Kennedy was younger, more vibrant and more irreverent than the gray-haired figures dominant in public life.

It was a bright, mild late November day when the stunning news reached Washington.

Forty years later, I can still recall my sense of shock as I recognized that the frantic words coming out of my bedroom radio told of the assassination of a president.

As the newest member of the AP staff, I worked nights and slept days as much as I could with four young children. Promptly offering to come in early, I got a quick reminder of my junior status by being told that my regular 10:30 p.m. reporting time would be fine.

The weekend passed in sort of a blur. I have a vivid memory of watching Charles de Gaulle stand before President John Kennedy’s body in the Capitol Rotunda. I recall how the weather reflected the weekend’s emotions. Friday’s mildness gave way to chilled rain on Saturday. By Monday, a bitterly cold north wind heralded the onset of winter.

In the ensuing years, we have learned much that we didn’t know then, from the riveting details of Kennedy’s historic achievement in standing down the Soviet Union in the Cuba missile crisis to the unsavory details of his private life.

Through it all, his hold on the imagination of many Americans has not wavered. He remains the nation’s most popular modern president despite his limited achievements, an enduring symbol of the promise of a simpler and more hopeful time.

Much of this, I think, reflects what came before him and what came after. Those too young to have personal memories have difficulty in comprehending how different President Kennedy was from the other political figures of his day.

In an age when older, gray-haired figures traditionally dominated public life, he was younger, more vibrant and more irreverent. His style, for the first time, combined the attributes of the political and entertainment worlds.

His telegenic appeal was accentuated by his beautiful young wife and their two cute young children, ideal subjects of frequently fawning coverage in the day’s glossy picture magazines like Life and Look.

Unlike predecessors seen mainly in newsreels or still photos, he was the first real television president, the first to hold live news conferences, the first to be seen in color as well as black and white.

At a time when there was no cable news and network newscasts had only recently expanded to 30 minutes, his assassination marked the first time that Americans saw a major national story unfold on their television screens.

The trauma of the next few years helped to establish the idea of the Kennedy years as the last good times, before racial riots wracked America’s cities, later assassins killed yet another Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, and a bloody war raged abroad.

And despite his role in extending the initial U.S. effort in Vietnam, Kennedy has largely escaped blame for that disaster, in part because of the subsequent role of his brother, Robert, as an increasingly outspoken opponent of Lyndon Johnson’s policies.

Though the historical evidence is decidedly mixed, many close to the late president have always believed he would, after winning re-election in 1964, have abandoned the Vietnam venture. Others disagree. We’ll never know.

One thing is clear: The history of the post-Kennedy years would have been different, though not necessarily better. Lyndon Johnson would almost certainly never have been president. Richard Nixon might never have been.

But some think Ronald Reagan might have reached the White House earlier in an inevitable conservative reaction to the liberal Kennedy years.

Our politics might have been less bitterly partisan without Vietnam and Watergate and also if Kennedy and Sen. Barry Goldwater had implemented their plan to travel together in the 1964 campaign and hold a series of televised debates. Instead, no such debates were held again until 1976.

After four decades of covering earth-shaking events including impeachment proceedings against two presidents, an assassination attempt against a third, a disputed presidential election and tumultuous events across the globe, John Kennedy’s assassination still stands as the most stunning and perhaps most influential of all.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.

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