don't let it be forgot

Don't let it be forgot /


That once there was a spot /


For one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot


____________________________













The word "Camelot" was always heard, being applied to the thousand-day Kennedy administration, January 1961 to Nov., 1963.


Why that word?


What's that mean?


What does "Camelot" have to do with modern America?


It was like a nickname or something, I thought, as it filtered into my conscious and subconscious mind and memory, throughout  my growing-up years.


Camelot.


Where does this word come from?


I didn't ask. 


I didn't have time to care. 


(Something about King Arthur legend?...?) 


Kennedy was in the past.  ("Now it's President Nixon -- and he got trouble" -- was perhaps what I used to automatically think, consigning "Kennedy-stuff" to the distant past [a decade ago, then -- now, 5 decades...])


----------------------------- I don't remember where I was or what I was watching or reading when I learned the source of the "Camelot" metaphor; somehow the information seeped into my awareness...


A week after President Kennedy's death, Jacqueline Kennedy gave an interview to journalist Theodore White





(author of The Making of the President, 1960).  White wrote it up, and it was published in Life magazine.  An excerpt:


----------------------------------- There was a thought, too, that was always with her.  "When Jack quoted something, it was usually classical," she said, "but...all I could keep thinking of is this line from a musical comedy.


At night, before we'd go to sleep, Jack liked to play some records; and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record.  The lines he loved to hear were:  Don't let it be forgot / that once there was a spot / for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot."




She...went on:  "There'll be great Presidents again -- and the Johnsons are wonderful, they've been wonderful to me -- but there'll never be another Camelot again.


Once, the more I read of history...I thought history was something that bitter old men wrote.  But...for Jack, history was full of heroes....  Jack had this hero idea of history, the idealistic view."


[The Life article continues] -- But she came back to the idea that transfixed her; Don't let it be forgot / that once there was a spot / for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot -- and it will never be that way again. ------------------------- [end, excerpt] ----------


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