As a guide at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, I drew the assignment of showing the Kennedy family around one beautiful autumn afternoon.
The large family piled out of the station wagons in disarray, the kids immediately running around checking out their environment. He pulled me over to the side and said, “Just go ahead 20 feet and hold your hand up so I know where to go.” That was my introduction to Robert F. Kennedy, a man of few words.
Walt Disney, often at the fair watching over several exhibits he had built, greeted us at his Pepsi exhibit (“It’s a small world, isn’t it?”). A rock-ribbed Republican, Disney was on the same wavelength as the children and enjoyed their company as much as they were delighted to meet the man who introduced the weekly Disney TV show. We had an early supper at the Spanish Pavilion and by dusk were back at the station wagons.
“Why don’t you help out in the campaign?” Kennedy asked. He had just resigned from President Lyndon Johnson’s Cabinet and, to survive politically, was running for senator from New York.
In a short hallway in the Chatham Hotel in midtown Manhattan, I ran the mimeograph machine, inking the drum to run off press releases, daily schedules and speeches. On an upper floor, two top-of-their-class law graduates, Peter Edelman and Adam Walinsky, turned out speeches and position papers on the great issues of the day. I became their indentured servant, cranking out their soaring prose by the ream.
The campaign was short and sweet, with a crucial win at the finish line. I collected the office pool on the margin of victory — 720,000 votes.
In 1966, I had a brief home leave from Army duty in Berlin, Germany, and paid a visit to the U.S. senator’s office in Washington, D.C., an arrangement of an open bullpen for staff and a high-ceilinged office for Kennedy. My old friends Peter Edelman and Adam Walinsky — now fiercely anti-war as Vietnam dragged on — were having a field day making fun of my uniform but then suddenly fell silent. Angie Novello, Kennedy’s gatekeeper, touched me on the elbow and said the senator would like to see me.
Seated at a coffee table Bobby Kennedy kept me engaged in a lengthy conversation about Berlin, my family and the new American University of Berlin. How was the Berlin Philharmonic doing? Was Willy Brandt, Berlin’s mayor and later German chancellor, settling in? And what were my thoughts about a reunified Germany?
I held forth on these weighty subjects with all the authority of youth. Only later did I realize that the visit was all about the razzing I took over my uniform. A Navy veteran himself, he had overheard Peter and Adam and played on staffer jealousy to signal his disapproval. Cast as seeing the world in black and white, Bobby Kennedy could be very subtle.
I returned stateside in time for the run-up to the 1968 presidential election, and Bobby Kennedy’s brother-in-law Steve Smith wanted me to help organize the New York City volunteers.
The top issue in New York was an airport crises. John F. Kennedy International, LaGuardia and Newark airports were all struggling with heavy traffic, and many planners wanted to convert a general aviation facility in Teterboro, New Jersey, into a commercial jetport. Carter Burden, Kennedy’s top guy in New York, asked me to look into it and put something in writing.
I threw myself into the assignment, obtaining an interview with the chairman of the Federal Aviation Agency and nagging acquaintances at the Regional Planning Association and Port Authority for details. The airport issue became hot, and Burden asked me to wrap it up.
Next I knew, I was sitting down with Kennedy at his apartment at U.N. Plaza overlooking the East River and LaGuardia. He kept me at his side as he worked his way through the various interviews.
Historians have analyzed his decision-making process as intuitive. That was not my observation. I saw a human vacuum of information, always engaging others by eliciting their opinions and views. A shy man, he was more at ease with listening than speaking.
I was glad to be on standby that day, but, truth be told, the senator knew more than the staffer.
Tom Deegan is a retired nurse. He lives in Orono.
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