Rare artefacts from John F Kennedy’s 1963 visit to Ireland were unveiled in Belfast today as part of a new memorial exhibition on the assassinated US president.
A handwritten poem about the River Shannon, which Kennedy scribbled on the back of a diary schedule after hearing it recited by Sinead de Valera - the wife of Irish president Eamon - is among the collection going on display at Queen’s University.
A copy of the speech the Irish-American president delivered to the Dáil on June 28th, 1963, just five months just before he was shot dead in Dallas, is also being showcased in the university’s New Library.
Along with an assortment of photographs taken during the four-day state visit, they were transported from the John F Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston by its founder Dan Fenn, one of the 35th US President’s closest aides in the White House.
Mr Fenn (86), was invited to the city to deliver the inaugural JFK Memorial Lecture at Queen’s next Wednesday and will also give leadership training to officials from Stormont’s Department of Social Development. His son Peter, who is a political adviser to President Barack Obama and a media commentator in the US, is accompanying his father during his week in Northern Ireland and will also be speaking at Queen’s.
Mr Fenn senior said Kennedy always had a close affinity with the country of his ancestors.
“Jack had a real love affair with Ireland,” he said. “I remember during the planning of his visit to Ireland one of his aides joked with him that the real reason he wanted to go was for a vacation and to have some fun. Jack turned to him and said: ‘That’s right, and I’m going!’. He had very warm, close ties with this land, both north and south.”
Boston native Mr Fenn, a long-time lecturer at Harvard Business School, was a staff assistant at the Kennedy White House during the short-lived presidency from 1961 to 1963.
Before boarding Air Force Oneat Shannon Airport at the end of his time in Ireland, Kennedy famously promised the crowds he would be "back in the spring", but his fateful visit to Dallas ensured he would never get the chance.
“I was just totally numb after his death,” Mr Fenn recalled. “On the Saturday after he died I remember watching people take his rocking chair out of the Oval Office - that was all I wanted to see of that. It was just so painful.”
A close friend of the wider Kennedy clan, Mr Fenn said he experienced similar emotions last week with the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy.
“Jack was great fun to be around, as was Teddy - they were just wonderful people to know,” he said. “It was a strange coincidence that I worked on the arrangements for Jack’s funeral, and my granddaughter, who was working as an intern in Teddy’s office, worked on his funeral service. It’s sort of come full circle.”
But despite the death of the last Kennedy brother, Mr Fenn does not think the family’s political legacy has come to an end.
“I am reminded of the phrase, ‘men die but the dream lives on’,” he said. “And I’m sure that will continue to be the case. Young people, who of course didn’t know Jack - it was their parents and grandparents who were around at that time - are still intensely interested in JFK and those years. It was the optimism, the enthusiasm for that era that still catches people’s hearts and minds today.”
Mr Fenn said he hopes to convince the current curator of the JFK museum to release more artefacts to Queen’s so the exhibition can be extended.
The JFK Memorial Lecture will be delivered in the Great Hall at Queen’s at on Wednesday evening.
PA