JAMIE RICHARDSON: As the holiday season gets into full swing, for many it's a time of being with family and loved ones, sending cards, decorating trees, and cooking delicious food, plus some concerns about Santa's safety in the midst of nuclear testing. We'll learn about that and other holiday topics from the archives, all in this week's episode of JFK 35.
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- And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
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JAMIE RICHARDSON: Welcome to this week's episode of JFK 35, a podcast by the John F Kennedy Library Foundation. I'm Jamie Richardson. Matt Porter will be off today. The archives at the JohnF Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is home to millions of items, including documents, photographs, sound and video recordings, and oral histories. For a number of reasons, only a fraction of them are readily accessible to the public, either in the museum here or online in the digital archives.
As archivists come across this material in the course of their jobs, processing, digitizing, declassifying, aiding the public as they do research, they get to see some really interesting pieces. These might not get to be part of an exhibit, or get in the queue for digitization, or make it into our social feeds, so archivists have recently started a display in the lobby of the museum to share some of their favorite photos and documents.
This round of picks has selections for the fall and winter seasons. With the holiday season and the New Year upon us, I'm excited to have three of the archivists here with me today to chat about their picks. With me is Stacey Chandler, textual reference archivist, Maryrose Grossman, AV reference archivist, and Laura Kintz, archivist for textual and photographic digitization. Welcome.
MARYROSE GROSSMAN: Thank you for having us.
LAURA KINTZ: Thank you.
STACEY CHANDLER: Hi.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: So it's exciting to have three archivists here with us today. And you all do, I believe, slightly different things. So can you all let us know, what do you do in the course of yourday? What types of things do you come across?
MARYROSE GROSSMAN: This is Maryrose. I am an audio visual reference archivist, so I work with audio visual materials, photographs, audio and moving image recordings. And I'm basically a customer service person who connects people with the historical resources. So I do a lot of customer service, talking about things for people's various book writing, production, Hollywood, my father was in the Navy, or in the White House purposes, so connecting people to the resources.
LAURA KINTZ: And this is Laura. And I am an archivist for textual and photographic digitization. So I am responsible for getting our materials up online on our website, so that people anywhere in the world can see them. And I work with both textual and photographic materials, primarily with the White House Photographs collection, which has a lot of really great photos from throughout JFK’s presidency. And so I get to see a lot of really interesting people, and places, and it's fun to be able to get those out so that anyone anywhere can see them.
STACEY CHANDLER: This is Stacy. I'm a textual reference archivists. I basically do what Maryrose said she does, but I do it only with things that are on paper. I work with a lot of people in the research room. And I'm basically working on whatever my researchers are working on. So whatever topics they come up with, and anything that they might be looking for, I try to help them track it down. So I get to see a lot of cool stuff in my searching for other people.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Excellent, thank you. And so the archivists recently put up a display in the lobby of the museum featuring different archives picks. What's the motivation behind doing that? This is new here. I love seeing it. It's always exciting to see new little known things. I won't say undiscovered, but--
STACEY CHANDLER: Thank you.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: So what was the motivation behind doing that? It's really cool.
STACEY CHANDLER: From what I understand, it was our new director, Alan Price's idea. He knows how much we get to see behind the scenes, how much material we have that will never be on display, or not for the foreseeable future, but we are looking at it every day. And just in our conversations with each other, and with our researchers, and even you and other people who work in the building, people are aware that we get to see some really cool stuff.
So we thought it would be a really great opportunity to show some of that to people, who might not ever visit us in the research room, or even necessarily go search our website. Now, if they're here in the museum, they can come and look at some of our favorite things.
MARYROSE GROSSMAN: And there are captions in the display, I think everybody has an emotional connection to what they picked. It's like what appeals to me, and this is why. And I would say, yeah, we haven't had that opportunity to share. And for me, it's like, yeah, I love that one-- oh, yeah, that's awesome. So it's kind of a-- I feel-- all of us probably feels that it's good to share our feelings and our-- I don't know, I just like it. It's a way of telling people what I think.
STACEY CHANDLER: I think we're not unaffected by the records that we have here. And we have our favorites for all kinds of reasons, the same favorites that some of our social media fans have. But for other people, I really like seeing what my colleagues have picked, because one of our digital archivists knows a lot about the history of photography.
And one of her picks in our past round had to do with the history of photography, which I don't know anything about. So it was really fun for me to see her expertise in that area come through. So it’s been a lot of fun for us.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Yeah, it is nice to see-- the last round, I think especially, you get an intro into kind of the personalities of all of you, where you see-- like with Nicola and the photograph, and other people's interests in the written word, or composition of a photograph, it's been really neat to see.
MARYROSE GROSSMAN: Or letters from kids to the president. There's a special emotion there, I think. I don't know.
LAURA KINTZ: Right, the textual documents, and letters, and things like that people pick are always interesting to see. Because those are things that your average citizen probably isn't going to see anywhere else. We have some textual materials in the museum, but not a lot. But photographs can be more recognizable. But seeing, especially, constituent mail and things like that, I think is really-- is interesting for people to see.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: And Laura, as somebody who does digitization and is working with what goes on the website, do you know roughly like how much is on-- how much is online, versus how much isn't?
LAURA KINTZ: Only a very small percentage is available online right now. So we have a lot of work to do, which is a fun prospect for an archivist who loves doing this kind of work. So we have, in terms of photographs, we have over 500,000 photographs in our collections and only about 23,000 of them are available online right now. So there's a long way to go. And there's, I'm sure, lots more cool stuff in there.
STACEY CHANDLER: Yeah, I love how Laura says only about 20,000 photos.
LAURA KINTZ: No big deal.
STACEY CHANDLER: It's like years of work to get that material out.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: I know, from behind the scenes, I do our social media and often I'll have to search for— its National Waffle Day. And I have to-- I'll look up the word waffle, and lo and behold, thank you meta data cataloguers--
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STACEY CHANDLER: Or facial hair, anything-- JFK smiling. Yeah, his hands in his pockets, wearing a hat, and all these things. It's fabulous.
LAURA KINTZ: We love to try to get those things into our descriptions so that when people are searching for something, they can find it.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: I really appreciate it. So to get into the whole meat of this episode, your actual picks. So there's some photographs, some documents. Who wants to go first and talk about what they picked?
MARYROSE GROSSMAN: This is Maryrose again. I picked a photograph that I've always kind of loved. I've been here 16 years. And just certain things hit you from the start. And it's a picture of aChristmas tree in the Blue Room from 1961, the Blue Room in the White House. And I just love blue. I don't know-- blue for winter, blue-- there's something about it. It's just a really beautiful picture.
It's very evocative of winter, the austerity of winter, perhaps. I don't know, I don't know what that is. I was thinking there must be a poem that Robert Frost might have written about blue in winter, stop by the woods on a snowy evening. And he actually wrote a poem I knew of from when I was a kid, doing stuff in school. It's called Blue Butterfly Day.
And it's about spring, and how butterflies are coming in like flakes. But that's not quite right. But I was thinking, well, maybe he has something about winter. So I went looking online. And instead ofRobert Frost, I found a poem by another New Englander by the name of Robert Francis, who was contemporary.
And actually, they kind of had parallel writing styles, meter and rhyme, that kind of thing. Kind of quirky, if that's the right word, just the way the things were laid out, the sentences and the words. So I don't know if I should read it?
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Yeah, why don't you read it.
MARYROSE GROSSMAN: Yeah, it's called Blue Winter by Robert Francis. Again, he was kind of unsung. Robert Frost got all the glory. And he was kind of happy not to be quite as promoted or be in the limelight, so to speak. But he's definitely an unsung poet compared to Robert Frost. Anyway, Blue Winter by Robert Francis.
Winter uses all the blues there are. One shade of blue for water, one for ice. Another blue for shadows over snow. The clear or cloudy sky uses blue twice, both different blues. And hills row after row are colored blue according to how far. You know the Blue Jay's double blue device shows best when there are no green leaves to show. And serious is a winter blue-green star.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: That's delightful, thank you. I want to clap now.
MARYROSE GROSSMAN: It's very New England-y, Robert Frost-y--
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Yeah.
MARYROSE GROSSMAN: --but it's actually Robert Francis.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: It does fit the feel of that photo. For our listeners, we'll have a link to actually archivist's blog posts, we'll have all of these pieces in it, so you can see for yourselves. Yeah, the blue in that photograph is just incredible. Laura, do you want to share your photograph?
LAURA KINTZ: Sure. So the photo that I selected is a photograph from 1962, Christmas Day. And it is the Kennedy family celebrating Christmas in Palm Beach. And the photo is a family photograph featuring President Kennedy, Mrs. Kennedy, their children, as well as the First Lady's sister, Lee Radziwill, and her husband, and her children, as well as the family dogs. And there is also a family friend, who is the son of Mrs. Kennedy's assistant.
And he and his mother were celebrating Christmas as well with the Kennedys in Palm Beach. And I like this photograph, because there is so much in it that might not be your standard Christmas. The president's wearing a tie. I don't think most people wear ties on Christmas morning while they're opening gifts. The oil painting on the wall. The Christmas tree is huge. But there are so many relatable things in the photograph as well.
Mrs. Kennedy is reaching for one of the dogs that is eating something on the floor maybe. John, Jr is trying on his mother's sandal. And no one's really looking at the camera. And if you look at this photograph on our website, you'll see there are numerous takes of this same pose, and in none of them is everyone looking. Which is a lot like any family's Christmas morning, I think.
And what initially drew me to it is John, Jr, right front and center, with his foot in his mother's flip-flop, because that's something that my two-year-old daughter likes to do. And so just, kind of, I related to it in that way. And it's also bittersweet, because this is the family's last Christmas together before the president was killed in 1963. So there's a lot to feel when looking at this photo. And I just-- I like that it's a family on Christmas.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Right, I think there's lots of-- we see plenty of very posed, choreographed photographs of the family. And this is just like, there's two dogs doing what dogs do. There's kids doing what kids do. And the adults are just trying to wrangle everybody.
LAURA KINTZ: Yep, the German Shepherd, Clipper, was notoriously in need of-- well, apparently went to, and I don't know how it worked out, but obedience school. Was definitely in need of obedience training. He definitely has something in his mouth in this that maybe he shouldn't have in his mouth. And that could be why the First Lady is reaching for him.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Like, oh, god, what's happening.
LAURA KINTZ: And the children are dressed up for their costume-- The children are dressed up for a Christmas pageant that they performed for all of their family that morning.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Yeah, that's a fun folder of photographs to look through. You see that progression of the trying to get the family photo, the doing the nativity little pageant.
LAURA KINTZ: Yeah, and other family members-- Joseph P Kennedy, Sr is there. Rose Kennedy is there. Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the president's sister. And when you get to the end of the series of photos, there are some very fun photos of later in the day, I believe, when they went out on the presidential yacht, the Honey Fitz. And the first lady went skiing. And we do have a photograph of that.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Not your typical Christmas morning, certainly.
LAURA KINTZ: No, no.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: That's where we get not relatable.
MARYROSE GROSSMAN: Don't want to try that in New England.
LAURA KINTZ: Yeah, no thanks.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Definitely not. All right, so, Stacey, you have two documents for us.
STACEY CHANDLER: I can't pick sometimes, so I wind up with two staff picks in the picks display. But one of mine, because this was sort of a fall and winter themed display, I had to go with one of my longtime favorite documents here, which is a response that the Kennedy administration had sent to an eight-year-old girl, who wrote a letter to John F Kennedy in October 1961.
She obviously has the original signed letter from the president, but we have the carbon copy here. So that's what I picked to go on display. And it's one of my favorite response letters I think I've ever seen to a constituent, and I've seen a lot of them. Should I read it?
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Yes, please.
STACEY CHANDLER: OK. All right, so it starts-- Dear Michelle, I was glad to get your letter about trying to stop the Russians from bombing the North Pole and risking the life of Santa Claus. I share your concern about the atmospheric testing of the Soviet Union, not only for the North Pole, but for countries throughout the world, not only for Santa Claus, but for people throughout the world.However, you must not worry about Santa Claus. I talked with him yesterday and he's fine. He will be making his rounds again this Christmas. Sincerely, John Kennedy.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: That's adorable.
STACEY CHANDLER: I know.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: It's so poignant too.
STACEY CHANDLER: Yeah, so there is some back story here, of course. So earlier in October, the Soviet Union had announced that they were going to do some nuclear testing. They were actually going to detonate the world's largest nuclear bomb in the air above the Arctic Circle. And so a few days later, the White House issues a press release as a response, saying that testing a weapon this large could serve no legitimate purpose, is what they said.
So this definitely got the attention of the press, as it was supposed to. It went out in a press release. And so Michelle, we know from some contemporary newspaper coverage, she heard her parents talking about this in her small town, in her living room in Michigan. And it really concerned her when she heard that this was going to be happening near the North Pole, because you know, there's aVIP up there that you need to consider.
And so she said she sat right down, wrote JFK this letter, and it actually got into the press before this response even went out. So the response was handled through the White House press office. And you can see that through the various notations in the carbon copy.
But there's something about the response that is-- I really love it. It's got like this whimsical quality to it, that we don't see a lot in textual material, just because it's a presidential administration, there’s serious stuff going on. But then you get this nice little indication that the president can just call up Santa and make sure that he's doing OK. And it's just a very reassuring, a very kind of unexpected thing to find in the archives.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Yeah, and you remember that oh, yeah, President Kennedy had small children too. He's talking about Santa with his kids probably. And wondering what he's doing up there.
STACEY CHANDLER: Yeah.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: That's delightful. Also terrifying that a child would have to do that would be so concerned.
STACEY CHANDLER: Yeah, this was obviously a really big topic on the minds of not just Americans, even as JFK indicated in the letter, people around the world were really worried about this. And the United States was also still doing nuclear testing at this time.
So a few years later, in the Kennedy administration, we had the limited-- or the nuclear test ban treaty. But at this time, there wasn't really anything like that. And there was work in that direction. But people were very concerned about this. So it makes sense to me that even a child as young as an eight-year-old would have been really worried about it.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Yeah.
STACEY CHANDLER: We don't have her original letter here, or we haven't found it yet anyway, but we do know what she said, because it got picked up by the press. So her original letter was really short. And it just said, Dear Mr. Kennedy, please stop the Russians from bombing the North Pole because they will kill Santa Claus. I am eight years old. I'm in the third grade at Holy Cross school. And that was it.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Yeah, well--
STACEY CHANDLER: Which is very typical of a lot of the letters we see from kids in the archives. They're just a few random facts about them, and then they're like, bye.
LAURA KINTZ: Here's my question. Or they said, tell John Jr I said hello or tell Caroline.
STACEY CHANDLER: Oh, yes, and tell Mrs. Kennedy she is pretty. We see that a lot too.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: And then you have another document for us as well, which I'm very excited. We use this on social media. And it always gets some good responses.
STACEY CHANDLER: Yeah, I really like this one. So this is-- it's one page and it's a draft that holds two different messages for the holidays that would be sent out of the White House. And in theKennedy administration, they actually have one draft that's labeled Christian recipients and the other one is labeled non-Christian recipients. And this is for obvious reasons, right?
They want to make sure that they have something that is thoughtful and appropriate to send to anybody who might send them a holiday greeting of any kind, and especially, they're dealing with people from around the world, from all across the country, and they wanted to make sure they could send something thoughtful to everybody. So the one for Christian recipients says, "We send you our heartiest greetings for this holy Christmas season." And the one for non-Christian recipients is, "We join in wishing you and your family a very joyful holiday season."
So I really like the inclusivity of this tactic. It's right here on the same page, both of these drafts. But it also, I think, is demonstrative of what we see a lot in the archives, and in communications, and in the press office, is really a lot of thought went into even sort of these mundane, everyday things that we all maybe don't even think that much about. It's like, well, what's our holiday greeting card going to say. They actually had several staff members work on that and write out these options for them.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: That's great. And also, I mean, just the thought between making sure you have an inclusive message for all people, and then also how do you answer an eight-year-old, and how do you answer somebody who's scared about something, or needs help, or is mad at you. Like, you don't just blow them off, you write something that's constructive.
STACEY CHANDLER: Yeah, so behind the president, he and occasionally the First Lady, they're signing these things and putting their names on them, but there's a whole team of people, who, depending on the topic, would be brought in to think up of responses to these kind of questions, anyone with any subject expertise.
If people are writing in about civil rights, maybe JFK's civil rights assistant will respond. I'm really lucky on the archives side, I get to see the machine behind the presidency. And really that it's a group effort.
LAURA KINTZ: One thing that was really interesting is, when I scanned that photo, or that-- when I scanned that document for you in that folder--
STACEY CHANDLER: Thank you.
LAURA KINTZ: You're welcome. In that folder it was a lot of Christmas and holiday drafts of letters and things like that. And this would have been my other pick if I had chosen another one. But there was a telegram that was-- I'm not sure who exactly wrote it, or who it went to, but it was basically instructing whoever was responsible for sending out these letters to make sure that they had a list of names for everyone who assisted in getting James Meredith into school the day that he arrived at the University of Mississippi. And it said, make sure they get individualized holiday message card from the president. He wanted to single out all of the people who helped make that a reality.
STACEY CHANDLER: And they did do that. We have a carbon copy of every single one of those letters. And there are hundreds of them.
LAURA KINTZ: So that was a fun thing to find when I was looking through that folder.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Yeah, I think I'm always struck by the thoughtfulness of President Kennedy and the people with him. And I think it wouldn't be there without him, but I think he had a great team to make sure that all of this happened. I remember one thing coming across too is the gifts for, I think, White House staff, one time. It was like customized shirts or something that they got. And they have all their measurements and monograms. And just the amount of detail that goes into a huge staff like that is quite something.
STACEY CHANDLER: Yeah, those were the gifts for the Secret Service agents.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: The Secret Service, that's right.
STACEY CHANDLER: Mrs. Kennedy, in her papers, has a folder that's devoted just to Christmas gifts that they were going to give to other people. And I think it was the Secret Service agents and like maybe some of the domestic staff, the White House doorman and people like that. So they have all their measurements all listed on this really long document.
LAURA KINTZ: Yeah.
STACEY CHANDLER: It's very-- it's a lot of work. A lot of effort went into even just these little--
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Yes, well, I want to thank you all so much for your hard work and thoughtfulness that went into this. I know of all the thousands of things you've come across, these are some really great personal favorites of yours. And again, we'll link your blog post in our show notes, so people can actually see them. And we will hope to have you back again for some other round of archives picks in the future. Thank you.
MARYROSE GROSSMAN: Thank you.
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JAMIE RICHARDSON: Thank you for listening to this episode of JFK35. This is our last episode of this season. We'll be taking a little break and we'll see you in February. If you have questions or story ideas, email us at JFK35pod@JFKLFoundation.org or tweet at us at JFK Library, using the hashtag JFK35. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram. And if you like what you heard today, please consider subscribing to our podcast or leaving us a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening and have a happy new year.
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