Excuse Us for Living

Sex Sells…

in Once Upon A Secret, by Mimi Alford

…But Heroes Live Forever

in Jack Kennedy Elusive Hero, by Chris Matthews

 for

 The Class of 1964

Paramus High School, Paramus, New Jersey

   Excuse us for living, but those of us who turned 65 last year spent our four years of high school during the presidency, the assassination, and shattered dreams of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, thirty-fifth President of the United States. –That day of our senior year of high school, November 22, 1963, roughly a thousand days into his administration, hearing over the public address system that the President was shot, was dead, and then fellow students crying & collapsing in the hallways as we passed to our next class. And like so many people of all ages that lived through those years, but especially for us, the images, the ideals, and the hopes embedded within us a lasting impression that we all will take to our graves.

   Any memories you have for “Comment” below?

   That is why there are such competing emotions that are triggered by the most recent books published on JFK (and there is a third book that just hit the NY Times Best Seller list). Mimi Alford’s book, Once Upon A Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and It’s Aftermath, published this February 2012, is # 7 this Sunday, Feb 26, on the New York Times Hardcover Best Sellers list, Nonfiction, and # 1 on the E-Book Best Nonfiction list. Sex sells! So no doubt you already know the book’s content. Mimi tells of her affair with President Kennedy beginning at 19 years old as an intern at the White House. The relationship lasts, granted with lessening intensity, until the very end of his life, even as he departs for Dallas, Texas, that November 1963. Mimi Alford not only presents the events and details of her liaisons with the President, but offers up with delicacy her feelings and emotions really too personal to share. And while some have querried her motivations for writing such a book so many years later, Mimi Alford’s eloquence and openness come across as trustworthy/creditable. As uncomfortable as the subject is, perhaps the affair will be examined further in the near future in our quest for the truth about our nation’s leaders.

There is another book with a more traditional approach to the life of JFK, traditional but hardly conventional, as you will see. It’s a book akin to that Beach Boys’ hit, Be True To Your School. (You can tell I’ve been listening to “the best of” recently. It entered the Billboards singles chart Nov. 2, 1963 and peaked at # 16!) And the book’s author, Chris Matthews, is certainly true to his hero, JFK. His book, Jack Kennedy Elusive Hero, was published back in November 2011. The book spent 10 weeks on the New York Times Hardcover Best Sellers list, Nonfiction, from # 3, November 20, 2011, holding its own at various spots, ending its run at # 14, January 22, 2012. I commend the book to you for its unconventional approach as it moves through JFK’s life from his boyhood school days at Choate until the end in Dallas with everything in between, leaving no period of his life and career neglected. I say unconventional because Chris Matthews fleshes out the real Kennedy and his inner thoughts and feelings through his own words and those around him. In doing so, the book makes a scholarly contribution to the body of research on JFK, moving our understanding of that time, that history, forward. Chris Matthews accomplishes this by the sources he utilizes for his narrative: books containing quotations and interviews, taped interviews, as well as new interviews, all from those people surrounding him from school day chums to intimate friends, personal and political advisors, politicians, and family members. –Billy Sutton, Dave Powers, Mark Dalton, Paul “Red” Fay, George Smathers, Tip O’Neill, Charlie Bartlett, Ben Bradlee, Ted Sorensen, Kenny O’Donnell, Pierre, Salinger, Arthur Schlesinger, John Glenn, Rachel Mellon, Jean Kennedy Smith, and, of course, Bobby Kennedy, and others, The oral histories were invaluable to the research, especially those at the John F. Kennedy Library. Curiously, Matthews always quotes Kennedy’s words as reported by another person from oral histories and shows no evidence of listening to JFK on tape. To these he added, among others, original sources such as the notes taken by Theodore White of his historic interview with Jackie Kennedy from November 29, 1963, just a week after the assassination. And lastly, Chris Matthews makes use of the collection of great books written about JFK.

Tie this together. Sex sells. In Jack Kennedy Elusive Hero, Chris Matthews articulates Kennedy’s incessant pursuit of women, documenting this by quoting words and observations of those around him. This obsession is the backdrop of JFK’s life and all that filled it. Yet, Matthews is careful to elaborate on Kennedy’s extraordinary traits: his uncanny ability to always see things objectively and unemotionally, “cutting to the chase,” compartmentalizing, single mindedness, always striving to accomplish his objectives. These traits are as present when JFK leads his club, the Muckers, at Choate to pile manure on the dance floor in the dinning hall as they are when he confronts the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 14-26, 1962. And so we see John F. Kennedy for what he really was, his strengths and his flaws.

But heroes live forever.