Don’t Let it Be Forgot — One Brief Shining Moment in Camelot: The Night I Met JFK
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” — Mark Twain
By Gregory N. Joseph
John Fitzgerald Kennedy and post-World War II America seemed made for each other: He was a living, breathing metaphor for all that it had been through in the 20th century, bursting on the political scene with a sense of preordained fate in the country’s greatest hour of triumph, prosperity, power and hope.
With a handsomeness to rival movie stars, a wisdom that belied his youth, the confident toughness of a genuine war hero, a millionaire’s son who understood the working man, Kennedy had the traits America was looking for at this certain moment in its history.
He had narrowly missed running for vice president with Democratic standard-bearer Adlai Stevenson in 1956, the only loss of his political career, and as it turned out, a blessing in disguise. He was introduced to a national audience without the tarnish of having lost the election. The experience left him thinking, “Why not me, why not me?” — why shouldn’t he make a run for the top spot?
Dwight David Eisenhower was the president who reminded everyone of their favorite uncle at Thanksgiving dinner. Kennedy was everyone’s favorite son who crashed a raucous graduation party. Eisenhower was photographed playing golf surrounded by rich, paunchy establishment friends. Kennedy was shown playing touch football with his slim, youthful war buddies. Kennedy was 43 and of the 20th century (born on May 29, 1917), Eisenhower was 70 and of the previous century (born on Oct. 14, 1890). Eisenhower spoke with the garbled syntax of someone whose best years were behind him. Kennedy spoke with the crisp assurance of someone whose best years lie ahead. Eisenhower’s campaign slogan had been the uninspired but reassuring “I like Ike.” Kennedy’s rallying cry was the kinetic challenge “Let’s get America moving again.” Eisenhower seemed to look backward to the past, Kennedy wanted us to know he was looking forward to the future. Eisenhower was status quo, Kennedy was change. With Eisenhower you somehow felt on the outside looking in. With Kennedy you felt as if he was taking you along — and the country sensed he was somehow unique.
Kennedy may have been young, and seemed and looked boyish, but he was wise and experienced well beyond his years.
In 1938, at age 21, he had worked at the American embassy in London, where his father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was serving as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ambassador to the Court of St. James. The next year, using his father’s connections, he traveled throughout Europe, the Soviet Union, the Balkans, and the Middle East.
He saw the Nazis up close and personal just before the outbreak of World War II, had tea with the future queen of England, sat in the House of Commons listening to speeches, including that of Winston Churchill, marking the United Kingdom’s declaration of war against Germany, and was sent by his father to help American survivors of the S.S. Athenia after it had been torpedoed.
While at Harvard University, he wrote a thesis, “Appeasement at Munich,” about the war and its origins, which became the best-selling book, “Why England Slept.” He graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in international affairs, then audited classes at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.
And that was just the beginning.
He would become a bona fide hero for his dazzling exploits captaining PT 109 in the Pacific in 1943 during World War II, cover the opening of the United Nations as a journalist for the Hearst newspaper chain at age 27 in 1945, win election to the United States House of Representatives against long odds as a newcomer in 1946, be elected to the U.S. Senate representing Massachusetts in a landslide in 1952, win a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for his book “Profiles in Courage” about eight U.S. senators in American history who acted with extraordinary political bravery, and win reelection to the Senate in 1958.
On Saturday, Oct. 22, 1960, I met Kennedy, now the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer for the presidency, as he campaigned in Grandview, Missouri, a suburb of my family’s home in Kansas City.
On Nov. 8, he would be elected the 35th president of the United States in one of the closest elections in American history. (The final popular vote was 34,226,731–49.7 percent — for Kennedy, and 34,108,157 votes — 49.5 percent — for his Republican opponent, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, a margin of just 118,574 votes; Kennedy won the electoral college, 303 to 219.)
It was two years to the day before he guided the country through the Cuban Missile Crisis (Oct. 16–29, 1962), America’s closest brush with all-out nuclear war, and exactly three years and one month before he would be shot to death on Nov. 22, 1963, passing into history as the fourth American president to be assassinated.
My family, like so many families back then, was politically aware and involved.
When I was 10, my parents and maternal grandparents swept me away to the opening of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, on a sweltering July 6, 1957. At 14, they had taken me to the rally in Grandview. When I was 26 and just home from California for the Christmas holidays, they insisted that I accompany them to Truman’s funeral between snow storms on Dec. 28, 1972.
During the politically raucous year 1960, when the winds of change were manifest, there was never any doubt that if Kennedy were near, we would go to see him — and, if we were lucky, meet him. My family thought it was important for me, especially, to do so, for my personal growth and understanding of the world, and to say that I had been a part of history. They encouraged me to take my little Argus C3 35 mm camera, the one my father, a fine photographer, had proudly gifted me with at Christmas the year before. Photos of this night, they said, would someday be cherished relics to show my own children and grandchildren. They couldn’t have imagined just how prescient they were.
I attended the rally with my mother and her parents, my maternal grandparents, brimming with expectation. They had read about his visit in The Kansas City Star, and planned going with the meticulous strategy of an invading force taking a beachhead. They knew exactly where Kennedy would be, and where they needed to be.
Mom and I stood in the crowd near the podium where Kennedy spoke, while my grandparents watched from their comfortable four-door green-on-green, tail-finned 1957 Plymouth sedan (they always bought green Plymouths — Gramps thought Plymouths were the best-made cars and Grams liked green cars) because of my grandmother’s severe arthritis. My grandfather carefully parked in a spot where they could see and hear the future president.
Mom and Grandma were devout Democrats, almost religious in their fervor. Mom because of the party’s social programs, Grams from her days as a New Deal supporter who fondly remembered how President Franklin D. Roosevelt had pulled the country out of the Great Depression. Grandpa was another story. He was a quiet Republican, someone who needed convincing, lots of it, if he was to cast his ballot for Kennedy (“Democrats start wars,” he uttered once in a rare show of his political leanings). While the Republicans in my family liked Ike, none of them was fond of Nixon, whom they regarded as devious and dishonest.
It was the day after Kennedy’s fourth and final televised presidential debate with Nixon, an event broadcast over ABC in which Nixon was in Los Angeles and Kennedy in New York. The viewing audience numbered in the tens of millions. (Years before, while serving at the same time in the House of Representatives, from 1947 to 1953, Kennedy and Nixon had a non-televised debated over the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 [the Labor Management Relations Act], a federal law that significantly restricted labor union power; then, despite being on opposite sides of the aisle, they were friendly. Not now.)
“We were late getting out of New York last night,” Kennedy apologized to the crowd gathered here. They had been waiting for him for almost four hours, often in a chill, driving fall rain.
If they were upset by his tardiness, they didn’t show it. Their patience rewarded, they cheered his every word, eternally grateful at finally seeing the handsome young candidate in person — their joy, and their awareness of being a part of history, were palpable. Indeed, they hadn’t budged, taking fierce possession of their chosen positions in front of the temporary speaker’s platform with the tenacity of people who had inherited an expensive piece of land and were ready to fend off squatters.
The candidate, who hailed from a family of savvy politicians, knew what he had to do. Upon arrival, he rewarded their persistence by plunging without hesitation into their midst, swallowed up by outstretched arms aching to touch him, white straw hats bearing his image bobbing in the stark Midwestern darkness like so many Christmas ornaments, and a sea of newly stapled campaign signs swaying in the cold night air like kites straining to soar.
The site had been carefully selected — the Truman Corners Shopping Center, which was located on land once owned by the family of the former president and where he grew up. He had dedicated the center himself just two years before.
Truman had been outspokenly opposed to Kennedy on grounds the young senator lacked the necessary experience for the presidency. And there was more, something even deeper: Truman harbored an intense dislike of Kennedy’s controversial father, who, as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1940, had publicly questioned Britain’s ability to stand up to Nazi Germany, saying at one point that democracy was finished in the UK and possibly even in the United States, an utterance that led to his forced resignation from the post and dogged him for the rest of his life.
This was a political genuflection by young Kennedy, a public reaching-out to the feisty ex-president.
Nothing was left to chance this night by the well-oiled, ahead-of-its-time Kennedy political machine. The speaker’s stand was erected in front of a men’s clothing store named “President Shops,” its big, bright red neon sign looming dramatically behind Kennedy as if to presciently bestow a celestial blessing on his candidacy, recording the moment for history. It worked. The speech kicked off a successful visit that ultimately resulted in Truman’s gruff approval.
In 1990, I shared my story of attending Kennedy’s rally, and the photos I took that night, with historian David McCullough, who had written about the episode in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, “Truman.” He replied with a lovely note. I had interviewed him when I was the television columnist for The Arizona Republic, discussing his role in Ken Burns’ landmark “Civil War” series on PBS, then, for a separate article, asked his opinion about the televised presidential debates between Kennedy and Nixon, since the 30th anniversary of that event fell at the time we spoke. He surprised me by saying that as a young man he had worked on Kennedy’s presidential campaign and that it had changed his life. “Now, whenever his image appears on the TV screen, I have to leave the room,” he said, his voice tinged with sadness.
In September 2021, the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, a museum located on the site of President Kennedy’s assassination, invited me to participate in its Oral History Project “to chronicle the assassination … and present the contemporary culture within the context of presidential history.”
My wife and I had visited the museum on the 50th anniversary of the assassination, in 2013. Coincidentally, McCullough delivered the keynote address with a speech in Dealey Plaza.
On that cold, damp Midwestern fall night in October 1960, I discovered what Mark Twain meant when he talked about discovering why you were born.
John F. Kennedy was president for only 1,036 days, but he left us the most wonderful and meaningful gift that one human being can give to another: the assurance that each of us counts and can make a difference, and that becoming involved in the world around us is our most fundamental shared right. All these years later, that inspiration remains his greatest legacy, one that still lights the way.
The full text of JFK’s speech that night, provided by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum:
Ladies and gentlemen, Congressman Randall — can anybody hear that? (Response from the audience.)
Congressman Randall, Senator Ed Long, your candidate for Governor, who I know is going to be the Governor, Hugh Dalton, the Attorney General, ladies and gentlemen: I am delighted to be in this state.
Mr. Nixon two weeks ago in Boston in my home town attempted to dismiss me as saying that I was just another Truman. I said I regarded it as a compliment, and he was just another
Dewey. (Applause) And he has not said it since. The fact of the matter is that this shopping center is called Truman Center, but also Mr. Truman is remembered for being a fighting President, who helped defend freedom after World War II in Greece and Turkey and Western Europe, through NATO and the Marshall Plan and the rest. The Truman Corner and the Truman Doctrine rests thousands of miles apart, but they are an expression of America at its best. I come here tonight to this center of a great Democratic state. I come here and ask your help. I ask you to join us in building the strength of America, again. (Applause) I shook hands coming over here tonight with some farmers, and how can you tell that they are farmers. It is because their hands are twice as big. I don’t know what they do with it all day but it is twice as big because they work longer and harder than anybody with the possible exception of candidates for the Presidency. (Laughter) And they average in pay about 60 cents an hour. I believe that this administration and its policies, pursued by Mr. Benson, called by Mr. Nixon the most remarkable Secretary of Agriculture in history, has helped liquidate the American farmer, and Mr. Nixon’s program will continue it.
How can any farmer vote Republican in 1960? (Applause) I understand nearby there was a farmer who planted some corn. He said to his neighbor, “I hope I break even this year. I really need the money.” We want him to do more than break even. We want him to move ahead. (Applause)
That is a Massachusetts joke. (Laughter) We are a little slow up there.
I want to express my regrets to all of you for keeping you waiting. We were not playing golf. (Laughter and applause) We started at midnight in New York after debating the Great Debater, Mr. Nixon. (Response from the audience) The man who stood up to Mr. Khrushchev but won’t stand up for a fifth debate. (Response, laughter, and applause) We left there at midnight, came to St. Louis, then to Joplin, then Wichita, now Truman Corners, back to Kansas and we end up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and we don’t even get 60 cents an hour for doing this.
I come here to Missouri and ask your help. This state is key. If we can carry this State of Missouri, I think the Democrats can win in 1960. (Applause) I believe this year, just as in 1932, and just as in 1948, just as in 1912, when Woodrow Wilson was elected, I believe it in the national interest that a new administration with new people, with a new sense of purpose, a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate and a Democratic President and administration, working together to strengthen our country, to move it ahead, to protect the interests of our farmers, to protect those who live over 65 and are retired, to build better schools, to set a standard of excellence for our society, to demonstrate here in this country that freedom can move, so that people around the world will want to be connected with us, will want to follow our example, will want to be associated with us, will wish to follow this leadership not of Mr. Khrushchev, not of the Chinese Communists, not of Castro, but they want to stand with Americans. All over Africa there are children named George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt. There are none called Nixon. (Laughter and applause) There are none yet called Lenin or Stalin, and we don’t want them to be. We want those people to be associated with the cause of freedom because they are impressed by what we have done here, because we move, because we build a vital society, because we move ahead and provide employment for our people, a secure life for our people, a better life, and in so doing we strengthen then the cause of freedom. (Applause)
Your Senators, men like Stuart Symington, have spoken for Missouri and they have also spoken for the United States. You cannot live in this state and read his speeches which warn of our peril for the last eight years, without knowing in your heart that the Republican Party which has always stood still, which has always looked back, which has always taken the easy way, which has always blocked progress, which has always stood in the middle of the road against movement — you know that that is the program that Mr. Nixon runs on in 1960, that we have never had it so good, that our prestige has never been higher, that our influence has never been greater. You know it is not true. You cannot be a citizen of this country and read the paper and listen to the radio and watch television and look at space, and look across the street and come here and know that we are doing enough. We are Americans. That is a proud boast. That is a great privilege, to be a citizen of the United States, and we must meet our responsibilities.
In 1960 and 1961, our responsibility is to pick this country of ours up and move it, and that is what we are going to do with your help. (Applause)
Senator Long, Senator Symington, this state’s saying from the time of its first history has been “Show me.” I am attempting to show you in this state before November 8. I am attempting to show you what this country must do if it is going to fulfill its destiny. And I hope that on November 8 you will show us that Missouri will go Democratic. (Applause)
(Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 913, “Truman Corners Shopping Center, Grandview, Missouri, 22 October 1960.” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.)
