MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. Fifty years ago this week John F. Kennedy took the oath of office on the East Front of the U.S. Capitol. And on that cold January day, the President Kennedy delivered one of the most famous speeches in American history.
JOHN F: Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.
SIEGEL: And it was that new generation that found inspiration in Kennedy's words, especially in this challenge.
KENNEDY: And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
SIEGEL: Unidentified Announcer: Inauguration day dawns on a capital that has been almost paralyzed by a full-fledged blizzard.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
NATHAN ROTT: January 20th, 1961. Bruce Birch was 19 years old. He had moved to Washington from Kansas just in time to see the inauguration. And after a two- mile hike, because his bus got stuck in the eight inches of snow, he made it to the U.S. Capitol.
BRUCE BIRCH: It was literally still snowing and blowing. And I remember music from one of the military bands, thinking, man, I'd worry about my lips freezing to the mouthpiece.
ROTT: Famously, Kennedy wasn't wearing a coat or a hat. Forty-three years old, tan, even to those watching on a black and white TV, he looked the part of the youngest man ever elected to the Oval Office. He stepped to the microphone.
KENNEDY: We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom.
ROTT: He spoke of beginnings and ends, war and peace, disease and Poverty. He built the listeners up and then, finally, let loose the line that shaped a generation
KENNEDY: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
BIRCH: I remember feeling very invigorated by it, feeling at the end of the speech, man, this really makes me want to do something, to contribute.
ROTT: And Bruce Birch did contribute. He became a teacher, a professor and, later, dean of Wesley Theological Seminary. Birch answered Kennedy's call, and so did many others. Nineteen-year-old Donna Shalala was in her residence hall at Western College for Women in Ohio. The room was packed with freshmen but quiet as they watched on a fuzzy TV.
DONNA SHALALA: His exact words hit me like a splash of water. He was actually talking to me and he was speaking about public service.
ROTT: And public service was something Shalala had never really considered. But here was the President asking her to do something. A year later she joined the Peace Corps because...
SHALALA: That was the embodiment of President Kennedy's call to my generation for service.
ROTT: Gonzalo Barrientos heard it, too. He heard it from Texas.
GONZALO: BARRIENTOS: In Bastrop, Texas, where I grew up, there were three schools. There was a school for blacks, a school for whites, a school for Mexicans.
ROTT: Barrientos was the son of farmers, of cotton pickers. Kennedy's speech struck him because...
BARRIENTOS: He spoke for all of us, he spoke to all of us, whether you were poor, rich, whatever color, whatever background as an American. That was especially inspiring to me.
ROTT: Bill Hilliard heard the speech that day. But for him, the inspiration came two years later, on November 22nd, 1963. That morning, around the same time President Kennedy was setting out in a motorcade in Dallas, Hilliard was re- reading a letter he'd received that very morning. Greetings, it read...
BILL HILLIARD: You will report for induction into the U.S. Army at 0530, 5th of December, 1963, at the county building.
ROTT: But Hilliard didn't want to be a soldier. He had a job. He was in school, just in between semesters. There was an anti-war movement, his own moral misgivings. He thought of running to Canada, and then he heard it on the news.
WALTER CRONKITE: From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died...
HILLIARD: After Walk Cronkite made his announcement, I went upstairs and I got an old copy of Life magazine, which had a picture of him on it.
ROTT: A picture of JFK. On the back, his ask not quote. Hilliard tore out the page, wrote closed in memoriam on the bottom, and taped it to the business's front door. The next day, he enlisted in the Air Force voluntarily, and two years later...
HILLIARD: First time I was in Vietnam, we were in Denang, and the words came back to me again, about ask not, as I got off the plane.
ROTT: So the first thing you thought when you stepped off the plane in Vietnam was?
HILLIARD: Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.
ROTT: It's here, below the eternal flame, that pieces of his speech are etched in granite, the pieces that inspired Barrientos and Birch, Hilliard and Shalala and many others - teachers and nurses, veterans and volunteers. But half a century has passed. Do those words still resonate? Or will they fade with the generation that carried them? I ask Andrew Collier, a 21-year-old from Tennessee, as he walks away from the memorial. He thinks they'll stick.
ANDREW COLLIER: It still clicks today, thinking about what you can do instead of trying to see what other people can do for you, you know.
ROTT: What about the next generation? Six-year old Kole Hurtgren says he knows the words well. He's here with his family. His dad is a freshman Congressman from Illinois. I ask Kole to recite the words.
KOLE HURTGREN: Do not ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
ROTT: Nathan Rott, NPR News, Washington.