JFK enjoyed Frost’s poetry

By Tom Hintgen (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Monday, December 29, 2008

Snowfall amounted to several inches on the ground in Washington, D.C., the evening before John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, in January 1961. City workers labored throughout the evening and into the morning hours to clear the snow and make final arrangements for the inauguration just outside the U.S. Capitol building.

JFK attended services at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown the morning of Jan. 20. He later joined outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower for the ride from the White House to the U.S. Capitol building. Congress had extended the East Front, and the inaugural platform spanned the new addition.

Chief Justice Earl Warren prepared to administer the oath of office to the 43-year-old Kennedy. Renowned writer Robert Frost planned to read a new poem at the ceremony.

Frost, 86 at the time of the JFK inauguration, was widely admired for his many works of writing, including the poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Frost penned that poem while residing in northwestern New Hampshire.

The poem ends with the words, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.”

Like Kennedy, Frost was a New Englander who had written a poem for the occasion called, "Dedication."

The poet approached the inaugural microphone, but blinded by the sun's glare on the snow-covered Capitol grounds, Frost was unable to read it. Thinking quickly, he instead recited "The Gift Outright," a poem he had written in 1942.

The poem started, “The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years before we were her people.”

The poem moved many people, including JFK, his wife Jacqueline, outgoing President Eisenhower and his wife Mamie and thousands in attendance. Millions of people, including those of us in Fergus Falls and across Otter Tail County, watched the inauguration on black and white TV sets.

As the years went by, and as our black-and-white televisions gave way to what was referred to “as living color,” Frost’s original poem became a footnote in history. The poet died two years after reciting his backup poem at JFK’s inauguration.

President Kennedy eulogized Frost after the poet’s death on Jan. 29, 1963, at the age of 88. Tragically, Kennedy himself lived only 10 more months and was 46 at the time of his assassination in Dallas, Texas.

Fast forward to April 20, 2006.

On that day the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, near Boston, received Frost's handwritten version of the poem, "Dedication," which Frost wrote but couldn’t read (due to the glaring sun) during JFK’s inauguration. Receiving the original hand-written poem was a dream come true for staff members at the Kennedy Library.

On the backside of the framed poem, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy had written in pencil, “For Jack. First thing I had framed to be put in your office. First thing to be hung there.”

The framed poem was given to the Kennedy Presidential Library through the will of a former Kennedy Administration staff member who died in 2005. After being displayed by JFK in the White House oval office, and following JFK’s death, the poem was given to the Kennedy staff member.

The poem now is on display in the museum at the Kennedy Library near Boston.

Historians praise the poetry of Frost as traditional and experimental, regional and universal. His ties to JFK are forever intertwined.

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Tom Hintgen is a reporter with The Daily Journal. His column runs Mondays.