The recounting of many who were at JFK’s early morning speech at the Union (JFK at the Union, Jan 2008) brings back many memories for this former Daily photographer (one of three) who covered the event, starting at Willow Run Airport.
The crowd was heavy because of the campaign’s increasing drama along with other reasons. The earlier televised debate had allowed people to see both Kennedy and Nixon only hours before JFK came to the campus.
Another element was the exceptionally comfortable, dry, warm weather that night. And the extended women’s curfew allowed thousands of his special fans to see this very attractive candidate for president in person.
It wasn’t known at the time by the crowd gathered at the Union that the candidate’s entourage was late in arriving from Willow Run because we were delayed by winding through downtown Ypsilanti. Thousands of people were on the streets there (no I-94 in 1960) to greet Kennedy’s motorcade, including cheering Eastern Michigan students. The enthusiasm of African-Americans was especially noticed and we were stopped or proceeded very slowly because of those crowds.
I had previously covered the JFK campaign when the Democratic candidate’s traditional Labor Day speech was given in downtown Detroit. It was obvious that enthusiasm had grown for JFK in the six weeks since then.
The trip up State Street and the exceptionally large crowd at the Union at that time of early morning was a surprise to the press corps–no mobile phones back then.
Bob Ross and others have given due credit to Al and Judy Guskin for picking up on Kennedy’s theme and followed through personally, starting with their Peace Corps training for Thailand at U-M. In the spring of 1961 as the Peace Corps was conceptually being defined and strengthened, Michigan students (Tom Hayden, Philip Power, Sharon Jeffrey among others) played a prominent role in a National Student Association conference on the Peace Corps held in Washington. Then-Sen. Hubert Humphrey (who had sponsored a bill in the Senate a year ahead of Kennedy’s speech setting up such a volunteer organization) consulted with the conference organizers before his speech. He helped rebut the conservative Young Americans for Freedom’s view that the PC should be organized to spread anticommunism principles in the Third World rather than do grass roots development. [Historical correction: In an earlier message appearing in this column, Gerald Rosenblatt, writing under the title “Meeting JFK”, indicated that Jackie Kennedy accompanied her husband on the trip to Ann Arbor. With all due respect, Mrs. Kennedy did not campaign at all in the Fall of ’61 because of a complicated pregnancy and was not at the Union nor on the campaign train the next day. None of the several hundred 35mm frames I have of those events reveal her presence.]

I remember as a freshman having to go to a “contraceptive class” before I was permitted to access contraception at the student health services. Men weren’t required to attend the same class. I thought then that even though the university was supposedly no longer enforcing curfews against women but not men, they were certainly treating men and women differently. I’ve wondered from time to time whether that policy is still in effect, and if not when it finally changed.

There is no longer a requirement that any student take a “contraceptive class.” –Editor

When Bill (Professor William C.) Morse looked at me and said, “I don’t know why you’re hesitating,” I was convinced that UM, and the joint Education and Psychology Program, were right for me. That was 1965, and my wife and I had journeyed to Ann Arbor to meet the man who had responded to my inquiry about Ph.D. study. During my time at Michigan I had many occasions to marvel at Bill’s penetrating empathy. If you find just “one or two head-and-shoulders-above professsors,” he once wrote, “you have found your university.” Because of Bill, and other unforgettable professors, I truly found mine at U-M.

I attended U-M from Sept. 1943 to Sept. 1944 (How to date women – 1943, Feb 2008) as part of an ASTP-ROTC (Army Specialized Training Program)unit to study spoken and written Japanese. We started with 275 men and were housed in Greene House, East Quad. I was in Room 215. We also had military classes and were supposed to become second lieutenants upon completion of training. Typical of the Army, this never happened. 180 men successfully finished the course, 90 of whom were sent to a military intelligence unit in Washington, D.C. to translate decoded Japanese messages. I was one of them. The other 90 were sent to a Signal Corps base. Some were taught to climb telephone poles. Some ended up in the Battle of the Bulge, in Europe. Again, typical of the Army!

RE: How to date a woman – 1943, Feb 2008: Still in uniform as a US Marine officer, and after marriage in May 1946, I began as a Law Student in the summer of 1946. Baby Nancy (now 60 years old) was born in University Hospital on July 13, 1947, the day before my Constitutional Law exam for which I had not cracked a book — but amazingly got an A on the exam and the course.
Torts Professor Paul Leidy is my fondest faculty memory. Lived in Willow Run Village in Ypsilanti and commuted to Ann Arbor to school daily. Graduated in upper 10% of class of ’48 with the degree, rare at the time, of Juris Doctor. The typical Law degree of the day was LLB — thus the award of the JD was designated on my Certificate as “With Distinction”.
At 84 years old now retired after receiving Honorable Mention from the Supreme Court of the State of California in January 2001 for 50 years of service as a member of the State Bar of California.

During the second World War, I was a student at Michigan (How to date a woman – 1943, Feb 2008)– graduate and undergraduate – and subject to the military draft. I reported in due course for the routine physical examination. But those in charge decided that my visual acuity was not at a level that would permit me to distinguish friendly soldiers from the enemy if my spectacles were misplaced. I was therefore wisely excluded from the dangers of becoming the origin of friendly fire.
As a result, although in those days I really wanted to, I never had the opportunity to stand rigidly vertical and shout “Yes SIR!!” to a general. I did, however, manage to see General Douglas MacArthur close up in 1951 in Ann Arbor, but only after he had lost his job. Harry Truman had reminded him that a president does in fact outrank a general. He invited him to return to this country from Korea and to employ his talents in other activities.

MacArthur returned and informed Congress and the rest of us that old soldiers never die, they just fade away. But fading, we soon found out, was not his thing, and he postponed it indefinitely.
Instead, possibly only to annoy the President, he made a tour of the country, during which our paths crossed.

Let me set the scene:

The dramatis personae: A small crowd of Michigan faculty, (including me), students, and townspeople waiting hopefully for the rumored motorcade of the great man to pass through Ann Arbor.

The Setting: The front of the Rackham Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the street between that building and the University’s signature Carillon Tower with its large clock notifying us all that it was about ten minutes to twelve. With confidence that he would really come, a microphone, stage center, had been set up on the curb to allow the general to deliver a talk that we were certain would inspire us all. We waited.

The rumor had been that he would arrive at noon, but he came a few moments early. He saw the microphone, stood up in the back seat of his open car, looked around majestically, and opened his mouth. And closed it, for at that moment, the large clock on the Carillon Tower, which had not been informed of the status of this visiting soldier, chose to inform us all that it was indeed noon. It dutifully, slowly and majestically, produced booming notes. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, a principal architect of the winning island-hopping strategy of the Pacific war, recently returned from waging war in Korea, waited, familiar profile outlined against the Michigan sky. The crowd, awed, did not breathe.

The clock ended its midday serenade. Its echoes faded away. The general gave his short speech, and his caravan took off – rather rapidly, I thought. I don’t remember what he said.

I was not at the Union that fateful night to hear JFK (JFK at the Union, Jan 2008), but mutual friends put me in touch with the Guskins the next day. A letter was sent to the Michigan Daily immediately on the heels of the one sent by the Guskins. A few days later at a late night session, ACWR (Americans Committed to World Responsibility) was born.

[In his letter to this page,] Robert Ross has reported that it collected signatures in support of a peaceful alternative to military service which were delivered to JFK. But ACWR did more. It held a mass meeting which filled one of the auditoriums adjacent to the “fishbowl,” between Haven, Mason, and Angell Halls.

Out of that meeting came the plan to send letters to colleges and universities across the county. A few days later, a large number of students gathered, bringing paper, envelopes, portable typewriters, stamps, and the like. Over 400 letters were created and addressed to student body presidents, campus ministries, and editors of student newspapers. (We ran out of stamps, but some of the students were members of a church near campus. They hit the minister for a contribution—and it was given!)

I never knew which church that was and so I have never been able to thank them. Since I believe many organizations would have helped us out if asked, I now give my thanks to all of them.

The post office on Stadium Blvd west of the city was notified of our effort and agreed to stay open for a few additional minutes so we could get the material in the mail that night.

Many of us feel that this effort also contributed to the creation of what came to be known as the Peace Corps. The letters contained the addresses of both the national Kennedy and the national Nixon campaigns. (Yes, it was Kennedy’s idea, but we wanted to include everyone regardless of which candidate they supported.)

Apparently the idealism on other campuses was as intense as at U-M. Kennedy campaign headquarters reported a mountain of mail supporting Kennedy’s idea. Neil Staebler, then a Democratic National Committeeman from Michigan, later told us that the effort may have made the difference in the election.

ACWR did continue as a campus organization at U-M for a while (and there were ACWR’s on other campuses as well).

One of the things that drove us was that the generation of college students of the 1950s was sometimes known as “The Silent Generation” in the US. It gratified me to show that the students were not silent when they had something important to say.

I was there that evening and waited to hear Mr. Kennedy’s remarks (JFK at the Union, Jan 2008). I really don’t remember much of what he said but I do remember some of the antics some members of the student crowd used to entertain themselves while waiting for him to arrive. Some Republican students hoisted signs with the ribald phrase “You can’t **** our Dick” on them. Referring, of course to Mr. Kennedy’s political opponent, Richard Nixon. Other students tore them down almost as fast as they were raised. And a good time was had by all.

When Kennedy spoke (JFK at the Union, Jan 2008), I was standing back along South University – for a long time and impatiently. I knew it was a big deal, but Kennedy was not my favorite. I remember the appeal for commitment and how excited I and others were at the idea– and I remember clearly the role Al and Judy Guskin played in the next days. The meeting the article referred to evolved into an organization they founded – Americans Committed to World Responsibility (ACWR). Initially it circulated the petitions that were delivered in Toledo through the good offices of Millie Jeffrey (the UAW’s Community Relations Director).

The reception that Kennedy got gave a hint, not fully clear at the time, of the reservoir of idealism that had built up in Ann Arbor. Just months earlier, on February 1, 1960, the Southern Civil Rights sit-ins began and almost immediately a boycott of Woolworth and Kresge was called nationwide to force them to desegregate. Picketing of the stores was organized in Ann Arbor by, among others, John Leggett, then a Sociology graduate student and Lefty Yamada, then working as a bookstore manager. Many of us younger students participated, including Sharon Jeffrey (Millie Jeffrey’s daughter referred to in the article), and others who heard the call to commitment later in the Fall.

It’s a longer story, but the core of the picketers, who included many of the petition-signers for the Peace Corps, became the core of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at U-M, who then took the lead in writing the Port Huron Statement – written at the AFL-CIO summer camp in Port Huron, arranged for us by …Millie Jeffrey.

Relating to the in loco parentis theme raised in the Kennedy story and in an earlier Michigan Today story (The day in loco parentis died, Nov 2007): the locking up of girls in dorms under the policy of in loco parentis (which was waived that night) became a target of what the SDS chapter came to call a need for “University Reform.” The VOICE political party affiliated with SDS and we campaigned against in loco parentis and became the first force to challenge the supremacy of Greek letter societies over the student government.