Muang Phuket Local Post (MPLP) announces the release of a new artistamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas.  This single 50-satang stamp is the second in MPLP’s ‘Americana Series’ which began with the Gettysburg Address stamp issued on Tuesday (19 November).  It has been printed in imperforate sheets of 15 (three rows of five stamps each).  The Americana Series is intended to mark the 180th year of Thai-American diplomatic relations.

Kennedy’s assassination holds a place close to my heart as my parents had moved to Dallas shortly before this tragedy occurred.  My father was actually attending a business meeting in California on 22 November 1963; “the meeting promptly broke up as soon as we heard Kennedy had been shot,” Dad recently emailed me.  My mother had stayed behind in Dallas and was shopping in a hardware store when the news reached her.  I remember her telling me how devastated she was.

I was born just two years later, in early December 1965, at Parkland Memorial Hospital.  This was the medical facility closest to Dealey Plaza and was where Kennedy was rushed in the motorcade.  He arrived still breathing but essentially brain-dead.  He was pronounced dead in Parkland’s Trauma Center.  The hospital was also where the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald died after being shot by Jack Ruby.  Coincidentally, my sister performed her medical internship at Parkland (initially working in the Burn Unit).

My mom had kept copies of the Dallas Morning News published the day after the murder and also following the funeral.  She later gave those to me, along with the Moon Landing newspaper.  One image that has stuck with me for many years is the front-page photo of John Jr. saluting his father’s casket.  Alas, I no longer have those earliest of personal “souvenirs”.  But now I’m crating my own in the form of local post stamps.  I hope you enjoy them…

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