JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President (46 page)

JFK speaks in Washington State during his Western conservation tour. He began the trip by delivering dull prepared speeches, but after discovering in Billings that the crowds wanted to hear about peace and the nuclear test ban treaty rather than conservation, he spoke extemporaneously about those subjects, receiving prolonged cheers and applause.

(Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia arrived in Washington, D.C., for a state visit on October 1, the same day that Jackie was leaving for Greece, where she would cruise with Aristotle Onassis and others aboard his sumptuous yacht. Before she departed, Selassie presented her with a magnificent leopard-skin coat and gave John a carved Ethiopian warrior.

(Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

JFK signs the ratification instruments for the limited test ban treaty in the White House Treaty Room. Presidential adviser Ken O’Donnell believed that this ceremony provided Kennedy with “the deepest satisfaction of his three years at the White House.”

(Photograph by Robert Knudsen, White House/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Jackie was determined not to spoil John and Caroline, but the moment she left for Greece, Kennedy ordered a large supply of toys so that he could give the children something when they dashed into his bedroom every morning. He played with them often throughout the day and told a friend, “I’m having the best time of my life.”

(Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Jackie returned to Washington on October 18. When Kennedy reached the top of the metal staircase, she reached out with a white-gloved hand to caress his neck and draw him inside.

(Photograph by Abbie Rowe, White House/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

After his father was incapacitated by a stroke, Kennedy initiated the custom of kissing him on the head. He visited him for the last time on October 20 in Hyannis Port.

(Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

During JFK’s last November weekend at Wexford, the house that Jackie had insisted they build in the Virginia hunt country, one of the ponies tried to eat all of the sugar cubes that Kennedy had been trying to feed him.

(Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

The Kennedy family attended a performance of Scotland’s famed Black Watch regiment on the White House lawn on November 13. The Black Watch returned two weeks later to play the bagpipes at JFK’s funeral, at which his children would wear the same matching blue overcoats.

(Photograph by Robert Knudsen, White House/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Kennedy with astronauts Gus Grissom and Gordon Cooper outside the Saturn Control Center during his visit to Cape Canaveral on November 16. Five days later he met Cooper in San Antonio and invited him to accompany him to Dallas the next day. Cooper declined because he was due at Cape Canaveral. Had he gone, he would have ridden in the presidential limousine, probably sitting in the backseat between Jack and Jackie.

(Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Kennedy made the Secret Service nervous by insisting on standing directly underneath the Saturn rocket. Looking up, he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet and murmured, “When this goes up we’ll be ahead of the Russians. . . . When this goes up we’ll be ahead of the Russians. . . .”

(Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Prior to embarking on the longest motorcade of his presidency, Kennedy shakes hands with the crowd welcoming him to Tampa on November 18.

(Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)