Coming Friday: Special look at JFK 50 years later, through the eyes of Delco

On Friday the nation will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. We will have special coverage, including the memories of citizens and notables across Delaware County.

I will offer a special blog with my own memories of that fateful day.

Make sure you pick up a copy of the print edition for a memento of that fateful day.

One of the things I am constantly amazed by is how certain segments of the news can go completely over my head.

It happened again this week as I was watching the evening news. Yes, I still try to catch the network news as one of my last acts here in the office. I like to know what the nation is talking about.

Of course, I have been voraciously devouring all the specials, documentaries and news reports tied to the assassination. I'm not sure why. I can't help myself. I guess I think that if I watch enough, I will learn what actually happened that day, and more importantly what we lost.

I was actually hooked into this broadcast by a teaser for someone I had not heard from before. Retired NBC anchor Tom Brokaw had secured an interview with the widow of Officer J.D. Tippit, the Dallas policeman gunned down by Lee Harvey Oswald in the minutes after the assassination.

She spoke eloquently at her loss, the devastation she was feeling, and her connection with First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Their slain husbands were buried on the same day.

Then Brokaw broke new ground. He had received permission from the Kennedy family to reveal the hand-written note written to Mrs. Tippit by the first lady in the days after the funeral to express her sorrow, and commiserate in their suffering.

What a magnanimous gesture.

But then Brokaw said something that made my jaw drop, something I was sort of aware of, but apparently had never quite sunken into my knowledge about what happened.

Brokaw referred to the great gesture by the 33-year-old widow of the president.

I actually bolted up in my chair, for a second I actually wondered if I had heard him correctly. Maybe he was actually referring to the officer's widow, I thought.

But a quick trip to Google confirmed it.

Jackie Kennedy was 33 years old when she accompanied her husband to Dallas. That means she was 30 when he was elected.

I knew she was younger than the president, but I never realized how much.

It only confirms what I often think, that when you think you know everything about a topic, something happens that shatters that image.

I remember vaguely being 30. I remember being a young father stumbling through the trials and tribulations of parenthood.

And then I remember being placed on a national stage for the worst possible reason, and realize just how great Jacqueline Kennedy really was.

In a moment of intense personal grief, she had to stand tall for the good of the country. The fact that the nation got through that weekend intact is a testament to her strength.

At the same time, she personally reached out to a woman who was going though the exact same horror, her husband gunned down by the same man who killed the president.

And she did it when she was 33 years old.