Forever an Acre of America by the River Thames

THE EVENTS OF 22nd November 1963 have been forensically analysed. Acres of paper and gallons of ink have been consumed in the quest for the truth. Yet, 57 years later there is no substantial evidence that could be brought into the courtroom of history and bring this American tragedy to a close.

I was with my Grandparents having tea and toast by an open fire watching children's TV. My parents arrived on their way home from shopping to pick me up. I still have that shopping list. They came into the sitting room just when the program on TV was interrupted with breaking news:

"The President has been shot".

In 1964 Britain gifted an acre of land by the Thames at Runnymede in perpetuity where a memorial to the late President could be built. In 1965 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II officially opened it in the presence of the President's widow, his two children and political dignitaries.

When we lived in that area my parents took my two elder brothers and myself to see the memorial soon after it had been completed and opened to the public. My memories of that day are of sunshine, warmth, light, green trees and a freshly carved piece of stone. I think we even had a picnic nearby that day but I cannot be sure about that.

HOW DIFFERENT THINGS were when I returned 55 years later, on a December afternoon.

It was cold, damp, cloudy, gloomy and the trees were bare. The walk from the car park towards the memorial was across open fields and through a couple of thin lines of trees. There parakeets screeched as I approached what they had claimed as their territory. The going was wet and every step caused a squelch to rise around my boots. I thought of our horses and how they would have coped with walking here. Their feet would have sunk at least an inch into the mud and could even have slipped.

A narrow gate leading through a hedge line marked the entrance to the memorial site. I was officially on American soil.

From where I was standing “The Individual Steps” sloped upwards and curved out of view behind the dark trunks of the bare oak and ash trees.

Ahead of me were 50 unique steps. Each one representing one of the 50 states of America and signifying how each one is different. The surface I was going to walk on is made up of 60,000 hand cut pieces of Portuguese granite setts, representing individual pilgrims progressing through “life to enlightenment. Over fifty years since those setts were laid time is beginning to take its toll. The ones at the edge of the steps having been laid flat were now being pushed into small gentle hummocks by the roots of the oak trees next to the path which added to each step’s individuality.

At last the memorial stone.

This has been carved from a piece of Portland stone hewn from one of the quarries around Weymouth in Dorset. It measures 10 feet by 5 feet and weighs 7 tonnes. The inscription, now partially redacted by the ravages of time rather than the deliberate act of concealment, reads:

THIS ACRE OF ENGLISH GROUND WAS GIVEN TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE PEOPLE OF BRITAIN IN MEMORY OF JOHN F KENNEDY, BORN 29 MAY 1917: PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 1961-63: DIED BY AN ASSASSIN'S HAND 22 NOVEMBER 1963: "Let every nation know whether it wishes us well or ill that we shall pay any price bear any burden meet any hardship support any friend or oppose any foe in order to assure the survival and success of liberty"

The stone's surface was cold and damp when I touched it. The indented inscription felt as sharp and clear as the day it was carved. The words from the inaugural address echoed in my mind as I had heard them from recordings many years later. They too were as sharp and clear as when they were spoken on 20th January 1961. I could still hear them being spoken with that Boston clipped accent loaded with such a unique cadence that his words when being read anonymously and for the first time are readily identifiable as being written for JFK.

That stone marked a part off my life when I began to realize that the outside world, which had suddenly intruded my own world of tea and toast by an open fire in the warmth and security of my Grandparents home through television. That world beyond could be ugly and the one certainty in life, death, was final regardless of how it arrived.

I retraced my route down “The Individual Steps”. Going down a set of steps at home or in any other building the brain and the legs work out the pattern and progress becomes second nature. Not here on these steps. Because each one is slightly different I had to look out for undulations in the surface and the different lengths of the steps themselves. It slowed me down and made me think.

FROM THE GATE I took one last look back up towards the memorial. I tried to discount how the weather was influencing how I felt about the condition the memorial was in. After doing so and trying to visualize it in sunnier weather when the leaves were green, and the air was warm, but I couldn’t improve on the impression I had gathered today. I was glad that I had made this “pilgrimage” but that was tinged by a feeling of flatness, disappointment almost emptiness brought on by the condition of the stone.

"The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt, it casts a vivid light 0n certain selected causes, and those which were best and greatest; it leaves the rest in shadow and unseen." (Walter Bagehot 1826 - 1877)

The memorial to what was once a beacon of light on the day of my visit was resting unseen in shadows.

I stepped through the gate and left this one acre of what was once England’s green and pleasant land and left “America”

The light was fading and while I was here at Runnymede I had two more sites to visit before the light the light faded into darkness. They were the Magna Carta Memorial and The Jurors.

Runnymede is "A place of politics, peace and picnics" according to the brochure. I am afraid that on this darkening winter's afternoon I was not going to be having a picnic as I think I did all those years ago.

PS Following my visit I wrote the US Ambassador in London mentioning the state of this memorial. To date (26th Jan 21) I have not had any response.