By DARREL RADFORD
For the Courier-Times
This week, America observed two major historical dates. Tuesday was the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. Friday marked the 50th year since President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
As local history enthusiasts are probably aware, there are several interesting, even odd similarities that forever link Lincoln and Kennedy. Some of these are well-known, others are obscure. Here are a few:
n Both Presidents were shot in the back of the head, on the Friday before a major holiday, while seated beside their wives, neither of whom were injured.
n Both were in the presence of another couple, and in each case that man was also wounded by the assassin.
n After both assassinations there were loud and insistent claims that the fatal shot must have come from a different direction.
n Each President in his thirties married a socially prominent twenty-four year old girl who spoke French fluently.
n While in the White House, each President had a family of three children, and both lost a child through death.
n Both Lincoln and Kennedy were second children.
n Both had been boat captains.
n Both were related to a U.S. Senator, Attorney General, ambassador to Great Britain, and the mayor of Boston.
n Each had been elected to Congress in the year ’47 and were vice-presidential runners-up in the year ’56.
n Each was elected president in ’60.
n Before each was elected, a sister died. Both had a friend named Billy Graham and knew an Adlai Stevenson.
n The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
n Both were succeeded by vice-presidents named Johnson: Andrew born in 1808 and Lyndon in 1908, both of whom had 13 letters in their names and two daughters.
n Both assassins have 15 letters in their names.
n Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and fled to a warehouse. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theater.
n Both assassins were in their turn assassinated by shooters who used a Colt revolver and fired only one, fatal shot.
n Neither one died immediately. Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House, Kennedy to Parkland Hospital (both with initials PH).
Internet chatter added this tidbit: Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, a place that used to be Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s home until it was seized by Lincoln’s soldiers.
Sunday during a program at the Henry County Historical Society, Lincoln look-alike Wilbur Tague offered one more.
“Who would have thought that an eyewitness to the Kennedy assassination would have nephew that looks like Abraham Lincoln?”
Tague’s uncle, James T. Tague, was in Dallas the day Kennedy was shot, and he was actually wounded by a ricocheting bullet.
“My uncle Jimmy was on the grassy knoll when Kennedy passed by,” Tague said. “He was the only eyewitness on the street hit in the face by a bullet fragment.”
Tague’s uncle has written a book entitled “LBJ and the Kennedy Killing” which alleges Johnson may have been more than just the man who took over as president.