Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 1: John F. Kennedy

This is one of those "tenuous" posts, wherein the connection between me and the person in question is a bit ... stretched.  Thank you for granting me the license to make this attenuation:

Ready for the 100-yard drive uphill to speak at AC Cage

On this day in October 1963, President John F. Kennedy came to our town, to speak at the groundbreaking for the new Robert Frost Library, to be built at the head of the beautiful Amherst College quadrangle.  The "young and gallant" Kennedy was repaying a favor to Frost, the President's favorite American poet, who'd recited his poem The Gift Outright at Kennedy's inauguration in January, 1961.

Frost passed away two years later, and on this day was to be honored with the commemoration, after his decades teaching at Amherst College.

My parents were invited to attend the event, within walking distance of our home.  With an out of town commitment that weekend, they blithely decided, "We'll catch the President another time."  Were my brother and I, at ages 4 & 3 and in care of a weekend babysitter, in position as the President's helicopter touched down on the baseball field and the presidential Lincoln whisked him to the quad for his appearance? Our beloved sitter Kate McGrath insists yes! The event is so mythic as to be apocryphal, and my memory is not clear.

JFK's words delivered that day are enshrined on the Kennedy Center's River Terrace in Washington DC:

I LOOK FORWARD TO AN AMERICA WHICH WILL REWARD ACHIEVEMENT IN THE ARTS AS WE REWARD ACHIEVEMENT IN BUSINESS OR STATECRAFT. I LOOK FORWARD TO AN AMERICA WHICH WILL STEADILY RAISE THE STANDARDS OF ARTISTIC ACCOMPLISHMENT AND WHICH WILL STEADILY ENLARGE CULTURAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL OF OUR CITIZENS. AND I LOOK FORWARD TO AN AMERICA WHICH COMMANDS RESPECT THROUGHOUT THE WORLD NOT ONLY FOR ITS STRENGTH BUT FOR ITS CIVILIZATION AS WELL.

Local folklore has it that, on the way out of town, Kennedy's entourage stopped at Stan's Drive-In Market in Hadley and the President left with a short-order burger in a sack. Always, I have been fascinated by what may have transpired in those quick minutes by the roadside. Twenty seven days later, he was gone forever.

All summer long in 1977 I worked many days at the serene Frost Library, proofreading and fact-checking a book on Ralph Waldo Emerson, and I never - not once, ever, that summer, nor ever since - entered this building without feeling awe at the power and might of the intellects conjoined on that October day.

* Daria D'Arienzo, supreme Amherst College archivist, documents the 10/26/63 on-campus proceedings here, although she does not confirm details on the hamburger...

See also: Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 2: Liz and Dick Booze Cruise
                Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 3: ... Slept Here