ORONO, BOSTON, AND CAPE COD
Kennedy’s Western tour had demonstrated that Americans could become as weary of a cold war as a hot one. The test ban treaty ratification battle had demonstrated the importance of convincing Congress that an agreement with the Soviet Union need not compromise national security. He combined these lessons in a speech that he delivered at the University of Maine’s Alumni Stadium in Orono on Saturday morning. After speaking of “new rays of hope on the horizon,” he cautioned that “we still live in the shadows of war,” and promised to maintain “our readiness for war” but pursue “every avenue for peace.” After recounting how one German statesman had asked another shortly after the start of the First World War, “How did it all happen?” only to have the other reply, “Ah, if only one knew,” he said, “If this planet is ever ravaged by nuclear war, if three hundred million Americans, Russians, and Europeans are wiped out by a sixty-minute nuclear exchange, if the pitiable survivors of that devastation can then endure the ensuing fire, poison, chaos, and catastrophe, I do not want one of those survivors to ask another, ‘How did it all happen?’ and to receive the incredible reply, ‘Ah, if only one knew.’” He received a standing ovation for what would be called a major foreign policy speech and the opening salvo of his campaign—a warning to those opposing détente that they were making more likely a nuclear conflagration that could kill millions of Americans.
Two hours later he walked into Harvard’s Soldiers Field stadium during the early minutes of the Columbia game. Spectators jumped up, pointing and cheering, and the Harvard band played “Hail to the Chief.” His own Harvard football career had been a fiasco. He had reported weighing 150 pounds and was demoted during the season first to the “B” and then to the “C” freshman team. But his enthusiasm for the game had remained undiminished, and he smoked a cigar, waved to a friend’s son as he came off the field, and applauded enthusiastically when a Harvard field goal tied the score. He had decided to attend at the last minute, leaving the Secret Service no time to screen his neighbors in the stadium. He sat between Larry O’Brien and Dave Powers, high on the fifty-yard line and surrounded by Harvard students.
Near the end of the first half he turned to O’Donnell and said, “I want to go to Patrick’s grave, and I want to go there alone, with nobody from the newspapers following me.” He stayed for the halftime show, laughing when the Columbia band performed a spoof about a presidential candidate named “J. Barry Silverwater.” Police blocked the exits from the parking lot to prevent anyone following him to the cemetery. The trip was less spontaneous than it appeared. He had designed Patrick’s headstone, giving Lincoln a sketch and instructing her to have it installed before October 19. He had also brought along a bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums. After standing silently for several minutes at the grave, he said, “Patrick seems so alone here,” and wondered if he would be buried alongside him.
He had several hours before he was due at the All New England Salute Dinner, a fund-raising event at the Commonwealth Armory. While heading back to his hotel he asked his driver to stop at one of his favorite haunts, the Boylston Street Schrafft’s. A waitress cried, “Oh, my God, it’s the President!” and dropped a glass. A teenage soda jerk kept saying, “Look who’s here. . . . Look who’s here.”
He signed menus and napkins, ate a butterscotch sundae, ordered a chocolate frappe to go, and chatted about old times with Thomas Pellegriti, who had driven him during his congressional campaigns and now managed the restaurant. As he began walking down Boylston Street there were shouts of “That’s the President!” accompanied by the bang of fender-benders as drivers took their eyes off the road.
His impromptu walk was another security headache for the Secret Service and Boston police during a day that had already demonstrated how difficult it was to protect a president who was determined to move about freely and spontaneously. At Logan Airport he had walked straight through the honor guard and around the Secret Service to shake hands with mechanics. While being driven to his hotel he had insisted on stopping to greet a group of nuns standing outside their convent. He had slipped out a side entrance of the hotel with a small contingent of Secret Service agents, leaving police and reporters to make a mad dash to the Harvard Stadium, and while riding to the armory that evening he stood in the back of an open car in a dinner jacket, waving at crowds three deep and insisting on traveling so slowly that he arrived twenty minutes late.
He flew to Hyannis Port by helicopter on Sunday morning, landing on the lawn of his parents’ home. He took his father for a gentle excursion on their power boat, and they later watched a football game on television. He asked the family chauffeur if he was getting “the best care,” adding simply, “I miss him.” During the afternoon he crossed the street to visit Larry Newman and his daughter Leighlan (“Lee-Lee”), who had nicknamed him “Mr. Kissable.” She rushed up and grabbed his legs, then climbed into his lap as he and her father discussed Vietnam. He told Newman that MacArthur and de Gaulle had used identical words to warn him against committing U.S. forces to a land war in Asia. “The first thing I do when I’m reelected, I’m going to get the Americans out of Vietnam,” he said. “Exactly how I’m going to do it, right now, I don’t know, but that is my number one priority—get out of Southeast Asia. . . . We are not going to have men ground up in this fashion, this far away from home. I’m going to get those guys out because we’re not going to find ourselves in a war it’s impossible to win.” As he left he smiled and said, “I’d like to be around when Lee-Lee’s ten or fifteen years older.”
The weather was too cool for his father to sit on his porch Monday morning, so he climbed to his second-floor room to kiss him good-bye. After he left the room, Nurse Dallas wheeled Joe Kennedy’s bed to the doors opening onto the balcony so he could watch his son’s helicopter lift off. Moments later she heard the elevator door open and looked over her shoulder to see the president pressing a finger to his lips. He touched his father lightly on the shoulder and said, “Look who’s here, Dad.” He kissed him again and whispered, “Mrs. Dallas, take good care of Dad before I come back.”
Tears filled his eyes as his helicopter rose above the house. “He’s the one who made all this possible,” he told Powers, “and look at him now.”