My twin brother and I were born in Springfield, Illinois, the “Land of Lincoln,” and celebrated our ninth birthdays three months before John F. Kennedy's election as president in November 1960. But even though we watched the evening news attentively on a fuzzy black-and-white television with our parents—a “mixed marriage” of a Protestant father and Catholic mother—neither of us quite understood why the election seemed to matter so much. A few weeks later on Thanksgiving morning, our view got clearer. The day began with helping our mother and grandmother, a secondgeneration Irish American, prepare for the traditional feast. Our jobs included tearing a mound of stiff, day-old bread into stuffing for the turkey, polishing silverware and carrying plates and other necessities to the table. This year was different, though, because not long after we started our chores mother and grandmother, cooking at the stove, began laughing and crying softly at the same time. I remember asking, “Mom, what's wrong? Did something bad happen?” With a smile she reassured us, “No, boys. These are tears of joy, because grandmother never thought she would live to see an Irish Catholic president in the White House. Now she will.”