'1000 DAYS'
Renews Kennedy Memories
By Charles Corcoran
Not a tall man, enveloped by a heavy winter coat and scarf, the former Special Assistant to the President of the United States stood alone in the wings of Hoch Auditorium last night.
Nearby, the professors who had escorted him to the site of his speech on the "Kennedy Legacy" were busy in animated conversation among themselves.
I LOOKED DOWN at the book in my hand. "Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.' A Thousand Days' John F. Kennedy in the White House." And on the back, "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize . . . Mr. Schlesinger has continued his distinguished career with such books as as . . . a former professor of history at Harvard..."
I walked over and introduced myself. He shook my hand warmly, nodding "yes" that I could ask him a few questions. Two other reporters crowded in close to listen. Tucked neatly in the right corner of his mouth I noticed the remnant of a plump little cigar. I fumbled for a place to start, fidgeting, trying to seize phrases, words that would express my respect for him, for the life he had led so close to the President, the President who means so much to so many of my generation.
I MUMBLED something vague about "the continuing influence of Kennedy on American youth." Mr. Schlesinger's eyes lighted up behind his horn rims and, looking rather owlish, said he was sure that there was, but that he couldn't give any specifics because he was "out of touch with that sort of thing" in Washington.
A reporter asked what historians were saying of Harry Truman's administration.
Schlesinger noted a recent survey of historians as reported by the New York Times rated Truman as a "Near Great," just below the top classification.
The reporter grimaced. "Really? Well, anyway, my husband will be happy to hear that."
"AND YOU?" the professor asked.
She waved her head from side-to-side, a glum expression betraying her feelings. Schlesinger grinned, a white cigar smoke cloud came forth, "Your husband's right."
"And Mr. Kennedy?" I interjected.
"That's for your generation to decide," he said.
I asked him if he felt President Kennedy's plans to try for support of the native populations of Southeast Asia were still a part of American foreign policy. "Or are people in the Johnson Administration just moulting the words because it was a popular idea for so long?"
TWO GIRLS INTERRUPTED and asked him if he would "Please autograph" their copies of the book. (I'd almost forgotten about that.)
"I'd be glad to... Why, I think that the announced results of President Johnson's Hawaiian conference indicate that such is the case," he answered my question. He took my book and inscribed "Arthur M. Schles??-gerir."
It was getting close to eight. A protective huddle of professors moved toward us.
"Exhilarated!"
He smiled knowingly, and there is such a look, turned and strode to the stage to begin his speech. His entourage hurried to keep up.
"How were you personally affected by your association with Kennedy?" I blurted.
The speech might have better been called two speeches, for sandwiched in between a rather long introductory and a succinct summary on John F. Kennedy, Schlesinger explained American foreign policies and postures today. With a tape recorder I caught more of what I was after, more on Kennedy.
NEXT! Starts Sat.
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"The UGLY DACSHUND"
"This is not the moment for dispassionate judgment, nor is one who had the exhilarating personal experience of working with President Kennedy ever likely to be a dispassionate judge. Yet . . . it seems not hard to acknowledge the extraordinary impact the man had on his age." That's what I'd been after!
SHORTLY THEREAFTER he said something that caught me completely off guard—
"With Kennedy's election, the generation which was born during the First World War, grew up in the Depression, fought in the Second World War and began its
public career in the Atomic Age, arrived in the seats of power and responsibility."
I had, for some inexplicable reason, always associated Kennedy with my own generation. Certainly not Schlesinger's. But there is was just as plain as could be "... born during the First World War..."
"THIS FACT," he continued,
"gave President Kennedy an extra ordinary relationship with young people everywhere, not only in the United States but around the world. No one knew how extraordinary a relationship until the outpouring of grief at his death.
"And it was not just, of course, the chronological fact of his own youth which won him this loyalty and love, it was even more the perception and precision with which he expressed youth's vision of the Twentieth Century."
Smiles crossed many faces in the crowd that filled the main floor and overflowed into the first balcony of Hoch when Schlesinger said "... he was cool when the young generation valued coolness above all else. But there could be no greater mistake to take Kennedy's coolness for indifference, an error a few of his fellow countrymen made before 1960, but few afterwards."
LATER, HE SAID, "Myths inherited from the past distorted the present and obscured the future. If there were anything Kennedy hated it was parroting of cliches as if they were new thoughts. Stale phrases almost made him wince physically. He wanted to release his country from the tyranny of cant and to cajole his countrymen into meeting the distinctive problems of their own times. . . . The result was an acuity of vision which bathed the world itself in a fresh new light.
"Americans for a moment looked on the Soviet Union, Latin America, the uncommitted nations and themselves with fresh eyes as our neighbors in the hemisphere, Europeans, neutrals,
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and even Communists began to look on the United States with fresh eyes."
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Kennedy, he said, "enlisted the enthusiasm of youth, supplanting the 'Silent Generation' of the fifties by a new generation of Americans—alive, exuberant, outraged and occasionally outrageous." There were chuckles from the crowd. "He revived wit, self-criticism and the sense of style in American life."
And finally, in conclusion (and after my tape had long since run out) the scholar, not given to euphemism but to euphony, said of him. "He was a cool, young political intellectual in a compulsive, sometimes irrational nation. . . . He personified the best of what is the United States. . . . His goals will guide the world for the years to come. . . . The future makes the past."
Prohibition Ends
Prohibition ended in the United States on Dec. 5, 1933, when Utah, the 36th state to do so, ratified the 21st amendment to the United States Constitution.
4 Daily Kansan Thursday, February 17, 1966
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