DEAR JOHN November 22, 1963—like September 11, 2001—was a watershed date. On one side lay the optimism of John F. Kennedy’s Camelot, on the other the disillusionment and unrest that followed his assassination. The nation is still fixated on that fateful day—the motorcade through downtown Dallas, the blood on Jackie’s pink suit, the swearing in of Lyndon Baines Johnson as the nation’s thirty-sixth president. To commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the assassination, the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, along with public television station KERA in Dallas, presents JFK: Breaking the News, a documentary about the media coverage of the tragic event narrated by Jane Pauley, which will air on PBS stations across the U.S. on November 19. Three days later, the museum will open “Remembering Jack: Intimate and Unseen Photographs of the Kennedys,”an exhibit of images by Jacques Lowe, the Kennedys’ personal photographer. On November 22 and 23, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra will perform Leonard Bernstein’s elaborate anti-war Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers, which was commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for the 1971 opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, D.C. (a portion of the companion exhibit, “Our Nation’s Stage: A Kennedy Tribute,” provided by the Sixth Floor Museum, will be displayed in the lobby of the Meyerson Symphony Center). And in Austin, another big, but gentler, work memorializing President Kennedy, JFK: The Voice of Peace, has been scheduled by the Austin Symphony early in the month (November 7 and 8). By renowned composer (and University of Texas professor) Dan Welcher, the piece features text taken from JFK’s speeches, Peace Corps volunteers’ letters, and poems that the most literary of our modern presidents treasured. The University of Texas Choral Society, cello soloist Douglas Harvey, and narrator Hugh Downs—who covered the tragedy as it unfolded—will perform under the symphony’s innovative conductor, Peter Bay. (See Austin: Music/Dance, Dallas: Music/Dance and Museums/Galleries.)
