JOHN F. KENNEDY WOULD HAVE BEEN NINETY-FIVE TODAY

JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY

May 29, 1917-November 22, 1963

35th U.S. PRESIDENT

January 20-1961-November 22, 1963

JFK DEBATING RICHARD NIXON ON TV (1960)

The link to the Kennedy Library and Museum website is here; the New York Times obituary, in five parts, starts here; JFK the icon discovered being used for commerical purposes on the Ginza, in Tokyo, is here; and a thought about Kennedy and Khrushchev and the Cuban Missile Crisis, here.

RICHARD GOODWIN TURNS EIGHTY

RICHARD N. GOODWIN

b. December 7, 1931

RICHARD GOODWIN

Back in the Day

-- about a decade after his work as first a speechwriter and special counsel to President John F. Kennedy and then special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, and a few years after his speechwriting for Senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was cut short by RFK's assassination (more on Goodwin's career here) --

JOHN F. KENNEDY b. May 29, 1917

JOHN F. KENNEDY 

May 29, 1917-November 22, 1963 

Part of a frame of a film screened at the JFK Library, Boston, in connection with a commemoration of the Cuban Missile Crisis and its resolution.  Perhaps this is from THIRTEEN DAYS?  Shall have to check. 

This is not the whole frame as presented in the film, and it is not a cropping afterwards.  I deliberately used a telephoto lens in the kind of extreme close-up I have often used in my photojournalistic work. 

Here I wanted to catch something of the intensity of crisis as it was lived through, and the president's centrality to it, for better and possibly, in part, for worse (the possibility that his actions caused Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to misjudge him). 

Since President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize has just been in the news again (for snubbing or being snubbed by his "fellow Peace Prizewinner" Lech Walesa), it does give one a bit of pause that neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev nor  the two in tandem were given such an honor. 

FIRST OF THE KENNEDY-NIXON DEBATES, A HALF-CENTURY AGO

FIRST TELEVISED 

U.S. PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE 

SEPTEMBER 26, 1960 

PHOTOGRAPHED IN FORT KNOX, 

KENTUCKY, FROM TV TRANSMISSION 

Richard M. Nixon (l) and John F. Kennedy (r) were to have four broadcast debates altogether in that autumn of 1960. Both men were subsequently elected president: Senator Kennedy in 1960, and Vice-President Nixon in 1968. President Kennedy was assassinated; President Nixon driven to resign by the Watergate scandal. 

Some reflections on the debates by speechwriter Theodore Sorensen, who was there with Kennedy, can be found here; a contemporary newspaper account here; and a more general  discussion here. 

EARL WARREN d. July 9, 1974

EARL WARREN 

March 19, 1891-July 9, 1974 

EARL WARREN 

CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT 

1953/4-1969 (EISENHOWER APPOINTEE) 

THRICE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA 

REPUBLICAN NOMINEE FOR 

VICE-PRESIDENT, 1948 

REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFUL, 1952 

LEADER OF THE "WARREN COURT" 

CO-CHAIR OF THE WARREN COMMISSION 

ON THE ASSASSINATION OF 

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY 

TED SORENSEN, JFK SPEECHWRITER & CONFIDANTE, b. May 8, 1928

THEODORE SORENSEN

JFK SPEECHWRITER

& CONFIDANTE

b. May 8, 1928

TED SORENSEN

 at

THE JOHN F.

KENNEDY LIBRARY

JFK ON THE GINZA

"JOHN F. KENNEDY" 

ON THE GINZA 

AN AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ICON ... 

IN JAPAN 

IN HONOR OF JFK, BORN ON THIS DATE 

IN 1917, IN BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS

PRESIDENT, 

JANUARY 20, 1961-NOVEMBER 22, 1963 

In 1981, en route to China for my first visit, I had a chance to dash downtown to Tokyo for an hour-and-a-half, and grabbed it. 

I was back in the country where I lived for a year as a child, in the town of Sasebo, and where, at age eight, I had taken my first photographs. 

And what did I see but an image of our slain president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in a store front window on the Ginza – being used to sell glasses. 

Such is the power of icons and the mystery of iconography, and of cross-cultural exchanges.