERSON'>Charles Manson</ent>, the cultural revolution,
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the counterculture revolution, the sexual revolution, the
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yippies, the hippies, the peaceniks and the crazies.
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</p>
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<p>
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In 1968, <ent type='PERSON'>Stuart Udall</ent>, secretary of interior for both
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<ent type='PERSON'>Kennedy</ent> and <ent type='PERSON'>Johnson</ent>, was asked his opinion of the times, which
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seemed to be reeling out of control. He offered a sober, but
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startling, observation.
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</p>
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<p>
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"This may be remembered," he said, "as the most creative
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time in our history."
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</p>
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<p>
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It did not seem such an outrageous judgment when the
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hurricane had passed. A sorting out had occurred in the storm.
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Not many years would pass before a black preacher from <ent type='GPE'>Chicago</ent>
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would run for the presidency. Women would flood the work place
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and supervise staffs of men. Men with an eye on <ent type='ORG'>the White House</ent>
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could talk of a female running mate without risking ridicule.
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Wars would be harder to make, nuclear waste harder to conceal,
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books harder to burn, air harder to pollute, justice harder to
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deny.
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</p>
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<p>
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<ent type='GPE'>America</ent> was starkly different. Kennedy's presidency and his
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assassination may have been essential to unlocking the passions
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of the time, but what the land became was neither his legacy, nor
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Oswald's nor <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent>.'
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</p>
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<p>
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After the trauma and shame and guilt were gone, the judgment
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of history would be that <ent type='PERSON'>Kennedy</ent> and <ent type='PERSON'>Oswald</ent>, <ent type='PERSON'>Edwin Walker</ent> and
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<ent type='PERSON'>Martin Luther King</ent>, <ent type='PERSON'>George Wallace</ent> and <ent type='PERSON'>Stokely Carmichael</ent>, Angela
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Davis and <ent type='PERSON'>George Lincoln Rockwell</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Los Angeles</ent>,
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<ent type='GPE'>Memphis</ent> and <ent type='GPE'>Birmingham</ent>, <ent type='GPE'>Detroit</ent> and Da Nang were fragments of the
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<ent type='GPE'>America</ent>n character, slivers of the dream and the nightmare.
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</p>
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<p>
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The legacy of that sunlit moment in <ent type='GPE'>Dallas</ent> was a nation's
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fretful and all-consuming search for itself, a long and howling
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rage against the dying of the light.
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</p>
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<div>
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</div></xml>
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