Jennifer Clark explores the Collection and finds a diversity of material reflecting the power of the Kennedy image John Fitzgerald Kennedy had it all. He was rich, young and handsome. He was married to the beautiful and talented Jacqueline Bouvier and they had two lovely children. As President of the United States of America he was the most powerful man in the world. Then, after almost three years in office, he was assassinated in November 1963. As the world was transfixed by Kennedy in life, so it has remained since his death. An eternal flame burns over his gravesite in Arlington Cemetery to keep his memory alive. Given the public interest in Kennedy such symbolism is probably not necessary. At 43 years of age Kennedy was the youngest President ever elected when he succeeded the 71-year-old Dwight D. Eisenhower. Taking office in January 1961, he was the first President born in the twentieth century. Kennedy was the first Catholic President. The only other Catholic presidential candidate was Al Smith in 1928; he failed. The admiration for Kennedy across the world, including Australia, can easily be explained. He came to office at the same time as television was enjoying rapid growth and popularity, especially in the area of news reporting. Kennedy was telegenic and he used television as his most effective mode of publicity. His presidency coincided with the beginning of a new decade and many people equated his election with promise and opportunity, especially for race relations. This optimism co existed with a deep foreboding about the outcome of the Cold War and a strained Soviet–American relationship. So a man more like a film star than a President came to power amidst political tension overseas and great hope and prosperity at home. It is not really surprising that across the world the press followed every move of the young President. Journalists photographed his holidays, snapped his family at play and followed him on tours. They talked about his Catholicism, reported his speeches and even commented on his hair. The President was public property. The effect of close press coverage, especially television coverage, was to produce a strange intimacy between the Kennedy image and the international viewing public.
With only a few exceptions, Australians had no personal contact with Kennedy. He never visited Australia although there was a plan for him to do so. The visit was cancelled for American political reasons and because the date eventually chosen clashed with a planned visit by the Queen Mother. The only Kennedy Australians knew was the one who came into their lounge rooms on the television. The Kennedy image was so powerful that when he was killed many Australians experienced a genuine and profound grief as if a friend or relative had died. People reported feeling physically ill, crying uncontrollably, feeling lost, desolate and afraid for the future. They packed churches to mourn collectively and to pray for Kennedy’s departed soul.
In Australia as elsewhere, ordinary people felt moved to send condolence messages to Jacqueline Kennedy. Many were from women, who, as wives and mothers themselves, expressed a personal understanding of grief. They told their own stories of widowhood and bereavement as a way to comfort each other. Correspondents often wrote to Jacqueline Kennedy in familiar and personal terms and, sometimes, realising the peculiarity of a one-way intimate international relationship, apologised for such boldness. The letters generally referred to Kennedy’s qualities as a world leader, a family man and a Catholic role model. Although a long way from Australia, still Kennedy was somehow a shared President. The materials about John Fitzgerald Kennedy held in the National Library reflect the many facets of his public and private life, the phenomenal response he engendered in ordinary people and the almost obsessive interest in the paraphernalia of the Kennedy Presidency that remains to this day. As expected, there are studies of Kennedy’s Presidency in action, such as Lawrence Freedman’s Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam (2000) or A.A. Fursenko’s One Hell of a Gamble: Krushchev, Castro and Kennedy 1958–1964 (1997). These books, and others like them, discuss Kennedy’s operating practices, his foreign policy, the decisions he made, and the international crises in which he became embroiled. The Cuban missile crisis brought America and the former Soviet Union as close to war as they had ever come while the rest of the world watched and waited. A sound recording of Kennedy’s speech on the Cuban missile crisis given on 25 October, 1962 is held in the Oral History Collection. Kennedy presided over critical periods in American history and there are dramatic stories to be told; in his words and those of others. Apart from the political or diplomatic side of Kennedy’s life there are other studies which demonstrate a renewed interest in those elements of America with which he was particularly associated or which examine a particular part of his life. Lawrence H. Fuchs’ book John F. Kennedy and American Catholicism (1967) or Walter Muir Whitehill’s Boston in the Age of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1966) both use Kennedy as an entry point into discussions of American life. Robert J. Donovan wrote PT109, John F. Kennedy in WWII (1961) and Joseph P. Berry published John F. Kennedy and the Media: The First Television President (c.1987) to explore those elements of Kennedy’s image that attracted enormous public interest. There is even a coffee-table book, America the Beautiful in the Words of John F. Kennedy (1964), published by the editors of Country Beautiful Magazine, which uses snippets from Kennedy’s speeches as the text for a photo shoot of American landscapes. The White House itself became an object of renewed interest during the Kennedy Presidency. In 1962 one third of all Americans watched Jacqueline Kennedy host a tour of the White House. The transcripts of that program were published in Perry Wolff’s A Tour of the White House with Mrs John F. Kennedy (1962). There is yet another kind of Kennedy material that can only be described as personal accounts of his life which illustrate the impact he had on the world. Some of these are written by people close to him such as his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, who wrote With Kennedy, or My Twelve Years with John Kennedy (1966), written by his personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln. There is a fascination with Kennedy, the man, that goes beyond an interest in the day-to-day affairs of top-level American politics. Still, it was not only those who knew Kennedy personally who felt compelled to write about him. Some of the more interesting works are actually written by those who never met him and have responded only to his public image.
Much of this response owes its existence to the tragic and mysterious circumstances of Kennedy’s death. The assassination has generated an enormous range of diverse materials. There are the studies that explore all kinds of assassination theories, some more believable than others, such as Jim Garrison’s On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy (1988), which formed the basis of Oliver Stones’ film JKF (1991) or Gerald L. Posner’s Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (c.1993). The Library holds Keir Strahan’s Discussion Notes on Jim Garrison’s On the Trail of the Assassins (1996) and also the 1964 report of the Warren Commission, the official investigation of the assassination, as well as studies born of its alleged inconsistencies such as Harold Weisberg’s Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report (1965). For something completely different there is Henry S. Bloomgarden’s 1975 study The Gun: A ‘Biography’ of the Gun that Killed John F. Kennedy (1975). Of all the materials produced after the assassination none are more revealing of the importance of Kennedy as a subject of modern popular culture than those created by ordinary people. They wrote about the imagined Kennedy in poetry, song, essay, verse of little literary merit, or they were inspired to press medallions, make sculptures, paint his portrait or rename streets and buildings in his honour. All of these creative acts helped to channel grief and to remember not just an American President but also a cult hero. The National Library holds a small representative collection of Kennedy tributes including a sound recording of a radio program broadcast immediately after the assassination that contains a description of events leading to the shooting and the reaction of people around the world.
Personal tributes were commonly made public as well. Pamela Piech, for example, wrote two poems about Kennedy in the two days after the assassination. She published them privately in a limited edition of 200 with linocuts by Paul Peter Piech. The National Library holds number 49. Pamela Piech was not the only one moved to poetry. Apart from other single publications, Erwin A. Glikes edited a whole volume of poetic tributes called Of Poetry and Power (1964). There is also a copy of the combined Kennedy Memorial and Thanksgiving Day Service in November 1963 held at St Stephen’s Presbyterian Church (later St Stephen’s Uniting Church) in Sydney and attended by the American Consul-General, Edward A. Bolster. Even more interesting is the copy of the sermon delivered by Rev. Gordon Powell at St Stephen’s on 22 November 1964, in which he highlighted coincidences in the lives of Kennedy and America’s other famous assassinated president, Abraham Lincoln. Similarly, the Library holds a copy of Malcolm Williamson’s Elegy—J.F.K. (c.1964), a purposely discordantcomposition for organ with a high pitched trumpet air. On the other end of the musical spectrum is Shona Laing’s 1987 popular song published in Australia called (Glad I’m) Not a Kennedy. Laing describes Kennedy as ‘Wearing the fame like a loaded gun’. ‘Ooh’, she sings, ‘I’m glad I’m not a Kennedy.’ John Kennedy and his family have engendered enormous and ongoing public interest. The circumstances of his rise to power, his film-star qualities and the speculation surrounding his death have all fuelled what seems like a Kennedy industry in popular culture. Kennedy may be gone but he is certainly not forgotten. JENNIFER CLARK a member of the School of Classics, History and Religion at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales |
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