Remembering President Kennedy

In remembering President Kennedy, Les Payne tells us of the applauding in an officers’ club in Texas in reaction to Walter Cronkite’s news that their commander-in-chief had been shot (Op-Ed Page, Nov. 21).

His comments bring back memories of an April day in 1945 at an Army installation in Denver, as the soldiers there went about their testing duties, to the news that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, their commander-in-chief in wartime, had died.

The reaction at that time was similar to Payne’s account: namely a sense of glee that almost resulted in fist fights, prevented by an alert noncommissioned officer!

Attitudes of hatred based on emotionally charged ideas are difficult to overcome.

Therefore, major attention in our schools and in the media must be given to the education and re-education of not only immigrant populations, the focus of so much attention today, but also our own American public--for “good will” to all, so as to eliminate the dangerous consequences of emotionally charged hatred and ill will.

H. ROGIE ROGOSIN

Los Angeles