Local attorney David Skinner recalls being the television newsman (left, with camera) when JFK, John Swainson and Walter P. Reuther visited Flint's Atwood Stadium before a huge crowd. JFK WAS HERE: How Many Recall Kennedy's Campaign in the Saginaw Area?
November 22, 2013
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Almost everyone recalls where they were when President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas.
But how many recall meeting the senator during the 1960 Presidential campaign?
Local attorney David Skinner is one Bay Cityan who does recall.
Skinner at the time was a young law student at the University of Michigan working part-time as a news reporter and broadcaster at Flint's WJRT-TV Channel 12 and WKNX Radio, Saginaw.
"On September 10, 1960, at Cobo Hall in Detroit, Governor Swainson introduced JFK. I was there.
"A motorcade to Atwood to Flint Atwood Stadium followed. I got there before JFK, Swainson and Walter P. Reuther arrived. I was at the large doors to the stadium were opened.
"The Buick convertible with Kennedy, Swainson and the Flint mayor entered. I was there with the Bell & Howell 16 mm "Filmo", 3 lens camera, recording the event on film for the 11 o'clock news.
"That's me filming on one knee to the left of the lead convertible," he recalled, referring to a photo taken at Atwood Stadium in Flint by a Flint Journal photographer.
"My memory is very fresh. Before Kennedy spoke I climbed up on the platform, shook Kennedy's hand and said "Good luck, Senator."
The following month Kennedy met a flock of Democrats at the Bancroft Hotel, Saginaw. The Bay City Times sent me and Photographer Leonard Falce to the event. I recall Leonard making sure JFK, who was standing on the edge of a group, got in the picture. He had to nudge the future President in a little closer to get him in the photo.
Kennedy gave a historic speech at the Saginaw Fairgrounds on Oct. 14, 1960, saying, in part, what could be accurately repeated today:
"I think that the most important domestic problem which will face the next President of the United States is the decline in agricultural income and the attrition in jobs, the loss of jobs, our inability to maintain full employment in the United States.
It is the most serious problem that we face. It is one of the most complicated problems that any free society can face. But it is a problem which we must face, because if our society is unable to keep our people working, we know that we have made a failure.
"And I cannot believe that this country can possibly agree to a recession in 1954, a recession in 1958, a partial recession in 1960, with the prospect of a serious recession, if the economy should go down further in the winter of 1961.
"Nearly 250,000 people in the State of Michigan are out of work, over 4 million people out of work in this country, 3 million working part time, and the prospects for the future uncertain. That is the problem that the United States faces, and it is a problem that this administration has not approached with the vigor required and the compassion required if we are going to maintain full employment in this country."
A transcript of JFK's Saginaw Fairgrounds speech is posted on line by the University of California-Santa Barbara at:
(http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=74027)
Kennedy also argued against the traditional Republican stance against universal health care, raising the minimum wage and other issues that echo through the years to the present day. He described the Republicans as "a party frozen in the ice of their own indifference."
Kennedy barely won that election (some say it was stolen in Chicago) by a paper-thin 112,000 votes over Richard Nixon, who had been Dwight D. Eisenhower's vice president.
(Presidential Election Results for 1960. ... John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Democratic, 34,220,984, 49.72 percent; electoral votes, 303, 56.4 percent. Richard Nixon, Henry Lodge, Republican, 34,108,157, 49.55 percent; electoral votes, 219, 40.8 percent.)
And, of course, three years into his term, he was dead, leaving only memories of what might have been and many conspiracy theories about who was behind his assassination on November 22, 1963.
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