Remembering JFK: forty years ago this month, the nation--and the world--mourned the tragic loss of a young President.

"America wept tonight," wrote New York Times reporter James Reston, "not alone for its dead young President, but for itself."

It was November 22, 1963, and John F. Kennedy was dead from an assassin's bullets. The youngest man ever elected U.S. President, at 43, Kennedy had charmed much of the nation--and the world. The President was killed while riding in an open limousine on a crowd-lined street in Dallas, Texas.

"It was a blunt crack," wrote historian Theodore H. White of the assassin's first bullet, "like that of a motorcycle backfiring."

Lee Harvey Oswald, the 24-year-old man who fired the shots--three in all--worked at the Texas School Book Depository, whose windows overlooked Kennedy's route through Dallas.

Arrested within hours of Kennedy's death, Oswald was gunned down two days later by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby. The murder, which happened while police transferred Oswald between jails, was the first ever witnessed on live television. It was one more jolt to a shattered nation--and would forever deepen a mystery. To this day, many people believe that Oswald, a ninth-grade dropout who had been dishonorably discharged from the Marines, did not act alone in the President's murder.

But Nellie Connally, who was in the car with the Kennedys and her husband, Texas Governor John Connally, disagrees.

"A $15 gun and a scrambled-egg mind caused all that horror," she said recently.

A Man of Courage and Vision

At the time of his death, Kennedy had been pursuing his dream of sending U.S. astronauts to the moon. For him, space exploration was a "new ocean."

His sense of daring extended into most aspects of his presidency. He faced down the Soviet Union in 1961 in Berlin, and again in 1962, when he learned that the Communist nation had secretly installed nuclear missiles in Cuba. Kennedy forced the Soviets to remove their missiles from the Caribbean island.

At home, he pushed for civil rights for African-Americans. Kennedy did not always act as quickly as leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. wanted, but he faced enormous political pressure from all sides in the fight to end segregation.

"If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public," Kennedy said in a 1963 speech, "if ... he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content ... with the counsels of patience and delay?"

Kennedy would not live to see his wish for equality fulfilled. But his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, continued his legacy, signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

The End of Camelot

The President had his share of enemies. But he was admired by many for his courage, wit, and eloquence. The most famous scion (heir) of a prominent Irish-Catholic family, he was handsome, athletic, and charming. He was also a World War II hero who had written about his Navy exploits in a best-selling book PT-l09.

Kennedy's White House years centered around his loyal advisers--several of whom had come from Harvard, his alma mater--his beautiful wife, Jacqueline, and their two young children, Caroline and John.

Mrs. Kennedy once referred to the glittering Kennedy White House as "Camelot"--a reference to the mythical home of King Arthur, and the title of a musical then popular on Broadway. The name stuck, leading many Americans to mourn "the end of Camelot" after Kennedy's death.

It is often said that America lost its innocence on that sunny fall afternoon in Dallas 40 years ago. It is more likely, as journalist Tom Wicker wrote, that Americans lost "their own sense of themselves and their country as they most wished them to be, as they used to believe they were."