2011.01.18: January 18, 2011: Walter Shapiro writes: Sargent Shriver's Death Severs the Last Major Link to the Kennedy Years
Peace Corps Online:
Peace Corps News:
Directors of the Peace Corps:
Peace Corps Founding Director Sargent Shriver:
Sargent Shriver: Newest Stories:
2011.01.18: January 18, 2011: Sargent Shriver Dies :
2011.01.18: January 18, 2011: Walter Shapiro writes: Sargent Shriver's Death Severs the Last Major Link to the Kennedy Years
Walter Shapiro writes: Sargent Shriver's Death Severs the Last Major Link to the Kennedy Years
As a boy who watched JFK's inauguration on a black-and-white television and remembers the 86-year-old Robert Frost struggling to read a poem in the bitter cold, I am undoubtedly overly emoting about the disappearance of the last traces of Camelot. Even though Sargent Shriver was afflicted with Alzheimer's in his final years, still how poignant that that last major link, that last strand of memory, was cut just two days before the 50th anniversary of that inauguration. Even if the TV footage from the 1960s is grainy and the suits that men (always men) wore along the corridors of power now look like Rat Pack retro, the Kennedy years marked the birth of modern politics. From harnessing the power of television to capitalizing on Kennedy's charisma, the campaign that Shriver helped direct was closer in many ways to Barack Obama than it was to Franklin Roosevelt. In contrast to the gifted amateurs who drafted both Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson in 1952, the 1960 Kennedy campaign marked the moment when running for president became professionalized. What has vanished with Shriver and Sorensen (who died last October) are not the old-fashioned politics of frock coats and Fourth of July stem-winders on the village green. Instead, these men were our contemporaries – part of the political dialogue, in Sorensen's case, until the day he died. That is why it is so haunting that almost none are left who were actually there at the 1960 convention or backstage during the debates with Richard Nixon or were within earshot of John Kennedy as he declared on an icy day 50 years ago, "Ask not what your country can do for you . . ." As the books are closed forever on the Kennedy years, those of us who were shaped by the experience – as seen through a TV set – have only our memories and the sobering awareness that we are now the adults of politics.
Walter Shapiro writes: Sargent Shriver's Death Severs the Last Major Link to the Kennedy Years
Sargent Shriver's Death Severs the Last Major Link to the Kennedy Years
24 days ago
0 Comments Say Something »
Text Size
Walter Shapiro
Walter Shapiro
Senior Correspondent
Author Bio »
Contact Author »
Subscribe :
Minutes after Wyoming's 15 votes vaulted him over the top at the 1960 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, John Kennedy arrived, under police escort, at the cottage that served as his political campaign center. As campaign chronicler Theodore White recounted, "Kennedy loped into the cottage with his light dancing step, as young and lithe as springtime. . . . He descended the steps of the split-level cottage where his brother Bobby and his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver were chatting, waiting for him."
The death Tuesday of 95-year-old Sargent Shriver – who accomplished far more than any other presidential brother-in-law in American history – was the final period on an era. Long departed are the political power brokers who also waited in the cottage to hail JFK as the Democratic presidential nominee (Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Ohio Gov. Mike DiSalle, Connecticut boss John Bailey, Pennsylvania Gov. David Lawrence) – the men who, in Teddy White's words, "represented the system of power that policed the industrial civilization of Northeast America."
With the deaths of Ted Kennedy, counselor and speechwriter Ted Sorensen and now Shriver, no one who celebrated with John Kennedy at his greatest moments of political triumph remains on this earth.
This is the human condition – inevitably the torch is passed to a new generation. Herodotus wrote that Xerxes, the Persian king, wept on the eve of his invasion of Greece because he knew that every soldier in his vast army would someday be dead. Shelley captured a version of this sentiment in his poem, "Ozymandias of Egypt."
For those with an appreciation of the sweep of history – or for journalists who treasure the shards of great events – there is something wrenching when the last witness to an epic event dies. That is true whether it is a veteran of the World War I trenches, a jokester at the Algonquin Round Table, or the brother-in-law who stood with Jack Kennedy on his big night.
As a boy who watched JFK's inauguration on a black-and-white television and remembers the 86-year-old Robert Frost struggling to read a poem in the bitter cold, I am undoubtedly overly emoting about the disappearance of the last traces of Camelot. Even though Sargent Shriver was afflicted with Alzheimer's in his final years, still how poignant that that last major link, that last strand of memory, was cut just two days before the 50th anniversary of that inauguration.
My political persona is forever entwined with the Kennedy years from the soaring cadences of Ted Sorensen's words to the idealism embodied by Sarge Shriver's Peace Corps. And, yes, my career choice was shaped by Teddy White's ballad to the Kennedy campaign, "The Making of the President 1960."
The men who forged the New Frontier with JFK were the adults of 1960s political life for me – even if their vigor and their unsentimental pragmatism bristled with Cold War macho and pointed the way toward Vietnam. Forged by World War II (Shriver served in the Navy in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters), they brought a sense of honor and an old-fashioned concept of public service to their work in government. Not all their handiwork shimmers in historical memory (the Bay of Pigs invasion), but they tamed the Cold War, belatedly embraced the civil rights movement and (in Shriver's case) symbolized the liberal commitment to battling poverty.
Even if the TV footage from the 1960s is grainy and the suits that men (always men) wore along the corridors of power now look like Rat Pack retro, the Kennedy years marked the birth of modern politics. From harnessing the power of television to capitalizing on Kennedy's charisma, the campaign that Shriver helped direct was closer in many ways to Barack Obama than it was to Franklin Roosevelt. In contrast to the gifted amateurs who drafted both Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson in 1952, the 1960 Kennedy campaign marked the moment when running for president became professionalized.
What has vanished with Shriver and Sorensen (who died last October) are not the old-fashioned politics of frock coats and Fourth of July stem-winders on the village green. Instead, these men were our contemporaries – part of the political dialogue, in Sorensen's case, until the day he died. That is why it is so haunting that almost none are left who were actually there at the 1960 convention or backstage during the debates with Richard Nixon or were within earshot of John Kennedy as he declared on an icy day 50 years ago, "Ask not what your country can do for you . . ."
As the books are closed forever on the Kennedy years, those of us who were shaped by the experience – as seen through a TV set – have only our memories and the sobering awareness that we are now the adults of politics.
Links to Related Topics (Tags):
Headlines: January, 2011; Shriver; Sargent Shriver (Director 1961 - 1966); Figures; Peace Corps Directors; Maryland
When this story was posted in June 2011, this was on the front page of PCOL:
Peace Corps Online The Independent News Forum serving Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
| Peace Corps: The Next Fifty Years As we move into the Peace Corps' second fifty years, what single improvement would most benefit the mission of the Peace Corps? Read our op-ed about the creation of a private charitable non-profit corporation, independent of the US government, whose focus would be to provide support and funding for third goal activities. Returned Volunteers need President Obama to support the enabling legislation, already written and vetted, to create the Peace Corps Foundation. RPCVs will do the rest. |
| How Volunteers Remember Sarge As the Peace Corps' Founding Director Sargent Shriver laid the foundations for the most lasting accomplishment of the Kennedy presidency. Shriver spoke to returned volunteers at the Peace Vigil at Lincoln Memorial in September, 2001 for the Peace Corps 40th. "The challenge I believe is simple - simple to express but difficult to fulfill. That challenge is expressed in these words: PCV's - stay as you are. Be servants of peace. Work at home as you have worked abroad. Humbly, persistently, intelligently. Weep with those who are sorrowful, Care for those who are sick. Serve your wives, serve your husbands, serve your families, serve your neighbors, serve your cities, serve the poor, join others who also serve," said Shriver. "Serve, Serve, Serve. That's the answer, that's the objective, that's the challenge." |
Read the stories and leave your comments.
Some postings on Peace Corps Online are provided to the individual members of this group without permission of the copyright owner for the non-profit purposes of criticism, comment, education, scholarship, and research under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. Government copyright laws and they may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner. Peace Corps Online does not vouch for the accuracy of the content of the postings, which is the sole responsibility of the copyright holder.
Story Source: Politics Daily
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Directors - Shriver; Figures; Directors
PCOL46667
49