The JFK Memorial, Hyannis

“I believe it is important that this country sail and not lie still in the harbor.” — John F Kennedy   When I was a kid, Hyannis, Massachusetts was the place we’d go to walk Main Street and buy some candy. When I got a little older it was the place to hang out with college friends or to catch a ferry to Nantucket. Hyannis isn’t quaint or quintessential Cape Cod, it’s a bustling village in the town of Barnstable. I practice active-avoidance here the way locals avoid tourist traps anywhere in the world. But I’m not a local, just way too familiar with the place.   And yet I’d never visited the John F Kennedy Memorial.  It’s a quietly-dignified and understated nod to the President who once sailed in the harbor this memorial overlooks.  Finding myself with a little time to spare, I fell back on my old habit of seeking out the most interesting and often overlooked places wherever I was at the moment.  And this moment brought me to Hyannis.   I remember having a glimpse if the entrance to the Kennedy Compound from the back of a station wagon as a kid, but to me that’s like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. That’s not for me. Far more interesting is an offseason visit to a quiet memorial to honor the brief, brilliant flame that was JFK.   The memorial features a fieldstone wall with a placard of JFK. Appropriately, it faces the harbor. There’s a fountain with the quote noted above engraved around it. In the offseason it’s simply a drained pool. I’m sure in summer it’s lively and impressive. But for my purposes, its stillness was appropriate for the somber occasion for the memorial. While it celebrates the life of the man, it also reminds us if all that we missed when he was assassinated that day in Dallas in 1963.