Recently, thousands of documents relating to the JFK assassination have begun to be made public. Whether the truth about what really happened that day may be found or not, the Kennedy years are a moment in time that older folks like me will not forget. That considered, I thought now would be a good time to revisit my thoughts from a post on Nov. 22, 2015.

Seems as though most of my memories of John F. Kennedy are archived in black and white:

The TV campaign debates with a sweaty Dick Nixon, who looked like a stiff cardboard prop in the shadow of the bigger than LIFE magazine war hero bred for achievement by Massachusetts’ premier political family.

The bright but bitterly cold inaugural on the steps of the Capitol, frozen under a Nor’easter snowstorm’s fresh blanket of dazzling white, a distinctive backdrop for a fledgling president’s epic “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not” speech, challenging us in a valiant call to arms against tyranny, poverty, disease and even war itself.

The televised series of White House tours graciously hosted by a sophisticated, shyly soft-spoken Jackie who assured us that it was just as much “our house.” The candid photos of handsome toddler John John playing hide-and-seek under the desk of the most powerful man on earth.

The who’s-going-to-flinch-first live TV broadcast to an on-the-edge-of-our-seats audience by a stern and deadly serious JFK demanding that a raging Russian remove his nuclear missiles from Cuba – or else. We held our national breath, praying, all eyes fixed on the doomsday clock.

And then came that day in Dallas.

It started out with smiles and waves – and color. Like heaven’s giant spotlight, suspended in a flawless azure big-as-Texas sky, a beaming golden noontime sun illuminates a cheering crowd at Love Field, all reaching out for a once in a lifetime touch from the chief executive’s hand. The First Lady, wearing that now iconic strawberry pink and navy trim Chanel wool suit and matching hat, cradles so tenderly an ill-fated bouquet of red roses, too soon abandoned on a blood-spattered seat of the presidential Lincoln Continental where the life of Camelot’s king was lost and everything suddenly faded back to black and white again.

For a very long time.