One Saturday Morning

One Saturday Morning...
Barbara E. Taylor
Edited by Carol St. Ann

Have I ever told you about the day I saw John F. Kennedy?

It was a Saturday, the 26th of October 1963, less than a month before his death. There was, of course, no way to know that he would be gone from us within that short time. Instead there was a heady sense of anticipation and occasion because he was coming to Amherst College for the groundbreaking ceremonies for the Robert Frost Library.

My family and I were still settling into the small New England college town, having located there just two months earlier, and we had yet to meet all our neighbors. It was pure luck that we knew about the President's arrival and the planned assembly or "convocation," as I later came to learn it was called. Ten thousand people would descend that day upon a town whose total population was scarcely more than that.

The haze that autumn morning did not allow the brightness in the air to penetrate to the ground. My mother and I walked out our front door to climb the steep hill that was and is Northampton Road to the campus at its summit. As we moved along our street, we fell in step with two women headed the same way. In a neighborly conversation we discovered each other's identities. They were sisters, my mother's age or older. One of them, Miss Dwyer, as she introduced herself to me, assessed my age correctly as primary school student. She was a teacher of high school history. They were Roman Catholic Democrats, and they were making it their mission to see the President that morning. They soon learned that I, too, was a Democrat novitiate, a Kennedy devotee; and I was current on national politics, Robert Frost's poetry, and had a sense of history. A bond was born, in that walk, that has lasted for over fifty years.

Other neighbors and then other pedestrians joined us. I see us now, a jovial procession steadily climbing the hill to the college, stimulated by the hope that we would have an opportunity for a close encounter with the President of the United States, a President so young in years that he was my father's age. Miss Dwyer carried her camera - perhaps she could get a snapshot as a souvenir. My mother and I had not thought to bring one, and I presumed upon my new friendship to ask if I might have a copy of anything Miss Dwyer managed to photograph.

We arrived at Amherst College after a fifteen-minute march and headed for the roped-off area where President Kennedy would walk from his limousine to the auditorium for the morning's first activity: opening remarks by the College President, a speech by Archibald MacLeish, the poet and playwright, to be followed by President Kennedy's address. As we made our way to the enclosure, a tall, slender man in elbow-patched tweed ran his eyes over us and then moved on. He tried to blend in but there was no mistaking the intensity of his scrutiny. "Secret Service," we nodded to each other in expert agreement. It was good to see them on the job, although we were sure this cloistered corner held no terrors for our popular young leader. The idea that anyone would disturb or even injure him was laughable to us. This was Massachusetts, his home state! The boarded-up windows in the upper storeys of the college buildings made us laugh at the zealousness of his protectors. A month later we would remember those boarded windows and wonder. I still shake my head in disbelief.

A crowd gathered at the ropes, which extended from the curb of the college roadway to the door of the auditorium, the Amherst College Cage. We were permitted to stand on one side of the walk only and uniformed State Troopers were stationed every 10 feet or so, facing the crowd to keep order. At Miss Dwyer's urging, I wiggled my way to the front and found myself positioned with a trooper to my left but with a clear view down the sidewalk to my right all the way to the road. The Dwyer sisters and my mother ranked directly behind me and to my left.

Sirens sounded the approach, and before I was prepared for it, President Kennedy stepped to the curb and started down the walk. The flagstone sidewalk curved as college sidewalks do, so at first he appeared to be coming straight toward me. The crowd clapped and cheered and waved. There was pressure from behind me. Time stopped as time often will when one is in the midst of a special moment. I noted to myself that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the most beautiful human being I had ever seen, perfectly at ease, appearing as if he walked in his own spotlight with his reddish-gold hair gleaming in the non-existent sun. I suddenly realized in an era of black and white television, I was seeing him "in color." He was very slender, incredibly graceful, impossibly young and handsome. The next thing I heard was Miss Dwyer's disappointed voice saying she couldn't get a picture. Without moving my eyes from the President, I raised my hand to shoulder height, said, "Give it to me," and brought the camera to my eye just as he passed in full profile in front of me. I snapped the shutter once and he was gone, shielded by the bulk of the trooper.

Miss Dwyer shrugged as I handed her the camera. "Thanks for trying," she said, thinking there had been no time for the shot.

"No, it's OK," I said. "I got him right in front of me. If it comes out, it will be wonderful."

The crowd evaporated, and some of us made our way into the gymnasium where we could view the speeches on closed-circuit television. An hour or so later, we came outside to brilliant sunshine and made our way to the next stop on the itinerary - the actual groundbreaking with shovels and additional remarks from President Kennedy. It was the words he said standing at the outdoor podium in the full sunlight of a New England fall day that went to my heart and remain there, some of the most beautiful words he ever said. They are not among the most-quoted, but I believe they delineate JFK's personal vision and mindset better than many of his more famous words; a month later, it was as if he had spoken his own eulogy. ▼

"This day devoted to the memory of Robert Frost offers an opportunity for reflection which is prized by politicians as well as by others, and even by poets, for Robert Frost was one of the granite figures of our time in America. He was supremely two things: an artist and an American. A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.

"In America, our heroes have customarily run to men of large accomplishments. But today this college and country honors a man whose contribution was not to our size but to our spirit, not to our political beliefs but to our insight, not to our self-esteem, but to our self- comprehension. In honoring Robert Frost, we therefore can pay honor to the deepest sources of our national strength. That strength takes many forms, and the most obvious forms are not always the most significant. The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation's greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.

"Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost. He brought an unsparing instinct for reality to bear on the platitudes and pieties of society. His sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation. "I have been" he wrote, "one acquainted with the night." And because he knew the midnight as well as the high noon, because he understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the human spirit, he gave his age strength with which to overcome despair. At bottom, he held a deep faith in the spirit of man, and it is hardly an accident that Robert Frost coupled poetry and power, for he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.

"The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect, we see how the artist's fidelity has strengthened the fibre of our national life.

"If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.

"If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society--in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having 'nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.'

"I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.

"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. And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.

"Robert Frost was often skeptical about projects for human improvement, yet I do not think he would disdain this hope. As he wrote during the uncertain days of the Second War:

Take human nature altogether since time began . . .
And it must be a little more in favor of man,
Say a fraction of one percent at the very least . . .
Our hold on this planet wouldn't have so increased.

"Because of Mr. Frost's life and work, because of the life and work of this college, our hold on this planet has increased."

* * *

On Saturday morning, November 23, 1963, I made my way to Miss Dwyer's house through a cold autumn downpour, seemingly designed by nature to mirror our national grief. I had not seen her in the four weeks since that splendid day at Amherst College. She was the one person, other than my mother, with whom I shared that day, and we needed to speak of it to each other that morning. We wept and talked, she as a teacher of history, me as a student of it, knowing we were living through an event of incalculable significance.

Later, as I was preparing to leave, she gave me the photograph - the smiling, profile shot of John Fitzgerald Kennedy I had taken in an instant when time stood still.

--
B.E.T.