JFK and My Grandmother

For as long as I can remember, there was an oil painting hanging at the top of the stairs at my Grandmothers house. It was of John F. Kennedy walking on the beach. We were an Irish Catholic family, my grandmother the matriarch. We weren’t conservative Christians, in fact my grandmother never liked them – she felt uncomfortable when, in her 80’s, our small local church started to take a turn for the evangelical. The change started when our priest, Father Guckert started to fall ill. He would take a Sunday off, and one of the local up-and-coming priests would…