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JFK as others recalled him
Mementoes of the promise
By Terry Sanford
The John F. Kennedy mystique has
persisted and permeated the
Democratic Party’s campaigns for the
dozen years since his death, and well
that it should. His brief leadership
brought inspiration and hope to a
promising height we have not since en
joyed, and it is natural and worthy that
Democrats should seek to restore to
Americans such faith and confidence in
themselves, and in their ability to
achieve the best of humanity's hopes.
This year, too, the evocations are ap
propriately calling our attention
abroad — to the promise that John
Kennedy, the person as much as the
President, had for the rest of the world
on behalf of America.
In a season and circumstances when
the United States is critically aware of
foreign criticism, following the In
dochina disaster, this is not mere
nostalgia, but a healthy exercise in
self-examination.
Back in 1967, only three and a half
years after John Kennedy died, I was
teaching in Salzburg. Austria, as a
member of the faculty of the Institute
for American Studies. My students
there included educators and public
servants and other professional people
from all around Europe.
Readily obvious was the high respect
those students still held for the fresh
memory of John Kennedy’s Presiden
cy. It fascinated them as a unique ex
perience in American history and life.
At the end of one course there, I ask
ed my students if they would try to put
into words their impressions and
memories of President Kennedy, es
pecially relating to his foreign policy
and to the image that they and their
countrymen had of him.
I have saved their papers over these
past eight years, and especially as the
anniversary of his death approaches, I
found it inspirational and instructive to
go back and think over some of their
answers.
And now comes Reagan to the presidential scene
By United Press International
Ronald Reagan first caught the political bug in 1966 at
the age of 55, after 29 years in Hollywood movies and on
television.
On his first time out, he went for California’s top job —
the governorship — and won by a landslide plurality of
more than one million votes.
Two years later, in 1968, he caught presidential fever
and challenged Richard Nixon for the Republican
nomination. There he had less luck. Nixon swamped both
Reagan and Nelson Rockefeller at the convention.
Political pros said then that Reagan started his campaign
far too late.
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Let me share a few of their
responses.
A government official from Luxem
burg echoed an attitude shared by
several fellow students, when he
emphasized the Kennedy spirit over his
accomplishments:
“Although his practical
achievements are only a few. (JFK)
set a level, gave a model that will some
other day be achieved again by
American political leaders. He helped
to convey abroad ... a hope for the 60 s
and 70’s. ‘The glow from that light. . ”
The student left the sentence un
finished, promisingly pregnant, like
John Kennedy’s Presidency was left to
history.
A man from Austria lauded
Kennedy’s “great, idealistic, and
dynamic visions; everything he plann
ed or did seemed to be part of a great,
TERRY SANFORD is president of
Duke University, a former governor of
North Carolina and a candidate for
the Democratic presidential nomina
tion. He was an early Kennedy sup
porter and seconded the JFK nomina
tion in 1960.
fine, but foreseeable future. ... He
won the respect of the Russians, and I
think they also trusted him, which is a
fairly sound basis for co-existence or
even cooperation . . . His death is an
immeasureable loss to the whole
world.”
Then he added a last sentence which
touched a nerve in me. The year was
1967, remember, and like a growing
number of Americans, I had been
agonizing over the course we were
following in Indochina. This final state
ment by my Austrian student made me
investigate his supposition, and I am
persuaded that he was not just wistful,
but right, when he said:
“The war in Vietnam would have
The same word was heard this year — that Reagan
hesitated too long in making a formal declaration while
Ford nailed down commitments among GOP leaders.
But Reagan has been far from idle since he left the
governor’s mansion in January. He has made hundreds of
speeches across the nation in the past 10 months.
He has a daily radio program, carried by more than 300
station, on which to give his views on everything from gun
control to the Russian economy. He also has written a
weekly column for more than 200 newspapers.
Reagan has been acknowledged one of the most polished
speakers among modem American politicians, going
Hi!
W II
JFK and Sanford back when ...
been avoided or at least not grown to
such dimensions had Kennedy been
President.”
A Scandinavian student with a
penchant for parentheses and titles
weighed both the credits and mistakes
of the Kennedy Administration. “The
foreign policy seemed for the first time
since World War II not to be dictated
only by the desire for economic (and
military) power . . .
“In his relations with the Communist
countries, he was strong when it was
needed, but he seemed to be conscious
of the priority of human beings over
systems (and even nations) . . . His
great mistake was that he didn’t see
the necessity of the admission of Com
munist China in the United Nations.”
I agreed with him immediately, even
back to the days when he first supported Barry Goldwater
for president and lambasted big government.
Today, he laces his conservative viewpoints with
generous dollops of humor.
“Federal researchers have learned what makes people
happy,” he said recently.
“They learned tnat young people are happier than old
people. People with money are happier than people
without and people who are well are happier than people
who are sick —a $249,000 grant to learn that it’s better to
be young, rich and healthy than old, poor and sick.”
During his acting career, Reagan appeared in more
than 50 movies. Many were Grade B affairs, but he was
Page 19
— Griffin Daily News Thursday, November 20, 1975
in 1967. I felt that President Kennedy
too, had he lived, would have very soon
seen the advisability of admitting the
People’s Republic of China to the
United Nations. Maybe we all at
tributed too much to him. But such his
promise seemed to be.
A man from Czechoslovakia quoted
his country’s first president, T.G.
Masaryk, as saying “The philosophers
should be kings and the kings
philosophers,” holding John Kennedy
up as a model, and then he went on:
“I am sure he could have done a lot
for all of us — including the
Czechoslovak people. I would even say
that my presence in your class
American studies is a heritage of
President Kennedy's policy.
“I am very thankful for everything I
have heard, seen, and experienced
here. I have got an agreeable and plea
sant experience that mutual understan
ding is possible and for the future
necessary. And for Kennedy’s sake, we
must do anything to realize it."
A man who was himself a professor
—a faculty member from the Universi
ty of Murcia in Spain — gave me a
bilingual version of his response, run
ning three pages each in English and
Spanish. And he could not resist an
analogy from Spanish culture:
“If we consider Destiny as a bull,
Kennedy instead of behaving like the
ordinary man who flies or hides from
the beast, adopted the brave attitude of
the bullfighter. . . .
“To many people all over the world,
Kennedy was a different kind of Presi
dent, a pioneer — because he was very
shrewd to choose the right advisers,
because he was young, but mainly
because he knew how to look at the
future and knew how to open new paths
to the great problems of our time,
economic problems, social problems,
and political problems.”
Finally there was a response from an
official in the Ministry of Education in
Helsinki, Finland, who dug up a clip
ping he had saved from the Finnish
magazine, Suomen Kuvalehiti.
The article had been written by a
Finnish journalist who was in the
Soviet state of Georgia when President
Kennedy was assassinated. My Finnish
student translated the article into
English in these words:
“Do you know, the day when
Kennedy died, I went to a restaurant, I
thought of drinking a little wine. It was
about 10 o’clock in the evening. Unex
pectedly many people were in the
restaurant, and they were all quiet.
“ Do you know that Kennedy is
dead?’ I didn’t believe. Then the radio
repeated the news. We cried, and drank
a toast to the dead. And I went to the
next restaurant and there we did the
same.”
My student from Helsinki stopped his
translation at that point to assure me,
“Drinking wine is a real ceremony in
Georgia ... It is always a gesture of
honor to be toasted.”
I have never published these com
mentaries. I gathered them for my own
personal satisfaction. In reading them
over now, and quoting from some, I am
reinforced in my original judgment,
stated in my seconding speech for
Kennedy’s nomination in 1960, that he
would “inspire the people of our coun
try to the heights of America’s
destiny,” that he would project to the
rest of the world the finest that is
America.
It was not saber rattling or dollar
spending that was to fix our position in
the world. It was the humane quality of
our abiding commitment to the dignity
of man, to individual liberties and per
sonal opportunity. That is our great
strength. Far greater than guns and
rockets. That was the Kennedy flame.
It is for us to lift it high.
(NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN )
praised for his performance in “Dark Victory” with Bette
Davis and his role as a young man whose legs were
amputated in “King’s Row.”
In his early years Reagan was a Franklin Roosevelt
Democrat and militant union worker for the Screen
Actors Guild. In the early 1960 s he changed parties and
went on to become a favorite of the GOP’a conservative
wing.
Reagan married actress Jane Wyman in 1940. They
were divorced eight years later. They had two children,
Maureen and Michael.
In 1952 he married Nancy Davis, an aspiring actress
and daughter of a wealthy Chicago surgeon. They have
two children, Patricia and Ronald II