The First Vote You Ever Cast

For me, it was for John Kennedy.

What a power house he was!
A person with vision and hope in a world that was full of fear.

He had plans a person could get caught up in. Peace.

I can still see his dream because it is still mine.

In those days, the idea of peace was new. People made whole careers singing about it, the hope for it, the dreams that are America.

Today, nobody seems to care much. It is not their job to care, they have no voice, what can they do, who will listen to them. What has happened to our voices? They have become a mumble that no one hears.
If one should speak loudly, they are told to shut up. I will never shut up.

Love,
Betty

When I wrote my Cuba Missile Crisis book, I studied a lot about JFK. The book is my story, the pilots' stories, and the government story. When I went back in time, remembered those times when I lived on a military base and listened as planes took off for 24 hours, fighter jets as well as large planes filled with equipment and ambulances. My husband had taken off in his fighter jet at 3:00 AM.

As I wrote I went back to those times. I wasn't frightened, even when I got a phone call the morning after my husband left that I should be ready to evacuate the base.

I had faith that the government would work it all out. I trusted them. Then when I read the declassified documents, I realized how I should have been frightened. But, like you said Betty, we all cared. The men cared enough that they were going to do whatever they were asked. And even as the men in Kennedy's group tried to decide what to do, they also cared. They argued and came up with the blockade. The men sat on "hot pads" ready to take off and bomb the missiles or shoot down Russian MiGs. And the wives waited.

Carol

Carol

JFK was my first too, Betty. My senior class went to hear him speak on
his campaign tour at Warm Springs, Ga., home of FDR's "Little White
House".

After his speech he did what his Secret Service agents hated... he
walked directly out into the crowd - straight toward me. He reached out
and shook my hand - and I had the feeling of being touched by magic.

"Ask not what your country can do for you..."

Rchard Nixon-- forty years of voting Republican for president. It is time for change

I will vote fo Obama and Biden this time.

I could have voted for JFK, but getting married, graduating from college, and moving to Florida, I didn't realize I had to get an absentee ballot to be able to vote in the next presidential election.

One year I gave my mother a diary for her birthday where each day there was a question, and one was similar to the one on this thread. My mother answered "Franklin Roosevelt." The amazing thing about this was that her parents, with whom she lived at the time, were life-long Republicans. It is like the recent newspaper article in our local paper where they interviewed the voting age high school students, and many were voting for a different person than their parents were.

This is a good question, Betty.

Carol

I'm in with a bunch of kids. My first vote was for Harry Truman and the first president I remember was Herbert Hoover although I do remember talk of the election when he beat Al Smith and it meant the end of Calvin Coolidge. Most of all, though, I remember the grim, hopeless atmosphere of 1930, '31 and '32 and then the complete change in outlook of most people after Roosevelt took office. Had it not been for him it's hard to imagine what would have happened in the country. It would have been very bad, that's a certainty.

Betty and Phil,
I truly envy you both. If I was around at the time, I'd have applied for a Green Card to the American embassy so I could come over and cast my first vote for JFK:-

"We choose to go to the Moon and do the other things, not because they are easy - but because they are HARD"

Those famous words of JFK are what's spurring on China, India and other nations today to aim for the Moon so vigorously.

While I'm on the subject, I just realised another intriguing "vision" being pursued here:

"Grandly called The Ultimate Project, the plan calls for building a cylindrical starship over one mile long and one mile wide weighing 100 million tons that would carry one million people across interstellar space for 10,000 years or more to colonize an inhabitable Earthlike planet that astronomers hope to find within the next few decades. "

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1930

This is 4 years *after* I published First Ark to Alpha Centauri... so naturally this vision is closely following mine. Perhaps too closely for my own liking and closely enough for it to be even labelled as 'unfriendly plaigerism'

My very first vote was for Carter. I still admire the man. I was thrilled, as the previous election, I had been just short of voting age!

Dear A,
What is your first name.

Your star shines brightly. I love the way you put your words together.

Have you ever read Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country? I was reminded of his poetic voice in one of your posts. You have a lot to offer.

Love,
Betty

Well, I stand corrected - by myself, no less. I couldn't have voted for
Kennedy in November,1960 because I was only 17 then - just two months
short of my 18th birthday. Even more conclusively, the minimum voting
age wasn't changed to 18 until 1971!

Remembering my feelings back then - realizing that I could be drafted,
but couldn't vote (or drink legally), caused me to do a bit of research.

The rest of my story is true!

"The rest of my story is true!"
Tell that to the judge.

That's his story, and he's probably sticking to it!

I was so sure I voted for him, but the dates don't lie. Well, I would've if I could've!

I guess that it was the next election in 1964 that I first voted - for Barry Goldwater. Man, can I pick `em!

My first vote was for IKE. I my second was for JFK, it was the first and only time I voted for a democrat for President until last Tuesday.

I was one of Carol’s GI’s standing by in Florida waiting for JFK’s orders to parachute into Cuba. The day he was shot I was jumping a skydiving exhibition for the Shah of Iran.

Excerpt from Memoirs of a Gypsy Moth:
As I previously mentioned, every jump was memorable, some more so than others. One particular jump never even got made, yet it is the one that is burned into my memory the deepest.

It was November 22, 1963. There were ten of us on a C130 circling the DZ gaining altitude at Fort Lee. We were climbing to twelve thousand five hundred feet to make a sixty second delay freefall. The jump was a demo for a group of foreign officers there attending the Riggers School. The Op plan was for all ten jumpers to exit at once off the rear ramp of the plane and then hook up in the air to form a ten man star, then we would separate and open, coming into the DZ as a group.
I remember glancing down at my altimeter, we had just passed ten thousand feet, when the pilot came on the speaker. “The jump has been aborted! The jump has been aborted! We are returning to base, the President has been shot…I repeat, President Kennedy has been shot!”
We all sat there staring at each other in utter disbelief as the pilot put the C130 into a tight turn and headed back for the airstrip.
Once we landed at the airfield everyone ran into the main hanger and gathered around the radio to listen to the news being broadcast. When the announcement came that President Kennedy had died, ten bad-ass Rangers sat with their heads in their hands and wept like small children.
God speed Mr. President.

Truly memorable, Don! I think we all remember where we were when we
heard the news. I was in electronics school at the time, and the only
one in the "lab", listening to a shortwave broadcast out of Dallas. The
guy talking was listening to a local station and gave the announcement,
which I passed on to the class.

Another serendipitous thing you mentioned about Ike. I wasn't old
enough to vote, but I remember the campaign and the "I Like Ike"
stickers. Years later after marrying my wife, we learned that she is
kin to Ike's mother through her Stover ancestors - who were related to
Daniel Boone!

A moving story, Don.
I was writing for a local paper and still doing some radio-TV repair work the day Kennedy was shot. I was working on the radio bench so I was first to hear the news and had to call out to the others in the shop. Not much work was done for a couple of hours.

Like Don, my first vote was for Ike. He was my commander-in-chief. Then came JFK. Another commander-in-chief to be admired and respected. Unlike Don, I was already out of the Air Force but in the active Reserves when JFK was killed. I think we all have special memories about that day. With few exceptions, he was loved around the world and the world cried with us.

Abe,

Do you think being around when JFK died, that we were changed by that experience, that we see the world differently?

I remember thinking, "It's not possible. He can't be dead. He's too much alive." It was a kind of ending of innocence.

Carol

I was in the Air Force, stationed at Lackland in San Antone, Texas, just going through basic training. We were in the middle of one of our first days of weapons class, and were taking apart the AR-15 rifles that were in the room. The officer came in and called us all to attention, saying that he had the worst news a commander could ever tell his troops, and that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. They dismissed class and all other activities for the rest of the day, and when they told us that he was dead I think it was a piviotal point in our young lives. That was the first time I remember that a national political thing actually was real to me.

Yes, Carol, I do believe we, those of us who recall that incident, were changed, and that from that time on we did indeed see the world differently. I know I did. By the way, I have always been one of those who believe that it was not the work of a lone shooter, and have always believed that the Cuban situation, and the CIA involvement with Castro, has a lot to do with it.

My first Presidential vote was for Johnson in 1964, my second for Nixon, and since then I've voted a straight Democrat ticket. Don't mind saying that I voted for Clinton in 92 and 96, and for Gore in 2000, Kerry in 2004 and last week for Obama. I felt strongly about Clinton and Gore, not so good about Kerry, and had very mixed feelings about Obama. I thought Hillary should have gotten the nomination. However, I think Obama will do a much better job than McCain, and I have high hopes for the next 4, 8, and maybe even the next 12 and 16 years, if Hillary is still in the hunt in 2016. Probably won't be, because she'll be pretty old by then, but I think someone else will come along to carry the banner.

Dear Don,
At the time, I considered it was LBJ who organized that.

The only reason I thought that at the time was he did not look too sorry about the whole thing.
I was young and idealistic. I had no idea about pork stuff, and the challenge of getting your campaign promises past the house and the senate.

Now that I am olden, I know these things. I see we all are in the boat of hope for the future. We need a change and I am glad that we have a hopeful and new president.

All the Bush's will retire much richer than they deserve. I wish they could give it all back.

Love,
Betty

I was still a gleam in my Dad's eye when JFK was murdered...but I do remember the most exacting details of the moment when I learned of 9/11. The mind is an amazing thing...

A memory from 9/11.

My son was a pilot with American Airlines and staying with us since his wife had filed divorce papers. When he saw the second plane hit the towers, he went into the American Airlines website for pilots and learned two of their planes had been hijacked.

As soon as it became evident the enormity of what had happened, he left our house. When he returned I asked him where he had gone. He said he went to his children's schools and made sure they saw him and knew he was all right.

There are those memories we never forget. I don't think Johnson had anything to do with Kennedy's death, but the CIA Cuban connection could be valid. Kennedy had considered approaching Castro and working towards some level of understanding. There is a mystery that has never been solved.

Carol