True Compass (16 page)

I rushed down to be at Jack's side there after the Wisconsin victory, and found my brother gaunt and hoarse as he struggled with an unexpected crisis. He'd built up another comfortable lead over Humphrey in the early polls, and now was facing more sudden bad news. The Catholicism issue had surfaced again, but with far more intensity than I'd encountered in the West. Criticism of Jack's faith was spreading throughout the state's hills and hollows. As it did so, his poll numbers dropped, until, just four weeks before balloting, he was suddenly twenty points behind Humphrey.

West Virginia, to my young eyes, was a desolate and depressing place, an impression hardly improved by the rain that never let up while I was there, turning the many hillside dirt roads into muddy quagmires. Yet I quickly gained respect for its people: stern, resolute, gritty folk who bore their hardships with dignity. Of course West Virginia in time became a cherished state for us. In those late winter weeks of 1960, Jack forged a rapport with hardworking miners and farmers and teachers and truck drivers. But it took an all-out effort, a mobilization of resources directed by a candidate who virtually willed himself not to lose on the issue of his religion.

Dozens of friends, political allies, and volunteers flooded into the state. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., the bearer of a hallowed name, arrived and hit the hustings. The usual banks of telephones were set up, the household receptions arranged.

I spent about four days in West Virginia, mostly in the northwest corner. Shortly after I arrived, I made a visit--a scheduled visit, I thought--to the famous Coal House in Williamson, a building made entirely of coal that housed the local chamber of commerce. When I entered, the chamber president stood up in amazement. He thought I was to be there the following month. He grabbed his telephone and spent the next hour making calls to round up the Democrats.

During a break, the chamber man suggested that he and I pay a visit to the nearby five-and-dime store. As we crossed the street, I could hear music blaring from several loudspeakers in front of the store. Inside, along one wall, were a record turntable and a radio microphone, manned by a fellow who apparently did live interviews with customers between the tunes he played. My host introduced me to him and asked whether he would like to interview me. The radio man seemed very reluctant, and I was about to suggest that we all forget about it when he finally agreed.

For the next twenty-five minutes, the questions were these: Is it not true that Catholics are dictated to by their priests? Is it not true that the Catholic Church is a sovereignty within a sovereignty? Is it not true that people left Europe for America so that they could escape domination by the Roman church?

Before long, a crowd of about three hundred people had gathered outside the store, where the loudspeakers were carrying our interview throughout the town. My interviewer's questions were getting to be almost like speeches in themselves. By this time, all propriety had vanished. My interviewer felt no compunctions against interrupting me whenever he felt the urge, which was often, and I found myself trying to grab the microphone from the man before he could finish his questions. At the end of the interview, the local personality invited me to have the last word. As I started to rattle off something about bigotry, he slapped an Elvis Presley record on the turntable, thanked me, and sent me on my way. I had no idea how I'd be treated by the crowd as I stepped outside, but a number of the people called out supportive comments to me, which went a long way toward calming me. Later I learned from the chamber of commerce president that the radioman was a Baptist minister, and that he had treated me to one of his past sermons.

The rest of my appearances were not nearly so unpleasant. I showed up at dance halls, and probably sang "Sweet Adeline" a time or two. At community parties, I bought beers for strangers, solemn-eyed Appalachians bound to a culture of hard work and deep patriotism.

I got to know West Virginia at ground level--and below. I descended beneath the earth to grab the sooty hands of coal miners, strengthening my awareness and respect for these men and the millions of hardscrabble workers like them around the country.

I'll never forget a scene I witnessed outside a mineshaft somewhere in that state. It was nothing out of the ordinary--and that is what made it so powerful to me. The workers were emerging from the mine as their shift ended. Faces blackened, clothes heavy with sweat and soot, they trooped out one by one, slowly. I followed them into a little woodframe shack where they changed their clothes. The miners would trudge into the room, not looking at anything or anyone, and drop down onto a bench. There was no shower. The men would sit for five or six minutes, not so much as moving. Complete silence reigned. One of them would finally stand up, take off his jacket, and drop down again. Another would stand up, strip off his shirt, and sit down again. Only after a long time were these men able to complete their change of clothes, and they were still covered with dirt. Then, one by one, they would shuffle out of the room and get into their cars and drive away. The whole process took about forty-five minutes. During that time I went around the room talking to them, asking each to support my brother. I felt humble in their presence.

Jack's obvious concern for these West Virginians' plight overshadowed the resistance to his religion that he'd expected to find. So did his stamina. He gave speeches, sometimes as many as twenty a day. He literally talked himself hoarse. As I stood at that remote mineshaft, watching those exhausted men drive away, a sheriff 's car pulled up beside me, and the sheriff leaned out the window and asked, "Are you Kennedy?" I said I was. "Your brother wants you."

We drove out to a little airstrip, where I boarded a single-engine plane and we took off for Ravenswood, a town of four thousand on the state's western border, the Ohio River. George Washington surveyed and purchased the land on which it lies. Sure enough, there was Jack, waiting to whisper, "I can't speak anymore." I traveled for two and a half days with him, giving talks from notes that he'd write out. On one occasion I got a little carried away by the sound of my own fine ringing voice. "Do you want a man who will give the country leadership?" I heard myself orating. "Do you want a man who has vigor and vision?" Jack grabbed the microphone and rasped, "I would just like to tell my brother that you cannot be elected president until you are thirty-five years of age." It wasn't long afterward that he decided to send me back to the coal mines.

Some of the most colorful, old-fashioned raconteurs in the nation hailed from West Virginia. One of them was a wonderful character named A. James Manchin. He seemed to do a little bit of everything for a living: high school civics teacher, football coach, youngest state legislator ever to hold office, and Baptist minister. He went on to become West Virginia's secretary of state. His nephew Joe Manchin III was elected governor in 2004.

I'll never forget his introduction of me one night. I know I can't do it justice. He was spellbinding. But I'll give it a try.

He took out a copy of the book
PT 109
and asked the assembled crowd, "Do you know what this is? This is the book about a war hero, about a man who risked his life for his country and his crew. It's a story about the man who is going to be the next president of these United States. It's about John F. Kennedy."

Then he took out a Bible and placed it on top of the book and said, "You know what this is. It's the Good Book. It's the word of the Lord. It's the word that guides the good people of West Virginia and that guides John F. Kennedy too. And I'm gonna place it here on top of the story about this great war hero. Yes I am. The Good Book on top of the story about the great war hero, John F. Kennedy.

"And here's Old Glory, the red, white, and blue. The blue is as blue as a West Virginia sky, the white as pure as a West Virginia heart, and the red as red as the blood of all the West Virginia patriots who gave their lives in defense of this great country."

And then Manchin took out a single candle, a long taper, and he held it up and, right on cue, all the lights went out in the room. It was pitch black. The crowd gasped. Then we heard the crackle of a match as he lit the candle. "And this is the light that every coal miner in West Virginia knows. This is the light that leads you out of the darkness of the mines. This is the light to safety. This is the light that leads you home. Well, I'm here to tell you that John Kennedy is that light. John Kennedy, that war hero, who led his men to safety. John Kennedy who follows the word of God. John Kennedy who risked his life in defense of his country."

The lights went back up in the room and Manchin said, "And now we're going to hear from his brother Ted, who's going to tell you more about him."

Lucky me.

The landslide victory in West Virginia was the breakthrough for Jack's nomination. Hubert Humphrey dropped out of the presidential race after losing and heartily praised his rival--although it took years for his private bitterness to heal.

The 1960 Democratic convention opened on July 11 inside the recently finished Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, adjacent to the Coliseum on Figueroa Street south of the USC campus. A sense of transition was in the air, symbolized by the curving, modernistic entrance to the arena. Loudspeakers crackled, not with the old-time "Happy Days Are Here Again," but with the recorded voice of Frank Sinatra. Sinatra had met and befriended Jack through Peter Lawford, the husband of our sister Pat. His contribution to the campaign was to update his big hit of the previous year, "High Hopes," with Sammy Cahn rewriting his own original lyrics as a campaign song: "K-E, double-N, E-D-Y / Jack's the nation's favorite guy." With Lyndon Johnson and Adlai Stevenson having come in from the cold to announce their candidacies, we were thankful for every edge we could muster.

We found one further indication of transition in Los Angeles: protesters, five thousand of them, marching in the streets toward the arena. These first-ever demonstrators at a national convention were civil rights advocates. They'd been organized by the young socialist Michael Harrington and the thirty-one-year-old Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The delegates, aware of the protesters' visibility before the photographers and TV cameras, did in fact write a mild civil rights plank into their platform. Jack endorsed the strongest version of the plank, and affirmed his commitment to fight discrimination in a speech to the NAACP and later to King himself in a private conversation.

Jack's nomination was far from certain. Johnson declared his candidacy on July 5 and came out strong. He pounded at Jack's physical condition, demanding a public report on my brother's health. In private, LBJ denounced Jack's supposed dependency on his rich father, whose prewar diplomacy he also slurred, and pleaded with President Eisenhower to speak out against Jack. (Eisenhower refused.) Johnson infuriated Bobby, who had faced Johnson's scorn himself in the past, and intensified the mutual dislike between my brother and the Texan.

Johnson's assault on Jack, coupled with the doubts that party elders still harbored about his Catholicism and his brevity of political experience, raised the stakes for a first-ballot victory. This was to be the last national convention at which a roll-call vote actually could determine defeat or success, and all of us, Bobby especially, understood the psychological importance of putting Jack over the first time around. (Since the 1936 convention, only the 1952 balloting had gone beyond the first round.)

Balloting would occur on the third day. Bobby set up a command post at the Biltmore Hotel. He canvassed the state party leaders with even more than his usual obsessive energy. He knew the count to the precise half-ballot. His numbers told him that as things stood on the first day, John Kennedy was assured of 710 delegates of the 761 needed for the nomination. He believed that with an extra push we could put Jack over on the first ballot. The last thing we wanted was for the balloting to go to a second round, because by then new coalitions could be developing and victory would be less certain. We wanted to wrap things up on the first ballot, and all of us launched into making that push.

Our team would meet at 7:30 every morning and Bobby would walk us through all the states and their tallies. Then we'd fan out, contacting every delegation chairman on the floor to see whether we could coax any movement in Jack's direction.

By the third night, Bobby was fatigued, but as clear as ever in his calculations of probable votes. He'd worked it out that Wyoming, the last state on the roll call, could conceivably put Jack over. Before the roll call began, Jack had ten and a half of the state's fifteen votes. We knew we'd need more than that. We'd need every one. Bobby told me to get the hell over to the Wyoming delegation and nail down those votes.

This was where my hard work in the West paid off: my months of crisscrossing those states, riding the broncos, meeting the chairmen, getting to know them, remembering their names, forging personal ties. I had made seven trips to Wyoming alone, and I had developed friendly relationships. I hurried over to Tracy McCracken, a crusty newspaper editor, lawyer, Democratic National Committee member, and the person who held the most influence over the remaining votes in the delegation. I knew that McCracken personally favored Lyndon Johnson. I had to get him to commit to Jack, and in a way that would make it impossible for him to renege at the last moment. I thought I had an idea how to do that.

I walked over to McCracken within earshot of Teno Roncalio, Jack's great supporter who had become my friend in Wyoming and was the leader of the state's delegates supporting my brother. Teno and I made sure we were standing close enough to all of the Wyoming delegates that they could hear our conversation above the general echoing uproar. Speaking as much for their benefit as for his, I shouted to McCracken, "We know you have ten and a half Kennedy votes! My question is this: if we're within five votes when Wyoming is called, if Wyoming will make the difference in giving John Kennedy the nomination, will you give us the whole fifteen?"