Being physically fit was something that was important to President Kennedy, and shortly after he was elected he published an article in Sports Illustrated titled “The Soft American,” in which he noted how the television set and the use of cars to travel everywhere, along with a myriad of other modern conveniences, had resulted in a generation of people who were not used to strenuous physical activity. He realized there would be many disadvantages to the country if our population became obese.
In January 1963, after coming upon a 1908 executive order in which President Theodore Roosevelt set forth rules for Marine officers to be able to complete a fifty-mile hike in less than twenty hours, President Kennedy sent a memo to Marine Corps Commandant David Shoup suggesting that a similar fifty-mile challenge would be a good test for present-day officers. When President Kennedy announced that he would put his White House staff to the fifty-mile test as well, it kick-started a national fitness campaign that eventually developed into the President’s Council on Physical Fitness.
In late February 1963, we were in Palm Beach for the weekend. I had returned to my room at Woody’s Motel on the evening of Friday, February 22, when Mrs. Kennedy called me with a special request.
She informed me that the president’s brother-in-law, Prince Stash Radziwill, and Chuck Spalding were taking on the challenge of the fifty-mile hike by walking on the newly completed Sunshine Parkway—a north-south highway running from Miami to Fort Pierce along the east side of Florida that was not yet fully operational. Because the president and Mrs. Kennedy would be going out to visit the two men periodically, she surmised, there would have to be an agent advancing the situation.
“The president and I would like you to be the one to go with them,” she said. “They’re starting tonight at midnight.”
It was one of those things that, at the time, I had no idea what I was getting into, but when the first lady made a request on behalf of the president, it wasn’t in my nature to question it. So I got dressed in some casual clothes, put on the only shoes I had with me—my Florsheim dress shoes—and contacted the Army sergeant who was assigned to me to drive Mrs. Kennedy. I told him I needed him, the station wagon—which was fitted with radio equipment so I could stay in touch with the Palm Beach base and the Secret Service command post—and a big cooler with ice.
It turned out that Prince Radziwill and Chuck Spalding had been practicing for this hike for months, and a wager of $1,000 was involved. The president had bet his buddies that they were not in good enough shape to do what Americans were doing all across the country. It was quite an adventure, which I detailed in Mrs. Kennedy and Me, and fortunately, professional photographer Mark Shaw, who had been with Life magazine, came along to photograph the hike for posterity. We finished the hike in about twenty hours, and a few weeks later, Mark gave each of us a leather-bound photo album filled with photos from “That Palm Beach 50.”
One of my favorites is a photo taken when President Kennedy paid us a visit just as Chuck and Stash had decided to lie down for a short break, and the president was ribbing me for allowing them to rest.
Another special memory is when we returned to Palm Beach and President Kennedy invited me to join them for a celebratory drink of champagne, and presented me with a medallion—handmade out of purple construction paper attached to a ribbon of yellow crepe paper.
“For Dazzle. February 23, 1963. The Order of the Pace Maker, He whom the Secret Service will follow into the Battle of the Sunshine Highway. Signed John F. Kennedy.”
I still have that simple paper medal. It is one of my most treasured possessions.
SHORTLY BEFORE THE fifty-mile-hike adventure, Mrs. Kennedy had confided in me that she was pregnant. She wanted to keep it private for as long as possible, but finally, on April 15, after celebrating Easter in Palm Beach, a public announcement was made that the president and his wife were expecting their third child, due in late August. This would be only the second baby born to a sitting U.S. president—the last time was in 1893, when Grover Cleveland’s wife had a baby girl—and the public’s excitement was enormous. Because Mrs. Kennedy had previously had two miscarriages and had delivered a stillborn baby, she informed me that she wouldn’t be accompanying the president on any more trips until the baby was born, and would be curtailing her social and athletic activities.
Meanwhile, President Kennedy was dealing with a number of issues that all seemed to be coming to a head at the same time. Communist forces in Laos and Vietnam were gaining ground, while Haiti’s dictator president François Duvalier had declared martial law and was threatening to overthrow the neighboring Dominican Republic. President Kennedy was committed to helping those nations defend themselves from the spread of Communism.
In our own country, civil rights leaders were growing impatient with President Kennedy’s slow response to their movement and were taking matters into their own hands by organizing protests against segregation in the South. Nowhere was the tension greater than in Birmingham, Alabama, where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had organized a series of marches. The entire nation was horrified when television film crews captured images of firefighters using fire hoses to blast the peaceful protestors—most of whom were teenagers—and send them into lines of police with German shepherd attack dogs. President Kennedy sent U.S. Army units trained in riot control to the area, which infuriated Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, who accused the president of overstepping his authority.
In the midst of the turmoil throughout the world, there was one thing that had captivated the attention of all Americans—something President Kennedy had strived to make a priority—and that was the race to space. When the Soviets launched the satellite Sputnik in 1957, it was seen as a major victory in the Cold War, to which President Eisenhower responded by creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the development of Project Mercury. Shortly after President Kennedy took office, he convinced Congress to dramatically increase funding to NASA, with the intention that “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.” Many had scoffed at the notion that this was achievable, but less than a year later, on February 20, 1962, John Glenn Jr. became the first American to orbit earth. Within the following year, astronauts Scott Carpenter and Walter Schirra Jr. had also orbited the earth, and on May 16, 1963, astronaut Gordon Cooper splashed into the Pacific Ocean, having just orbited our planet more times than any human being yet. It was a shining moment amid the hatred and violence that seemed to be everywhere you turned, and five days later Major Cooper was honored with a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue and a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. On the portico, in the back of the crowd, Paul Landis and I stood close to Mrs. Kennedy, who was watching the ceremony with two-year-old John in her arms, trying to avoid the attention of the press.
Speaking off-the-cuff, President Kennedy paid tribute to the distinguished group of astronauts who had participated in Project Mercury, noting that they had, “in this rather settled society, demonstrated that there are great frontiers still to be crossed, and in flying through space have carried with them the wishes, the prayers, the hopes, and the pride of 180 million of their fellow countrymen.”
His remarks were brief but sincere, and at the last moment he broke into a smile, adding, “You have given the United States a great day, and a great lift!” His vision for putting a man on the moon was moving forward, and with all the turmoil in the world, this was indeed a welcome positive accomplishment.
MAY 29, 1963, was President Kennedy’s forty-sixth birthday—and it is one of those days that has remained vivid in my memory. At the end of the workday, at around 5:45, President Kennedy walked down to the Navy Mess, where a small group of his staff and Mrs. Kennedy were waiting with a cake. When the president walked in, we yelled, “Surprise!” and as soon as somebody handed him a glass of champagne, we all started singing “Happy Birthday.”
He broke into a big smile and played along like he really was surprised, as he was presented with an array of gag gifts. There was a miniature rocking chair, boxing gloves to deal with Congress, “Debate Rules” supposedly from Richard M. Nixon. But he got the biggest kick when Mrs. Kennedy gave him her present—a basket of dead grass.
“Mr. President,” she deadpanned, “on behalf of the White House Historical Society, it is with great honor and with the utmost respect that I present to you genuine antique grass from the antique rose garden.”
The president loved it.
That evening, Mrs. Kennedy had planned an intimate cruise for twenty-four guests aboard the presidential yacht, the USS Sequoia. None of President Kennedy’s political advisors had been invited—the guest list included only family members and his closest friends—and while we had Secret Service agents on a couple of security boats, there were just three agents aboard the Sequoia—Floyd Boring and Ron Pontius from the president’s detail, and myself.
It was a dreary, rainy evening, making the open-air top deck unusable, so everybody was crammed inside the main and aft salons. There were plenty of toasts, and after birthday cake at the dining table, the president opened presents—more gag gifts that had everyone laughing with delight and amusement. The champagne flowed, people danced, and as the evening wore on the party got louder and livelier. I had never seen the president and Mrs. Kennedy having so much fun—and while no one wanted the night to end, the captain finally docked the Sequoia around 1:20 in the morning signaling it was time for everyone to go home.
What a privilege it was for me to have been there, to witness the joy and laughter on that wild and raucous night. It was such a special evening, one that everyone aboard would remember forever—none of us capable of imagining that President Kennedy’s forty-sixth birthday would be his last.