The speech he was going to give at lunch

Third in a series: documents written but never handed over.

“Remarks Prepared for Delivery at the Trade Mart in Dallas.” The JFK Library files it under a plain label, JFKPOF-048-022, with one bracketed word after it: [Undelivered].

He was going to say it at 12:30, at a Dallas luncheon. Nuclear strength, space, the economy, six hundred billion. Confident the way you are when you assume there is a next time.

The line he is remembered for, he never said aloud: “We in this country, in this generation, are, by destiny rather than choice, the watchmen on the walls of world freedom.”

He ends on a psalm: “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

It is not a farewell. He is planning past the room, past the year.

Lincoln’s unsent letter is one a man chose not to send. The moon-disaster memo was written to be thrown away. This one was written to be spoken, and the day reached the room first. The White House released the text anyway.

I read the whole thing, the parts that do not hold up included. The last two lines land like they knew something the middle did not. Reading straight, you do not get to un-know what happened while you turned the page.

Source: presidency.ucsb.edu/node/236838. More reads: paper.wf/witchseye.