On November 22, 1963, three icons of the 20th century died: John F. Kennedy, Aldous Huxley, and C. S. Lewis.
People of my generation remember where they were when the news came of Kennedy’s assassination. (I was in 7th grade study hall.) Other traumatic public catastrophes would follow. Now we also remember where we were when we learned about the 9/11 attacks. (I was in the basement of Rincker classroom at Concordia Wisconsin, going to my English Lit. class where we were going to study Grendel’s attack on the Hall Heorot in Beowulf.) But JFK, for all of his faults that we learned about later, inspired an idealism that I can still remember to this day, an idealism that was shattered at his assassination and that received further shocks as the century wore on. Stephen King captures the feel of those times perfectly in his novel about time travel to stop Kennedy’s assassination, 11/22/63.
Also, here is an interesting essay on the three from what might seem to be an unlikely source: John Garth, Three Great Men Died That Day: JFK, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley – The Daily Beast: