Local writer Carl Schultz has written an article about the visit JFK made to Johnstown in 1960 through a child’s eyes.
When I was a little kid, I once ran out into traffic in front of John F. Kennedy’s limousine.
In October of 1960, Senator JFK made a campaign visit to Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The junior senator from the state of Massachusetts at the time, Kennedy was running for the US presidency against Vice President Richard M. Nixon, the second-in-command to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Eisenhower was retiring from the US presidency after two terms as America’s commander-in-chief (The constitution prevented him from running again), and Senator Kennedy and Vice President Nixon were campaigning to replace him as the county’s chief executive. Kennedy’s motorcade was going to pass about three blocks from my family’s home in Johnstown’s West End on the way to a political rally in the downtown area.
The 1960 presidential race was a contentious one, partly because Senator Kennedy was a practicing Catholic, and the United States had never before elected a Catholic president. Since many of the families in Johnstown’s West End neighborhoods were of the Catholic faith, hundreds of spectators were lining the street for a glimpse of Kennedy. Johnstown’s Cambria City neighborhood alone contained no less than seven Roman Catholic parishes, and my family attended one of them.
I was five years old at the time, and my seven-year-old big brother and I walked down the street from our home to take a look. Kids could do that in 1960, without adult supervision. Although the skies were intermittently cloudy, the late afternoon was unseasonably warm–a little breezy, with temperatures in the sixties. Not needing coats or autumn jackets, my brother and I were both wearing the striped and colored tee-shirts popular for young children at the time.
We were standing on the curb on the edge of Fairfield Avenue, in front of the throngs of spectators who’d gathered to wave to the visiting celebrity. Forty-three years old at the time, Kennedy was unusually young to be running for such an important position as US president, and his good looks, generational wealth, and glamorous wife gave him a sort of movie star appeal.
As a whole, Johnstown’s Edgewood and West End neighborhoods were a sort of playground to my brother and I and our friends. Our family lived about fifty feet outside the city limits on J Street, affectionately known as “Old Bricky” because of the road’s red brick pavement. Our unofficial territory ran past Edgewood Avenue up the hill to Burkhart Street, and down the hill past Barron Avenue to Fairfield Avenue.
Our parents were very clear about Fairfield Avenue: The road was the formal, solemn, and official boundary of our neighborhood territory. Also designated as Route 56 East and West and lined with trolley tracks to conduct the city’s electricity-driven transit system, Fairfield Avenue was one of Cambria County’s busiest roads, with thousands of automobiles, trucks, streetcars, and buses running along the corridor daily, en route to or from Pittsburgh or just around the city.
Not that it hadn’t been a temptation. A business called Jerry’s Confectionery occupied the retail space directly across Fairfield Avenue at the bottom of J Street. Jerry’s sold the penny candies that act as rocket fuel to kids our age, and the store’s tiny, inexpensive toys had all the gleam of golden treasure. The store’s owner, Jerry, was known to the neighborhood kids as Jeddy because of his European accent. Our intention wasn’t mockery–because that was the way he pronounced it, we thought Jeddy was his name.
My brother and I were standing on the edge of Fairfield Avenue as Kennedy’s motorcade came around the corner from Strayer Street. On an impulse, I decided to run across the street for a closer view. Suddenly remembering the strict rule about crossing Fairfield without parental supervision, I made it to about five feet across the street and then froze like a deer in the headlights. I was standing in the middle of Fairfield Avenue, right in front of the oncoming cars in Kennedy’s motorcade and their motorcycle escort.
John F. Kennedy was standing in the backseat of a black convertible limousine, and unquestionably saw me standing as still as a statue in the middle of the street. With the visual acuity of the very young, I noticed that Kennedy’s hair was reddish-brown, his face was deeply tanned, almost brown, and his eyes were the light blue color of a clear summer sky.
With only a black-and-white TV at home and newspapers that didn’t yet publish color photos, I’d never seen Kennedy in vivid, living color before. The image was a revelation: He just looked so vital, so real, so–alive. Senator Kennedy was looking straight at me with a curious expression on his face, possibly wondering why in the world a little kid was standing in the street in front of his car.
Just then, my brother grabbed me by the neck of my pullover shirt and hauled me back to the curb. I recall Kennedy pointing to me briefly with an amused gaze and smiling broadly as the car slowly passed by. In my mind’s eye, he looked a little relieved that I hadn’t been flattened by his limo.
The crowd lining Fairfield Avenue began to disperse soon after Senator Kennedy’s motorcade trailed out of sight on its two-mile eastward drive toward the political rally in Johnstown’s central business district. I overheard conversations and laughter among the adults, debating whether Kennedy had lived up to expectations and whether there was a chance he’d prevail over Nixon in the general election.
My demeanor was tentative and sullen as my brother and I began to walk silently up the J Street hill toward home. I was silently wondering whether my brother would rat me out to our parents about my abortive attempt to violate the Fairfield Avenue edict. Blessedly, he never did, and I’m still here to tell the tale. A little less than a month later, Senator Kennedy was elected to be the 35th President of the United States.
Senator Kennedy and I never exchanged words, and our brief accidental encounter altered neither of our lives in the slightest. But for me, the image of John F. Kennedy, standing in the back of a limousine, smiling and waving to the crowds who’d lined the road to see him, remains a vivid memory over sixty years later.
I remember the moment every time I see a photo of the man in a magazine or a newspaper, or read his name online, or in a history book or encyclopedia. And when I remember the moment, I can close my eyes and see it still–as vivid and vital and alive as the day it happened long ago, when I was a child of the visit JFK made to Johnstown.
The visit JFK made to Johnstown in 1960 represents what seems like a simpler time in politics.