Fifty-five years later, the assassination of JFK still leads pilgrims to his grave

Pat Mulloy put his hand in his pocket and took out his wallet. "I'll show you," he says. He groped and then found: a used photo of President John F. Kennedy. He wore it forever, he says.

He was 19 when he met Sen at the time. Kennedy on a country trip to Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He shook hands with Kennedy – twice – and said, "Good luck, Jack." Not a senator, but Jack. "We thought he was part of the family," he said.

Mulloy, 77, of Alexandria, told the story Thursday as he stood near his hero's grave on metal crutches at Arlington National Cemetery on the 55th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination in Dallas.

He said that he makes the visit every year.

On a cold, windy morning, he and his wife, 73-year-old former Peace Corps volunteer Marjorie, were among dozens of people who gathered on the hill right up to the spot. where are buried Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Visitors came from Georgia, North Carolina and Stockholm.

They remained silent or whispered while the breeze was acting like a flurry on the trees and a distant bell was ringing the hour. At the top of the hill, the flag of Arlington Mansion broke in the wind and a hawk rose above his head.

"I loved the president," said Mulloy, who was wearing a green baseball cap from Notre Dame. "I campaigned for him in 1960.. . and I've dedicated my life to public service because of him. . . . I was a hard core. Dude, I liked the guy. "

Mulloy is a lawyer, retired from many years in the federal administration. "I served in the state department, the justice department. . . I was the general counsel of the Senate Banking Committee, "he said.

"I have spent my whole life serving the great republic," he said. "And he inspired me to do it."

Mulloy memorized the final lines of JFK's inaugural speech: "Let's go ahead and lead the country we love. . . knowing that here on earth, the work of God must be truly ours, "he recited.

"I know it by heart," he said.

Mulloy grew up in Kingston, Pennsylvania, on the other side of the Susquehanna River, between Wilkes-Barre.

Kennedy went on a campaign in October 1960, Mulloy said.

"I shook his hand. I heard him speak. And then, when he left, I ran after the car and shook his hand again, "he said. "I said," Good luck, Jack. "He looked at me and said," Thank you very much. "

Like many of his generation, he remembers where he was the day Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy.

He was at graduate school at Notre Dame.

"I will never forget coming out of the big library … and someone said that the president was shot down." I rushed into a chapel and I recited prayers. One of the saddest days of my life. "

Earlier, an admirer of another generation had stopped in front of the grave, where Kennedy's eternal flame had blinked orange and a bouquet of white roses had been placed.

Colin Thompson, 35, recently left Dallas for Washington.

He recounted that he remembered a six-year-old kid taken away by his father to the site of the assassination. "I remember my father saying," Right there, a great man died a long time ago, "he said. "The city has never really experienced the situation," he said.

"In terms of world history. . . it's probably the closest person I can think of who actually saved the world, "he said.

Kennedy is recognized by many as having avoided nuclear war through his handling of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, when the United States and the Soviet Union clashed against the missiles that the Soviets had placed in Cuba.

They were eventually kidnapped after the blockade of Cuba by the United States.

"Let's hope posterity will remember him for those moments and not his death," Thompson said. "Half a century after his death, he is still here. And that attracts me somehow.

A former State Department trainee, he saw the daughter of Kennedy, Caroline, then ambassador to Japan, sitting alone in a hallway.

"I remember watching her and for a second, I had the impression of looking him in the eye," he said.

Thompson said he was now working for the federal government on national security issues.

"You can not do this job without understanding decision making, without understanding the October crisis," he said.

Thompson said he, too, was a volunteer with the Peace Corps, the famous foreign aid agency Kennedy founded in 1961.

"I think the brevity of his presidency has exploded into tangents that still resonate today," he said.

Chris O'Neill, 50, a physical education teacher from Morton Grove, Illinois, stood near the grave site and whispered the story of the Kennedys to his 13-year-old daughter, Susie Richter.

"I just wanted her to know more about our country and the history of our country so that she could become a better citizen," he said. "The good that has happened, the harm that has happened and how we learn from it."