When you spend enough time on the road, most hotel rooms have a tendency to blend together to the point where it’s hard to tell a Marriott, from a Hilton, from a Holiday Inn. For the average road warrior, the only part of a hotel you really notice is whatever it is that isn’t working in the room you happen to be in that week. Occasionally, though, a hotel really stands out… and not in that “Eww… there’s a hairball in the tub and a dead mouse under desk” kind of way.

Being first and foremost a lover of history some hotels simply have better stories than others. The best of those are usually reserved for the grand old hotels in the downtown of major cities. Some of these places are past their prime, but some of them have endured as symbols of elegance from on generation to another. It’s been my good fortune to spend the last two nights in one of the latter.

The Hilton Fort Worth was built in the 1920s as the Hotel Texas. Built at a time when cattle drives still ran through the heart of downtown and Fort Worth was in the process of became a center of the Texas oil boom – with money comes political influence… and where there’s influence, there are politicians looking to earn or cash in on favors. On November 21, 1963 President Kennedy arrived in Fort Worth as part of a five-city swing through Texas. The presidential party booked out two floor of the Hotel Texas, with the grandest suite looking out over downtown Fort Worth and Main Street.

On the morning of November 22^nd, the president addressed a crowd that had gathered in the early morning rain before delivering formal remarks in the hotel’s ballroom. Following this breakfast speech, the Kennedy motorcade departed the Texas, following an agenda that would carry the president to a scheduled speech in Dallas at noon. Kennedy never made that speech, of course, and the Texas became inextricably linked with one of the darkest moments in American history.

I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to spend the last two nights at the Fort Worth Hilton, though I can’t help but think of it a the Texas, and I am deeply grateful to the kind staff who allowed me to visit the Kennedy Suite and have a few brief moments of communion with real American history. There was something about it being a hotel room, albeit a ridiculously well appointed hotel room, that reminded me that despite the pomp and ceremony, presidents aren’t anointed; they’re elevated from the people and will return to the people at the end of their term as they have in unbroken succession since the beginning.

I had a moment today. I don’t get those very often any more… and I kind of wish I did.