I wanna again welcome you to The 405 Coffee Break. Guys, get you a cup of coffee, glass iced tea, put a sweater on, grab a bottle of water, let's see what's happening. Spring wheat $6.03 a bushel, 550lb steer calf, top end, $5.14 if they're shiny. and a 100lb fat lamb in Billings at $2.94 a pound. But guys, there's more, much more.
Okay. Okay. Today, a great factual report from the archives of history. Please remember that I did the research to strive to make this 100% true. You know what, guys? I like truth.
Well, on the other hand, I enjoy fiction too, but don't try to pawn fiction off as truth. Okay? Now do you think I can find a bible verse on truth? If I can't, then I don't know what truth is. From Proverbs 12:17 Whoever speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness utters deceit. Well, guys, I don't wanna utter any deceit here. Again, Proverbs 12 verse 17.
Now listen. There are some moments in history that seem almost stitched together, not by conspiracy, not by magic, but by the strange way memory works in the human heart. And if you were to travel back through the pages of American history, you would find two men standing there an entire century apart, hundred years, somehow forever connected.
One born in a log cabin in Kentucky, the other born into wealth along the coast of Massachusetts. One tall and weathered with hands rough from labor, the other polished, confident, and carrying the smile of a new television age. One boy grew up splitting rails, the other grew up sailing yachts. One wore a stovepipe hat. The other had movie star hair.
Abraham Lincoln and John f Kennedy, two presidents, two fathers, two leaders asked to guide America through dangerous and divided times. Lincoln inherited a nation tearing itself apart over slavery and the survival of the union. Kennedy inherited a nation trembling under Cold War fears while struggling through the growing storm of civil rights. Different centuries, different enemies, even different voices on the nightly news, yet both men found themselves standing in the same difficult place, asking America whether it would truly live by the ideals it claimed to believe. Lincoln spoke of liberty.
Kennedy spoke of equality. Neither man pleased everyone. That's usually how you recognize a good leader. Both men carried private sorrow as well. Lincoln lost a son while living in the White House.
Kennedy lost a son while living there as well. And grief has a way of leveling even the tallest men. History often remembers presidents in bronze statues and in oil paintings, but sorrow reminds us they were husbands and fathers before they were carved into marble. Then came the Fridays. For Lincoln, it was Friday, 04/14/1865.
The civil war was over. Washington breathed easier. The president and Mrs. Lincoln attended a play at Ford's Theater. For Kennedy, it was Friday, 11/22/1963. The crowd smiled and waved in Dallas as the president and Jacqueline Kennedy rode through the city in an open motorcade.
And in moments, America changed. Now, guys, over the years, storytellers, radio hosts, newspaper writers, and probably a few fellows sitting around the coffee shop or at the hardware store began collecting similarities between the two men. Some true, some, well, stretch longer than fishing stories at the local bar. But the true ones, well, the true ones are remarkable enough. Lincoln was elected to congress in 1846, Kennedy in 1946.
Lincoln was elected president in 1860, Kennedy in 1960. Both men pushed America towards civil rights. Both were shot on a Friday. Both were shot in the head. Both sat beside their wives when they were assassinated. Both were succeeded by vice presidents named Johnson. Andrew Johnson was born in 1808. Lyndon B. Johnson was born in 1908. Both assassins are remembered by 3 names, John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and fled. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theater. Both assassins were killed before they could stand trial. And then perhaps the strangest detail of all, Kennedy was riding in a Lincoln automobile made by the Ford Motor Company and Lincoln, well, he was shot inside Ford's Theater. Now some of the legends people repeat are simply not true.
Lincoln did not have a secretary named Kennedy. Kennedy, however, did have a secretary named Evelyn Lincoln. Booth was not born exactly 100 years before Oswald. Booth was born in 1838, Oswald in 1939. Close enough for carnival guesses perhaps, but no, not for history.
History deserves better than embellished folklore. Yet even after the exaggerations are stripped away, what remains is still enough to make a listener lean back quietly in his chair. Two presidents a hundred years apart both leading a divided nation, both urging America towards greater liberty, both struck down before they could fully see the work completed and somehow their stories still mirror each other across time. The end.
So until next time, as you go out there, remember now, don't be bitter.