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On October 22, 1962, I had just turned ten when my parents called me in to watch President Kennedy give what they said was an important speech.
It was his Cuban missile crisis speech. I sat on the floor in front of the black and white television, listening to the president talk about the “maximum peril” of nuclear weapons. He spoke about courage and commitment; he accused the Soviet Union of lying. Judging from my parents’ reactions, we were on the brink of disaster, and Kennedy was doing what he needed to do as president—standing firm on ground carved out by presidents before him, like Abraham Lincoln, who I had studied in school. I’d learned about the Emancipation Proclamation, signed in 1863 to abolish slavery.
I didn’t understand everything President Kennedy was talking about, but I knew courage when I saw it.