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11/21/2003

Past Presidents

When The Editor speaks, I listen. Brian Trumbore suggested
that I take a break from science and technology and write briefly
about my recollections of John F. Kennedy’s death 40 years ago
this week. I was listening to WOR on the radio this morning and
someone said that about 40 percent of our population wasn’t
even born 40 years ago. It occurs to me that a much smaller
percentage were around in 1945, the year Franklin Roosevelt
died. In 1945, I was 17 years old and in my junior year at
Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The way in which
we experienced the two events was profoundly different due
largely to a technology that came into widespread use in the
intervening period. Of course, television was that technology.

FDR’s death was for me more like the death of a father.
Roosevelt had been president for 12 of my 17 years and had led
us through a depression and most of World War II. Kennedy, on
the other hand, was not that much older than I was. He was
young and energetic, the picture of good health and in his prime.
At least that is what most of us perceived in those days. And he
had led us through the Cuban missile crisis, a truly scary crisis
that could have ended in a nuclear war.

It was some time after JFK’s death that his womanizing became
widely known and only in recent years has the extent of his ever-
present pain and his dependence on drugs been recognized. The
recent History Channel program on Kennedy brought home to
me the similarities of JFK and FDR in keeping their true physical
limitations secret from the public. Even at 17, I had no idea of
the fact that Roosevelt was wheelchair bound.

Shortly before his death, FDR made a very rare reference to his
infirmity. Two days after his inauguration for his unprecedented
fourth term, on February 11, 1945, he left to go to Yalta for his
meeting with Churchill and Stalin. Pictures of that meeting show
a haggard FDR sitting between the other two hale and hearty
looking leaders. In a report to Congress on the meeting, he
apologized for delivering his report sitting down, saying it was
easier for him “not to have to carry about 10 pounds of steel
around at the bottom of my legs.” (Quote taken from the 1962
World Book Encyclopedia.)

A few weeks later, on April 12 that year, that I was at home in
Mechanicsburg (I commuted the 10 miles to Dickinson College)
tossing a ball around with some friends when someone came out
to say they had heard on the radio that Roosevelt had died. I
remember distinctly my first reaction was to say, “Oh no, not
Harry Truman!” I believe most shared my reaction, skeptical
that this former haberdasher could fill the shoes of FDR. The
plainspoken Truman, later one of my favorite presidents, was no
match for the eloquent Roosevelt. Today, it’s hard to imagine
that Truman, kept completely in the dark about the atom bomb,
was left with the awesome responsibility of deciding to use it.

The process of grieving for a departed president was quite
different in those days. I remember somber music on the radio
interspersed with news reports and waiting for the best pictorial
accounts of funeral and other ceremonies in Life magazine. We
had to go to see whatever movie or double feature was playing at
our local theater to see action pictures of the funeral and
associated ceremonies. The chances were there would be a Fox
Movietone News short with Lowell Thomas as the commentator
and a brief film of the recent events. No color newsreels in those
days – they were all black and white.

The voting age was 21, so I didn’t have a chance to cast my vote
in the upset Truman-Dewey election. My first and second
presidential ballots were both cast for Dwight Eisenhower but
Kennedy was my choice in the 1960 election. His apparent
youth and vigor and the arrival on the scene of TV, highlighted
by the famous debate with Nixon, ill and lacking good makeup,
certainly affected the outcome of that very close election.

Until I watched the History Channel program, I was not fully
aware of the extent of Kennedy’s medical problems. An
example was his highly overmedicated and debilitated state
during his first meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna, which led to
Khrushchev’s evaluation of JFK as a weakling. This feeling
probably influenced the decision to place missiles in Cuba. After
the History Channel program, I was much more appreciative of
Kennedy’s handling of the missile crisis. The support for an
immediate invasion of Cuba was quite strong in both the Cabinet
and in Congress. I was not aware of the number of missiles in
Cuba already targeted at any invasive forces and at East coast
cities of the U.S. Kennedy’s naval blockade and his back door
contacts with Khrushchev proved masterful strokes and I joined
everyone else at the time in breathing a sigh of relief when the
crisis was over.

In the late summer of 1963, my family spent some time on Cape
Cod on vacation. My wife and older son went to attend church
one Sunday while I stayed in our cottage with our 5-year old son.
President Kennedy attended the same church service. My wife
had trouble finding a parking space and ended up standing
outside the church while our son went inside. Kennedy came out
of the church, smiling, with Caroline and said hello to my wife,
who totally froze. It was one of the few times in her life when
she was at a loss for words, stunned by the tall, handsome
Kennedy standing right in front of her.

About three months later, we were driving from New Jersey to
western Pennsylvania to visit my wife’s relatives and to attend a
football game between Pitt and archrival Penn State. After we
picked up our toll ticket at the entrance to the Pennsylvania
Turnpike in Carlisle, we noticed a flag at the tollbooth flying at
half-mast. Wondering what had happened, we turned on our car
radio and heard the news that Kennedy had been shot and had
died. It was a somber drive to Greensburg and everyone was
distraught when we arrived. The football game was canceled, as
were most such events, and everyone was glued to the TV that
day and the next. The next day was riveting and we were
dumfounded when we saw Jack Ruby shoot Oswald. It was live
TV! We returned to New Jersey early and, like virtually
everyone else, did not stray far from the TV until the end of the
funeral ceremonies, the salute by little John John stamped
forever in our memories.

The contrast between our experiences of the deaths of FDR and
that of JFK is clear. With Roosevelt, the initial grief and concern
upon hearing the news were there but our participation in the
grieving process was more as distant observers. With Kennedy,
thanks to TV, we were all family, sharing the grieving and the
transfer of power to Lyndon Johnson as though we were there in
person. The TV close-ups let us share our pain with Jackie and
the Kennedy family perhaps even more directly than if we had
been present in person. As has been repeated many times in the
media, it was a new world. Today, we expect to be present at
any significant event, be it a battle in Iraq, the trial of an alleged
murderer or an inaugural ball.

In closing, my wife reminded me that during the 1960 Kennedy-
Nixon campaign, she and our older son also had a close-up
experience with Richard Nixon. We lived in Plainfield, New
Jersey at the time and Nixon and his wife Pat were there on a
campaign appearance. My wife and son were among a handful
of people at a street corner when the motorcade came through
and stopped briefly, with the open car carrying Dick and Pat
right at the corner. My wife waved and got a smile from Pat,
who my wife thought was very pretty. My wife doesn’t seem to
remember much about Nixon himself, perhaps an indication of
Kennedy’s greater charisma and a harbinger of the outcome of
that election.

Allen F. Bortrum



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-11/21/2003-      
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Dr. Bortrum

11/21/2003

Past Presidents

When The Editor speaks, I listen. Brian Trumbore suggested
that I take a break from science and technology and write briefly
about my recollections of John F. Kennedy’s death 40 years ago
this week. I was listening to WOR on the radio this morning and
someone said that about 40 percent of our population wasn’t
even born 40 years ago. It occurs to me that a much smaller
percentage were around in 1945, the year Franklin Roosevelt
died. In 1945, I was 17 years old and in my junior year at
Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The way in which
we experienced the two events was profoundly different due
largely to a technology that came into widespread use in the
intervening period. Of course, television was that technology.

FDR’s death was for me more like the death of a father.
Roosevelt had been president for 12 of my 17 years and had led
us through a depression and most of World War II. Kennedy, on
the other hand, was not that much older than I was. He was
young and energetic, the picture of good health and in his prime.
At least that is what most of us perceived in those days. And he
had led us through the Cuban missile crisis, a truly scary crisis
that could have ended in a nuclear war.

It was some time after JFK’s death that his womanizing became
widely known and only in recent years has the extent of his ever-
present pain and his dependence on drugs been recognized. The
recent History Channel program on Kennedy brought home to
me the similarities of JFK and FDR in keeping their true physical
limitations secret from the public. Even at 17, I had no idea of
the fact that Roosevelt was wheelchair bound.

Shortly before his death, FDR made a very rare reference to his
infirmity. Two days after his inauguration for his unprecedented
fourth term, on February 11, 1945, he left to go to Yalta for his
meeting with Churchill and Stalin. Pictures of that meeting show
a haggard FDR sitting between the other two hale and hearty
looking leaders. In a report to Congress on the meeting, he
apologized for delivering his report sitting down, saying it was
easier for him “not to have to carry about 10 pounds of steel
around at the bottom of my legs.” (Quote taken from the 1962
World Book Encyclopedia.)

A few weeks later, on April 12 that year, that I was at home in
Mechanicsburg (I commuted the 10 miles to Dickinson College)
tossing a ball around with some friends when someone came out
to say they had heard on the radio that Roosevelt had died. I
remember distinctly my first reaction was to say, “Oh no, not
Harry Truman!” I believe most shared my reaction, skeptical
that this former haberdasher could fill the shoes of FDR. The
plainspoken Truman, later one of my favorite presidents, was no
match for the eloquent Roosevelt. Today, it’s hard to imagine
that Truman, kept completely in the dark about the atom bomb,
was left with the awesome responsibility of deciding to use it.

The process of grieving for a departed president was quite
different in those days. I remember somber music on the radio
interspersed with news reports and waiting for the best pictorial
accounts of funeral and other ceremonies in Life magazine. We
had to go to see whatever movie or double feature was playing at
our local theater to see action pictures of the funeral and
associated ceremonies. The chances were there would be a Fox
Movietone News short with Lowell Thomas as the commentator
and a brief film of the recent events. No color newsreels in those
days – they were all black and white.

The voting age was 21, so I didn’t have a chance to cast my vote
in the upset Truman-Dewey election. My first and second
presidential ballots were both cast for Dwight Eisenhower but
Kennedy was my choice in the 1960 election. His apparent
youth and vigor and the arrival on the scene of TV, highlighted
by the famous debate with Nixon, ill and lacking good makeup,
certainly affected the outcome of that very close election.

Until I watched the History Channel program, I was not fully
aware of the extent of Kennedy’s medical problems. An
example was his highly overmedicated and debilitated state
during his first meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna, which led to
Khrushchev’s evaluation of JFK as a weakling. This feeling
probably influenced the decision to place missiles in Cuba. After
the History Channel program, I was much more appreciative of
Kennedy’s handling of the missile crisis. The support for an
immediate invasion of Cuba was quite strong in both the Cabinet
and in Congress. I was not aware of the number of missiles in
Cuba already targeted at any invasive forces and at East coast
cities of the U.S. Kennedy’s naval blockade and his back door
contacts with Khrushchev proved masterful strokes and I joined
everyone else at the time in breathing a sigh of relief when the
crisis was over.

In the late summer of 1963, my family spent some time on Cape
Cod on vacation. My wife and older son went to attend church
one Sunday while I stayed in our cottage with our 5-year old son.
President Kennedy attended the same church service. My wife
had trouble finding a parking space and ended up standing
outside the church while our son went inside. Kennedy came out
of the church, smiling, with Caroline and said hello to my wife,
who totally froze. It was one of the few times in her life when
she was at a loss for words, stunned by the tall, handsome
Kennedy standing right in front of her.

About three months later, we were driving from New Jersey to
western Pennsylvania to visit my wife’s relatives and to attend a
football game between Pitt and archrival Penn State. After we
picked up our toll ticket at the entrance to the Pennsylvania
Turnpike in Carlisle, we noticed a flag at the tollbooth flying at
half-mast. Wondering what had happened, we turned on our car
radio and heard the news that Kennedy had been shot and had
died. It was a somber drive to Greensburg and everyone was
distraught when we arrived. The football game was canceled, as
were most such events, and everyone was glued to the TV that
day and the next. The next day was riveting and we were
dumfounded when we saw Jack Ruby shoot Oswald. It was live
TV! We returned to New Jersey early and, like virtually
everyone else, did not stray far from the TV until the end of the
funeral ceremonies, the salute by little John John stamped
forever in our memories.

The contrast between our experiences of the deaths of FDR and
that of JFK is clear. With Roosevelt, the initial grief and concern
upon hearing the news were there but our participation in the
grieving process was more as distant observers. With Kennedy,
thanks to TV, we were all family, sharing the grieving and the
transfer of power to Lyndon Johnson as though we were there in
person. The TV close-ups let us share our pain with Jackie and
the Kennedy family perhaps even more directly than if we had
been present in person. As has been repeated many times in the
media, it was a new world. Today, we expect to be present at
any significant event, be it a battle in Iraq, the trial of an alleged
murderer or an inaugural ball.

In closing, my wife reminded me that during the 1960 Kennedy-
Nixon campaign, she and our older son also had a close-up
experience with Richard Nixon. We lived in Plainfield, New
Jersey at the time and Nixon and his wife Pat were there on a
campaign appearance. My wife and son were among a handful
of people at a street corner when the motorcade came through
and stopped briefly, with the open car carrying Dick and Pat
right at the corner. My wife waved and got a smile from Pat,
who my wife thought was very pretty. My wife doesn’t seem to
remember much about Nixon himself, perhaps an indication of
Kennedy’s greater charisma and a harbinger of the outcome of
that election.

Allen F. Bortrum