JFK PT109 GIJoe Memorial

Recently an ORWELL TODAY reader wrote in to say he had JFK PT-109 COMMANDER and PT-BOAT COMMANDER GI-JOE figures he wished to sell and I wrote back saying I wished to buy them. See JFK PT-109 GI-JOE FOR SALE & JFK PT-109 GI-JOE SOLD

Godcidently, the package containing the precious cargo arrived in the mail the day before November 22nd, 2011, the 48th anniversary of the assassination of JFK.

To share with ORWELL TODAY readers I scanned the two figures separately and together.

Then, in remembrance and honour of JFK I surrounded the JFK GI-JOE with other JFK memorabilia and symbolically displayed it on the old wicker rocking chair I own (and spray-painted green to cover its weather-worn faults).

JFK aficionados, and even people who don't know much about JFK, will recognize the symbolism of the 'JFK Rocker'. JFK is famous for always sitting in a wicker rocking chair at the Oval Office and at home.

The reason JFK always sat in the wicker rocking chair was because it helped his back which was a war-injury suffered when his PT-109 boat was rammed by a Japanese destroyer and he was smashed against the wall of the cockpit. After the war, JFK had a very intricate back operation to fuse his damaged discs. The surgery was so dangerous it resulted in JFK almost dying and needing last-rites performed. Miraculously, he came through, and during recuperation JFK wrote his famous book PROFILES IN COURAGE which won the Pulitzer-Prize for literature in 1955.

Years later, by the time he became president, JFK found a new back doctor and she prescribed holistic therapies like inserts in his shoes, and a back brace, and swimming in a warm pool and rocking in a wicker rocking chair. It had been discovered that the rocking motion against the pliable wicker was a form of exercise that warmed up JFK's back -- so while he was rocking he was actually doing therapy!

My JFK GI-JOE ROCKING MEMORIAL is scanned above. Across the back of the wicker rocker hangs my JFK T-Shirt with an American flag (made in USA) waving from the top. Then there's the JFK GI-JOE figure standing there holding the coconut -- shirtless as in the famous photo of skipper Kennedy in the PT-109 cockpit. His jacket, Commander cap, sunglasses and map of the Solomon Islands are laid out on the LIFE magazine Warren Report special edition that came out on October 2, 1964. A model of the PT-109 boat can be seen, if you look closely, skimming across the cover of the November 29, 1963 edition of LIFE magazine that came out a week after the assassination.

Below is the letter from Kalamazoo Kevin who sent JFK GI-JOE safely on his journey to me, and which sentiments are greatly appreciated.

Dear Jackie,

Good to be in touch with you. I trust that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in the spirit and form of GI Joe JFK-PT Commander, has been safely transported to you this day. I trust that you will have a lifetime of treasured memories with him at your side.

May God Bless America, JFK, and our close neighbor to the North, dear Canada!!!

Best wishes & blessings,
Kevin M. Large

In coming full circle, regarding JFK and PT-109, it is appropriate, at this time, to also honour the Solomon Islands for the contribution of two of their countrymen -- Biuku Gasa and Aaron Kumana -- who godcidently discovered JFK and the PT-109 crew on the islands of Naru and Olasana and carried out their rescue. Recently the grandson of one of JFK's rescuers sent an email (not a coconut) with news about the intervening 68 years since that fateful day on August 6th, 1943.

If it hadn't been for Gasa and Kumana saving the life of JFK we, the world, would never have had that "brief and shining moment known as Camelot".

In researching the history of JFK PT-109 I came across a Boston Globe news article from two years ago saying that JFK's rescuer, Aaron Kumana, had sent a very special tribute -- symbolic shell money from Solomon Islands -- to be placed on JFK's grave:

In a small, private ceremony in November at Arlington Cemetery, members of the Kennedy family gathered to witness an unusual item being placed on President John F. Kennedy's grave: a simple bracelet-sized ring made of cream-colored shell from an old man who lives on a remote island halfway across the world. Why the fuss? Because without Eroni Kumana, the man who asked that the item be placed on the grave, Jack Kennedy, the young PT boat captain, might have not made it back from World War II. Kumana was one of two Solomon Islanders who helped to rescue Kennedy and his crew after his boat, PT-109, had been rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer. When the destroyer smashed into the small boat in the early morning hours of Aug. 2, 1943, two crewmen died. Kennedy, then 26, led his remaining 10 crew members in a weeklong fight for survival, swimming to a series of tiny deserted islands. Kumana and another native, Biuku Gasa, found the men, who had been surviving on coconuts. They took a message from Kennedy written on a coconut husk (an item currently on display in the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum) to the nearest Allied base 35 miles away. A rescue was launched....

I wish that every year, on the anniversay of JFK's death and funeral, the Solomon Islands shell money, which is displayed at the JFK Museum & Library, would be placed on JFK's grave, below the eternal flame, in appreciation for JFK's life being saved in 1943.

I love the following poem, written by Roger Craig who was a Deputy Sheriff on duty in Dealey Plaza that horrific day on November 22nd, 1963:

DEDICATED TO PRESIDENT KENNEDY

Our president John Kennedy went down to Dallas town
Where the hired assassins waited and there they shot him down,
Because he dreamed of peace and plenty and he talked it 'round
His dream goes marching on.

From the book depository and of course that grassy knoll
And the Dal Tex building's shooter fulfilled his deadly role
The noon day sun was witness as they took their awful toll
His dream goes marching on.

The industrial and military complex can't survive
Without their little horror wars they artfully contrive.
If they push us to the big one then we won't come out alive
His dream goes marching on.

Our President is lying up there cold beneath his flame
He is calling out for vengeance and to do so in his name.
To keep the peace forever and erase our nation's shame
His dream goes marching on.

The flame on JFK's grave is eternal and we must vow to carry the torch for JFK and then pass the torch to the next generation. ~ Jackie Jura

THE DAY THE WORLD STOOD STILL
November 22nd, 1963

Truth, Freedom, Peace & Prosperity
died with JFK
11/22/11