OUR ETERNAL STRUGGLE: HAS ANYBODY NOTICED - -

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This is the magnetic bumper sticker
on the tailgate of my pickup truck.

This coming THANKSGIVING DAY, which is Thursday 22 November 2012, is also the anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Does anyone else know, or care?

JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY
Thirty-Fifth President of the United States of America

Since I'm now an old man, I reckon the majority of the population probably wasn't even born when that happened, and therefore has no memory of it, and can't relate to it.

But, I remember it vividly, just as clearly as the shock I also felt on Tuesday 11 September 2001.

One lesson that I learned from the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is to always be careful of your own personal conduct in all things.

That's because almost everybody who remembers that event can readily tell exactly where they were, who they were with, and what they were doing when they learned of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

But, I can never do that.

For, on that particular day, Friday 22 November 1963, at that historic moment, I am embarrassed to admit that I was in a very bad place with some very bad people, and I cannot freely discuss the details of my unfortunate circumstances with strangers.

So, I urge all of you youngsters, if you please, to learn a lesson from my experience, and always conduct yourselves with a morally circumspect manner.

You just don't know when YOU might be an eyewitness to a truly momentous historic event, one which you'll want to be able to share for many years to come.

However, one memory I will always cherish is of the time when I was a soldier in the old Republic of Viet Nam going to Australia on a Rest and Recuperation leave in November of 1971, and learning that Thanksgiving was a uniquely AMERICAN holiday, not observed anywhere else.

My Latter-day Saint Australian hosts,
the Browns, of Manly, New South Wales

My Australian hosts, fellow members of The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints, arranged for me to have my traditional Thanksgiving Day turkey dinner at the home of an American family living in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.