John P. Walsh is an art historian, writer and photographer. He has an M.A. in Modern Art History, Theory and Criticism from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and taught Modern Art History at Northwestern University.
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PUBLISHED APRIL 19, 2025 7pm CT. Feature image: Lexington Minute Man, 1899, by H. H. Kitson (c.1863-1947) stands in Lexington Green west of Boston, Massachusetts. Although called Minute Man, the statue is meant to represent the local Lexington militiaman, colonists of many ages and backgrounds, who volunteered to be first responders to military and other threats. The actual “minute men” was part of an elite subset of militia who were young and fit and able to respond to the greatest danger and challenge. Author’s photograph, July 1989.
At the foot of the minuteman monument, visitors arrive in a steady flow, drawn to this enduring chapter of early American history. The bronze figure, rifle held in the classic Revolutionary‑era stance, recalls the citizen‑soldiers who first stepped forward to defend their towns. According to the National Park Service, the Minute Man National Historical Park—which includes Battle Road and its surrounding historic sites—welcomes more than 1 million visitors each year. see – Tourism to Minute Man National Historical Park contributes $102 million to local economy – Minute Man National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service) – retrieved April 19, 2025.
H.H. Kitson, sculptor of the famed Lexington Minuteman, was born in England and immigrated to the United States as a teenager. After studying art in Paris, he returned to New York in 1884 and moved to Boston two years later, where he established a studio, taught, married one of his students, and raised three children. The monument was commissioned in 1898 for $10,000 by railroad executive and U.S. Congressman Francis Brown Hayes, erected in 1899 facing the route of the British advance, and formally unveiled on April 19, 1900, for the 125th anniversary of the battle.Public Domain. see – https://monuments.freedomsway.org/monuments/minute-man-statue/ – retrieved April 19, 2025.
On April 19, 1775, local militiamen stepped out from Buckman Tavern beside the Lexington common and formed two lines to face the advancing British troops. Their stand resulted in the first casualties of the American Revolution. During our visit, we also learned that the phrase “sleep tight” comes from the rope‑laced frames that supported Colonial‑era mattresses. Author’s photograph, July 1989.
Author’s wife on Lexington Green where the first shots of the War of American Independence were fired on April 19, 1775. Author’s photograph, July 1989.
Also on April 19, 1775, the British approached the town of Concord where the American colonists sprang into action. After an alarm rider notified minutemen and militia, scouts were sent out to reconnoiter British movements. They heard the cackle of gunfire at Lexington Green and, learning of this martial situation, Concord prepared. The British advanced to Concord and the colonial militia strategically retreated past the North Bridge to watch what the British would do. Meanwhile the colonists were checking on the safety of their own military stores. With Concord effectively in British hands the Regulars moved out to take the town’s two bridges over the Concord River. The South Bridge was taken but the North Bridge proved more problematic. They crossed the bridge but encountered the colonists who had moved past it and into an elevated position. Loyalists in town informed the British where the colonists kept their military stores filled with supplies such as gun powder, cannon, shot, and flour. The colonists had their own intelligence network and had moved these stores to other hidden locations. At a farm where they thought the military supplies to be stored, the British forced a woman who lived there, one Rebecca Barrett, to make them breakfast as they searched the premises. But they found, as the colonists planned, nothing. Although there were kegs of gunpowder stored in the farm next door, the British didn’t go look.
DO NOT FIRE UNLESS FIRED UPON.
Meanwhile, the British held the two Concord bridges and waited for their search party to return. At the same time, the American colonists were getting a better look at their red-coat adversaries. As the Americans held a military council, their growing military presence forced the British who had crossed the bridge to retreat back to it. Armed militiamen were streaming in from several towns and formed a formidable front. As the British were setting fires in downtown Concord, the American colonists could see the flames rising from their position on the high ground. Because of these fires (the British were burning carriages) the Americans decided to march to the North Bridge so to cross into town to prevent the British from burning it down. Fully expecting a confrontation with the British, the militia companies loaded their weapons but were told not to fire unless fired upon. Approximately 400 militia men marched in order by company seniority down towards the North Bridge. There were less than 100 British guarding the bridge. With the coming American militia the British retreated around the bridge and considered this American action as an attack. There were a flurry of orders flying around the field of action to the point of chaos. The British debated marching into the field to meet the approaching Americans. They also debated ripping up the bridge so the Americans could not cross. They finally decided on a firing formation in the street at the base of the bridge.
SHOT HEARD ‘ROUND THE WORLD.
In the chaos the Americans arrived to the bridge. The British fired directly into the group and wounded and killed men. “The balls whistled well,” recalled a militia soldier. One American was shot through the throat. Another under and through the eye. One more through the heart. In a matter of seconds there were six total casualties. The Americans were then ordered: “Fire, for God’s sake fire!” A hail of bullets was shot into the British. Three were killed and nine wounded. Many of the British fled towards town. As the Americans chased the British, one militiaman struck a hatchet blow into the head of a wounded British soldier.
The British were quickly reinforced and ordered to march back to the bridge. But there was no more firing. The militia dispersed from the bridge though there was a huge influx of militia coming into Concord from several towns in all directions. The militiamen knew the terrain and its backroads and could converge quickly, directly and stealthily. Though the British asked for reinforcements (1,000 men) from Boston, nothing happened. The British retreated though Concord Bridge marked the beginning of a massive battle that raged over 16 miles along the Bay Road from Boston to Concord, and included some 1,700 British regulars and over 4,000 Colonial militia. see – https://www.nps.gov/mima/north-bridge-questions.htm – retrieved April 19, 2025.
The Minute Man statue of 1875, created by Daniel Chester French (1850–1931), was unveiled on April 19, 1875, during the centennial commemoration of the battles of Lexington and Concord. Set near the site where the first colonial militiamen fell in Concord, the seven‑foot bronze was cast from old Civil War cannons by the Ames Foundry of Chicopee, Massachusetts. Its stone pedestal bears the opening lines of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Concord Hymn, honoring the “shot heard round the world.” BY THE RUDE BRIDGE THAT ARCHED THE FLOOD, THEIR FLAG TO APRIL’S BREEZE UNFURLED, HERE ONCE THE EMBATTLED FARMERS STOOD, AND FIRED THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD. https://www.nps.gov/mima/learn/historyculture/the-minute-man-statue-by-daniel-chester-french.htm – retrieved April 19, 2025. Author’s photograph, July 1989.
Daniel Chester French (1850–1931) was born in New Hampshire and, at seventeen, moved to Concord to be near Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Alcott family, where he received his first art lessons. After further study in Boston, he was only twenty‑one when he received the commission for The Minute Man. The statue was unveiled to critical acclaim in 1875, though French himself was in Europe studying art at the time. Upon returning to the United States, he worked in studios in Washington, Boston, and eventually New York City. In 1897 he purchased the Stockbridge, Massachusetts estate that became Chesterwood, his longtime home and workspace. Over the following decades, French produced major public monuments in Boston, Cambridge, New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., and he is best known today for his Seated Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord alongside Emerson, the Alcotts, and Henry David Thoreau. https://www.nps.gov/mima/learn/historyculture/sculptor-daniel-chester-french.htm – retrieved April 19, 2025.
The author stands at the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, a house on Monument Street with the Concord River just behind it and the North Bridge—now part of Minute Man National Historical Park—beside the property. Built in 1770 for Rev. William Emerson (1743–1776), the home later became central to the Emerson family line: William’s son, minister William Emerson, and his grandson, the transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. The elder Rev. Emerson served as Concord’s minister, chaplain to the Provincial Congress in 1774, and later chaplain to the Continental Army; he watched the fighting at the North Bridge from his fields while his family witnessed it from the upstairs windows. Decades later, Ralph Waldo Emerson drafted his foundational essay Nature here, and during his stay in the mid‑1830s he proposed to Lydia Jackson before the couple moved to what is now known as the Emerson House. Author’s collection, July 1989.
John Hancock, 1770, by John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) in the Massachusetts Historical Society. Public Domain.
Built in 1738, the Hancock–Clarke House at 36 Hancock Street in Lexington, Massachusetts—less than half a mile from Lexington Green—is the historic residence where John Hancock (1737–1793) and Samuel Adams (1722–1803) were staying on the eve of the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Author’s photograph, July 1989.
John Hancock and Samuel Adams attended the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in Concord on the evening of April 18, 1775, and spent the night in Lexington as guests of Rev. Jonas Clarke (1730–1805). Clarke, a Harvard graduate and Lexington’s pastor since 1755, feared the two leaders might be seized by the advancing British. In Boston, Joseph Warren (1741–1775) dispatched William Dawes (1745–1799) and Paul Revere (1734–1818) to warn them; arriving separately at the Hancock–Clarke House around midnight, both riders delivered the alarm before continuing on toward Concord. Hancock and Adams then left for Burlington, about a half‑hour away by horseback, to ensure their safety. Author’s photograph, July 1989.
Old North Church, founded in 1723 as Christ Church, is best known for the night of April 18, 1775, when sexton Robert Newman and vestryman Capt. John Pulling Jr. climbed the steeple to display two lanterns. Their signal—alerting Paul Revere’s network that British troops were crossing the Charles River “by sea” toward Lexington and Concord—set in motion the opening moments of the American Revolution. see – https://www.oldnorth.com/ – retrieved April 19, 2025. Author’s photograph, July 1989.
Inside Old North Church, visitors stand only a short walk from Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, where Increase Mather (1639–1723) and his son Cotton Mather (1663–1728) are buried. Both served as Puritan ministers whose era of leadership overlapped with the notorious Salem witch trials. Author’s photograph, July 1989.
Paul Revere, c. 1770, by John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Public Domain. Unlike Copley’s formal portraits of Samuel Adams and John Hancock—both displayed in Boston’s Faneuil Hall—Revere’s portrait was long kept in the Revere family attic, disliked for its informality. After Revere’s fame surged with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1861 poem Paul Revere’s Ride, the painting was restored in 1875, though it was not publicly exhibited until 1928. Revere’s descendants donated it to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1930.https://collections.mfa.org/objects/32401/paul-revere?ctx=00d797a8-0c5a-4d78-ba26-db22eb858902&idx=5 – retrieved April 19, 2025.
Author at the Paul Revere House in Boston with a work friend of my dad. March 1976. Author’s collection.
Feature Image: June 2017. 4.37mb DSC_0785. The statue of Ronald Reagan by American sculptor Donald L. Reed in DIxon, Illinois, was dedicated on August 14, 2009. It is based on a photograph of Reagan when he visited Dixon in 1950 and rode a horse through its streets in a parade.The statue itself is nine feet high on its pedestal and called Begins the Trail. It is the first of a series that includes a life-sized statue for the Reagan Foundation at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, called Along the Trail. These artworks capture Reagan’s rugged amiable nature and his natural ability throughout life when riding. see – https://www.cowboysindians.com/2016/02/ronald-reagan-rides-again/ – retrieved April 13, 2025.
All text and photographs (except where noted) by John P. Walsh.
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Considered the heart of Dixon, the memorial arch has been a landmark since the 1920s. The original arch, built in 1919, was made of beaver board and wood. It was built to celebrate the return of Dixon’s soldiers after World War One. In 1949, a new arch was constructed of wood. It was replaced in 1966 when Galena Avenue was widened. In 1985 the arch was replaced with this fiberglass one with the letters from the 1966 arch. In 2024 it went through a major restoration. See – https://www.wifr.com/2024/06/04/dixons-iconic-memorial-arch-facing-repairs/ – retrieved February 28, 2025.
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This helicopter (above and below) wears five Purple Hearts carved from enemy ground fire in Vietnam — battered, scorched, and shot to pieces, yet every time it clawed its way back through the smoke, it delivered its crew home alive. In Dixon’s (Illinois) Veterans Memorial Park founded in 2001 the 1967 AH-1F Cobra Attack Helicopter Gunship (serial #67-15475) was issued to the 7th Squadron of the First Calvary Divisions Aviation Group for its entire tour of duty. This helicopter arrived in Vietnam in March 1967. Following 1142 combat hours flown, the helicopter was damaged on July 27, 1969, because of a weapons malfunction. At 1792 hours flown it was shot down on February 6, 1970, by heavy enemy ground fire while providing armed escort to medivac helicopters with both crewmen wounded. On April 15, 1970, at 1954 hours flown, it was damaged while providing direct fire support to infantry. On July 13, 1970, it was shot down by small arms fire while providing escort at 2092 hours. At 2471 hours, on January 19, 1971, it was severely damaged by gunfire while providing direct escort protection to ground troops. On July 6, 1971, it was damaged by heavy ground fire on an armed escort mission at 2745 hours flown. see – Cobra Attack Helicopter – Veterans Memorial Park & Museum – retrieved April 13, 2025.
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On June 5, Ronald Reagan’s death day, Honor Guard gather at the Reagan Boyhood Home in Dixon, Illinois.
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Reagan was a lifeguard at Lowell Park from 1926 to 1932. The original 200-acre public park opened in 1907 and began Dixon’s park system with the objective to preserve scenic beauty and establish civic beautification. From the start, Lowell Park attracted large numbers of people to its location along the Rock River. In this area, the valley of the Rock River contains bluffs and unique rock outcroppings that create a natural beauty. More than 100 years later, Lowell Park has maintained its distinctive scenic and natural recreational resources for free public use.
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Lowell Park predated the development of Illinois state parks in areas of outstanding natural attractions by many years. Lowell Park is the only public place in the Dixon area that preserves remnants of the Boles Trail established in 1826from Peoria, Illinois, to Galena, Illinois. The trail was replaced in popularity by the famous Kellogg Trail established in 1825 east of the Boles Trail route. See – https://historyillinois.org/boles-trail-the/ – retrieved March 3, 2025.
Lowell Park, Dixon’s first recreational park, was gifted in 1906 by Carlotta Lowell who was the niece of James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), a famous Boston (Cambridge) poet. The family came west on the invitation of Alexander Charters, a wealthy New York businessman, who purchased a large, wooded estate overlooking the river north of Dixon in 1837 and named it Hazelwood. His home later became the estate of Mr. & Mrs. Charles R. Walgreen, founder of the drug store chain that bears that name. Charles Lowell. a guest at Hazelwood, purchased the adjacent tract of land to live. Lowell married Josephine Shaw, also originally of Boston, and then of Staten Island in New York. When the Civil War broke out, Charles enlisted and was promoted to the rank of colonel and was killed in 1864 at the Battle of Cedar Creek in northern Virginia. Carlotta never knew her father as she was born after his death and the family never lived on their land in Dixon. In 1874, they moved to New York City and stayed there the rest of their lives. After her mother died, Carlotta offered the property in 1906 to the City of Dixon for a park in memory of her parents.
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40th U.S. president Ronald Reagan visiting the Rock River in Lowell Park where he was an effective and beloved lifeguard for seven consecutive summers. In July 1921 a longer dock had been installed at the beach, extending 75 feet into the river with a springboard platform. The new bathhouse was built in 1922 that accommodated hundreds of bathers. Electricity was installed at the park in 1922 with lighting that allowed the beach to remain open until after dark. Over those summers, Reagan saved 77 swimmers from drowning. Obviously proud of his achievement, President Reagan often showed his Oval Office visitors a picture of the Rock River while telling them that his lifeguarding there was “one of the best jobs I ever had.”
The original 200 acres of Lowell Park opened to the public in 1907. The park was designed by the Olmsted Brothers, a nationally prominent architecture firm headed by the sons of Frederick Law Olmsted. Lowell Park was designed in the American Romantic style which is characterized by its emphasis on natural scenery, native plant materials, native building materials, curvilinear roads, and minimum formality. In 1959 the beach was finally closed after ten years of declining usage due to the opening of Memorial Pool in Vaile Park in the city of Dixon. The Lowell Park bathhouse was used for storage as its concession stand continued to operate until the late 1980s.
June 2017. Lowell Park was designed in the American Romantic style by the Olmsted Brothers. 7.24mb DSC_0916 (1)
Rock River at Lowell Park is still the hub for recreational activities as it has been for over a century.
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President Reagan on his lifeguard years in Dixon: “One of the Best Jobs I Ever Had.”
Ronald Reagan as a lifeguard at Lowell Park in 1927. Public Domain.
June 2017. Lowell Park, Dixon, IL. DSC_0882June 2017. Diving top with changing rooms and concession behind. Lowell Park, Dixon, IL. 5.38mb DSC_0896
Bus service from Dixon city to the park started in 1921. This diving top was anchored to the river bottom during its swimming hole glory days when Reagan was lifeguard. Swimmers teetered, spun and jumped into the water during hot Illinois summers which Reagan knew and loved. The one-story bathhouse behind it was designed and built in 1922. When Reagan was a lifeguard the building served as the concession stand and the check area for clothing baskets. Under a hipped roof, the men’s wing was to the south and women’s wing out of sight to the west. The architect of the bathhouse is unknown. Native stone was used from the ground to the height of the concession building’s serving counters and for the foundations of the two wings. Above that the walls were stucco on the exterior. All stonework was coursed and roughly squared. It was ventilated by raising the hinged board covers of the screened window openings. The steel-supported roof was covered originally with black-blue slate shingles that were replaced in 1934 with asphalt shingles. The overhang is broad with exposed rafters.
June 2017. Lowell Park, Dixon, Illinois. 3.53mb DSC_0877
Ronald Reagan in Dixon, Illinois, in the early 1920’s. Public Domain.
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The Reagans settled in this rented house at 816 S. Hennepin Avenue in Dixon, Illinois, on December 6, 1920. The family of father Jack, mother Nelle, and 12-year-old Neil and 9-year-old Ronald lived here for three years. From 1921 to 1924, Neil and Ron attended South Side/Central School which still stands four blocks north of the house and is now the Dixon Historic Center. Reagan often walked along Hennepin Avenue going downtown to the Dixon Public Library at 221 South Hennepin Avenue and the First Christian Church at 123 South Hennepin Avenue where both Neil and Ron were baptized on June 1, 1922. Nelle taught Sunday school and sang in the church’s choir. Ronald and his mother were members of the Disciples of Christ church until 1937. Between 1924 and 1930, the Reagans lived in a rented house at 338 W. Everett Street in Dixon. Reagan lived in that house in Dixon when he was home from college after he began attending Eureka College in September 1928.
Reagan 1920s with family. Ronald Reagan sitting (hand on chin in front row) posing with other family members, Neil Reagan at far right (front row), Jack Reagan (middle row at left), Nelle Reagan (last row, second from left), Illinois. Public Domain.
Ronald Reagan sitting (hand on chin in front row) with other golf caddies for the Lincoln Highway Ladies Golf Tournament in 1922 in DeKalb, Illinois. Public Domain.
Reagan (second row, left) in 4th grade in Tampico, Illinois. Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, on February 6, 1911 in a second-floor apartment at 111 Main Street and, until 1914, at 104 W. Glassburn Street. Afterwards the family moved in sequence to Chicago, Galesburg, and Monmouth until they returned to Tampico in 1919-1920 and ultimately to Dixon in early December 1920. Reagan’s father was an alcoholic and they moved around a lot. As a young man Reagan became a lifesaver. Public Domain.
June 2017. Inside the Reagan Boyhood Home, Dixon, Illinois. 4.90mb DSC_0778 (1)
June 2017. Veterans Memorial Park, Dixon, Illinois. 6.41 mb DSC_0827.
The M60 tank is designed as one of the main assault vehicles of an Armor/Mechanized Infantry/ Infantry Division. It weighs about 105,000 pounds unloaded and has a 64,000 pound payload. The tank can travel at top speeds of 30 m.p.h. and can travel nearly 300 miles.
June 2017. Veterans Memorial Park, Dixon, Illinois. 7.05mb DSC_0831.
Republic F-105D Thunderchief (serial #60-455) was a new aircraft that served the U.S. Air Force from 1958 to 1984. This specific aircraft fought in Vietnam between 1968 and 1970. It was stationed at Takhli Airforce Base in Thailand with the 355 Tactical Fighter Wing that was established in April 1962 at George AFB in California and transferred to Thailand in 1965. This F-105D Thunderbird was one of 833 airplanes manufactured by Republic in Farmingdale, New York, with over half the fleet lost in combat or due to mechanical failures. With 610 built, this particular warbird was the definitive production model with all-weather capability because of advanced avionics, including AN/APN-131 navigational (Doppler) radar. This aircraft was retired with almost 6000 flying hours and two men who had flown it receiving the Medal of Honor. The plane’s maximum range is 2390 miles at a maximum ceiling of 48,500 feet and reached speeds of supersonic Mach 2 (1,534 m.p.h.) at over 36,000 feet. In addition to a Vulcan Gatling Gun the plane’s payload includes 750-pound conventional bombs (16 of them) or one nuclear bomb.
Capt. A. Lincoln, 16th president of the U.S., looking onto the Rock River in Dixon, Illinois, This 1930 statue by Leonard Crunelle (1872-1944) Reagan would have seen and known while living in Dixon. Young Lincoln enlisted in the Illinois Volunteers on April 21, 1832 and, following more enlistments, finally mustered out of military service on July 10, 1832. Across the Rock River is the modern Reagan statue.
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Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) lived in Dixon, Illinois from 1920 to 1933. Reagan always referred to Dixon as his “hometown.” Reagan made several visits to Dixon after he lived here, even when he was President of the United States. The statue is on the banks of the Rock River which is the same waterway where Reagan saved 77 lives as a lifeguard upstream at Lowell Park.
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After Reagan’s death in 2004 local donors commissioned this larger-than-life-sized statue of Dutch Reagan on a palomino horse and gifted it to the City of Dixon. It was dedicated to the eradication of Alzheimer’s that was a foe that President Reagan had to battle in last years.
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Reagan in DIxon in the early 1920’s. Public Domain.
In 1982, President Reagan told the Eureka College audience, “Everything that has been good in my life began here.”
September 2016. Eureka College’s Burrus Dickinson Hall built in 1858. 3.87 mb
On campus at Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois, about 90 miles south of Dixon, where Reagan lived. The college, affiliated with the Disciples of Christ of which Ronald Reagan was a member, was founded in 1855. At the time of its founding Eureka was one of a handful of U.S. colleges that was co-ed. In 1856 Abraham Lincoln spoke on campus. After he graduated Reagan returned for campus visits at least a dozen times and served on its board of trustees. Reagan attended Eureka College from 1928 to June 10, 1932, when he graduated as the elected student body president with a degree in economics/sociology. Eureka College is the smallest college or university in American history to graduate a future U.S. president with a bachelor’s degree. The school is in Woodford County in Illinois.
On May 9, 1982, President Reagan announced the START treaty proposal in the Reagan Gym at Eureka’s commencement exercises. It resulted in a bilateral treaty signed in 1991 between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. on the reduction and the limitation of strategic offensive arms including nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles and heavy bombers.
Ronald Reagan is the only U.S. president who was born, grew up and received his education in the state of Illinois.
September 2016. Part of the Berlin Wall. Eureka College. 2.40mb DSC_0493 (3)
Of Dixon the Gipper once said: “It was the place I really found myself.”
Portrait of Ronald Reagan in 1934 the year after he left Dixon, Illinois. His career led to Hollywood, California as a film actor and Screen Actors Guild president; to Sacramento, California as 33rd Governor of California (1967-1975); and to Washington, D.C., as 40th President of the United States of America (1981-1989). But it was to Dixon, Illinois, that Reagan always returned with its fond memories. Reagan graduated from Eureka College, a liberal arts school affiliated with the Disciples of Christ, in 1932 where he was active in sports and drama and elected student body president. Reagan’s first job was as a sports radio broadcaster in Davenport, Iowa, for Big Ten football games. Afterwards he was a sports announcer for Chicago Cubs’ baseball games on WHO-AM in Des Moines. Reagan arrived in Hollywood in 1937 and was cast in his first feature film Love is on the Air for Warner Bros. where he gets to play a newscaster. Fair use.
In Love is on the Air (1937) Ronald Reagan made his screen debut as a crusading radio reporter who takes on civic corruption.
This explanatory article may be periodically updated.
Reagan giving a speech in Liberty State Park in Jersey City, NJ on September 1, 1980. On a personal note, I met Ronald Reagan at the Palmer House in Chicago in June 1980 during a press conference. He was gracious and had movie star looks: tall and handsome. Reagan was elected the 40th U.S. president in a landslide over Jimmy Carter in November 1980 and re-elected in 1984. I later met Jimmy Carter in Chicago at a book signing in the 1990’s.
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Author and wife at Reagan Boyhood Home, Dixon, Illinois.
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The Ronald Reagan Trail (IL-26) is a route in Illinois that follows sites of interest associated with the 40th president of the United States who was born in Tampico, Illinois and grew up in Dixon, Illinois. Route 26 originally ran north-to-south for about 25 miles from Freeport, Illinois to Polo, Illinois. In 1937, IL-26 was extended about 15 miles north to the Illinois-Wisconsin state line and about 15 miles south to Dixon, Illinois. In 1969, IL-26 was extended almost 100 miles south from Dixon to East Peoria, Illinois.
June 2017. Rock River at Lowell Park, Dixon, Illinois. 4.93 mb DSC_0865 (1). Author’s photograph.
January 3, 1960 — Announcement: One day after launching his campaign for the Democratic nomination, Kennedy immediately confronted a revived national anxiety: whether a Roman Catholic could serve as president without divided loyalties. As the first Catholic with a viable path to the White House, he faced sharp questioning over whether allegiance to the Pope might compromise his constitutional duties.
Religious Controversy: Kennedy moved quickly to defuse the issue. Kennedy, who happened to be Catholic, argued that religion should neither qualify nor disqualify a candidate. His position was deliberately universal. Though he made no excuses for his Catholic faith, he insisted that the presidency belongs to individuals, not categories. The controversy did not end there. In September 1960, before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, he faced it down again, declaring that he was not the Catholic candidate for president, but the Democratic Party’s candidate who happened to be Catholic. The speech became the campaign’s clearest statement that personal identity must not become a political litmus test. He pledged to carry out the responsibilities of the presidency independent of any outside religious authority, rejecting both criticism and instruction. He argued for an uncompromising separation of church and state, stating that he would oppose a national church even if “99 percent” of Americans shared his faith.
Electoral Strategy: Beyond addressing religion, Kennedy used the NBC broadcast to outline his broader campaign logic. He rejected identity‑based ticket balancing, insisting that a major party’s presidential ticket should be shaped by geography and political experience rather than religious background.
Vice‑Presidential Speculation: He also dismissed rumors that he might accept the vice‑presidential slot, stating bluntly that he had no interest in “waiting for the president to die.” The unusually candid remark signaled his determination to run on his own terms and set the tone for the rest of his campaign.
September 13, 1962 — News conference:
I think – and I am sure this is the view of the people and the states- the right to vote is very basic. If we are going to neglect that right, then all of our talk about freedom is hollow. And therefore we shall give every protection that we can to anybody who is seeking the vote.
October 26, 1963 — Remarks at Amherst College:
The men who create power make an indispensible contribution to the nation’s greatness. But the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensible for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.
September 13, 1960 — Kennedy-Johnson Joint Campaign Appearance, Grand Prairie, Texas:
Above: One of the rare joint appearances of Senators John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson—the Democratic presidential ticket—in the 1960 campaign, which ultimately defeated the Republican ticket of Nixon–Lodge. During the second day of their Texas tour, the two men spoke to nearly 6,000 people in the parking lot of the Chance Vought Aircraft factory. It was at this stop that Kennedy was famously presented with a western cowboy hat, joking that he “didn’t have the guts to wear it” immediately. They also rode in a motorcade through the intersection of Main and Center streets in downtown Grand Prairie. Neither man was a natural campaigner: Kennedy’s hands often shook beneath a table or podium as he spoke, his voice growing hoarse, while Johnson, uneasy in crowds, frequently pushed himself into sick exhaustion on the trail.
Campaign Dynamics: Although both candidates wanted more joint appearances, their aides agreed such events mostly hurt the ticket’s image—especially Kennedy’s. Johnson was only nine years older, and both were the first U.S. presidents born in the 20th century, yet aides felt that when they stood together Kennedy looked almost like LBJ’s son. Still, the press and Johnson complained for weeks that the two men should campaign together more often, given the offices they sought.
Press Pressure: When reporters began hinting at a rift between the candidates as the reason for their limited joint schedule, the campaign arranged another appearance in November 1960, five days before Election Day. For that final joint even at the Biltmore in Los Angeles, Johnson flew out specifically to join Kennedy. The appearance received strong national print and television coverage, and on that Thursday before Americans went to the polls, both campaigns regarded it as a major success.
February 18, 1958 — Speech at Loyola College Alumni Banquet, Baltimore, Maryland:
Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.
The Cuban Missile Crisis lasted from October 16 to October 28, 1962.Critical Milestones:
October 16: Kennedy was first shown U‑2 photographs revealing Soviet nuclear missile installations in Cuba.
October 22: Kennedy announced a naval “quarantine” of Cuba in a televised address to the nation.
October 24: Soviet ships approached the blockade line but stopped or turned back to avoid confrontation.
October 27 — “Black Saturday”: A U‑2 was shot down over Cuba, and a Soviet submarine was forced to surface by U.S. Navy signaling, marking the peak of the crisis.
October 28: Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union would dismantle and remove the missiles, ending the 13‑day standoff.
FROM 13 DAYS (2000). JFK: BOB, IS THERE ANY WAY TO AVOID STOPPING THE SUBMARINE FIRST? MCNAMARA: I’M AFRAID NOT MR. PRESIDENT. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gol-iCLcroY – retrieved April 20, 2026
In response to the rapid buildup of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, President John F. Kennedy announced that the United States would impose a naval blockade—officially termed a “quarantine”—around the island. It went into effect on the morning of October 24, 1962, when American warships and aircraft tightened a ring around Cuba with orders to intercept any vessel suspected of carrying offensive military equipment.
Tension spiked almost immediately. Roughly 25 Soviet ships, some believed to be transporting nuclear missile components, continued steaming toward the quarantine line. U.S. commanders had standing instructions: any vessel refusing inspection could be stopped, diverted, and, if necessary, sunk. At 10:00 a.m., as the quarantine became active, Kennedy convened ExComm to assess the situation when new intelligence came in that made the situation immediately more precarious. Reports were that the approaching Soviet ships were joined by a Soviet sub armed with nuclear weapons, raising the risk of an existential, catastrophic confrontation. At the same time, aerial reconnaissance showed Soviet crews working feverishly in western Cuba to complete missile sites armed with nuclear warheads pointed at the U.S.—further evidence that the threat to U.S. national security, already considered imminent by the Kennedy Administration, was growing by the minute.
On the diplomatic front, the crisis was unresolved as it was debated by delegates at the U.N. whether Kennedy’s blockade was even legal under international law. Soviet leaders accused the United States of issuing an ultimatum and warned that force would be met with force. Meanwhile protests were organized on each side across the globe as political maneuvering accelerated.
By the end of October 24, 1962, the first signs of restraint appeared: several Soviet ships slowed or halted before reaching the quarantine line, suggesting Moscow might be reconsidering its next move. Even so, the world understood, some for the first time, that it stood on the precipice of nuclear war. The day ended with both superpowers locked in the most dangerous equilibrium of the crisis so far – both armed, alert, and waiting for the next move – with no one knowing whether diplomacy or confrontation would ultimately prevail.
October 31, 1962 — Three Days After the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK Meets the Archbishop of Canterbury at the White House:
Above: Rev. Dr. Michael Ramsey (1904–1988), Archbishop of Canterbury, meets with President John F. Kennedy on Halloween, 1962—just three days after the Cuban Missile Crisis ended. The world was still exhaling in relief: armed confrontation between the superpowers had been narrowly avoided, and October 27 had been the crisis’s most perilous day. A U‑2 reconnaissance plane was shot down by Soviet‑supplied SAM missiles, killing the USAF pilot. Kennedy’s ExComm urged immediate military retaliation, but he resisted. That same night, Robert Kennedy met secretly with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin in Washington, where they reached a tentative understanding pending Moscow’s approval. By the next morning, October 28, Radio Moscow announced acceptance of Kennedy’s proposal, ending the 13‑day standoff.
Michael Ramsey had been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury on May 31, 1961, and installed the following month, serving until 1974. In 1962 he was also president of the World Council of Churches (1961–1968). During his archbishopric, the first woman Anglican priest—Chicago‑born high‑altitude balloonist Jeannette Piccard—was ordained in the United States in 1974.
Massachusetts: John F. Kennedy Library, Columbia Point, Boston (June 1989):
July 1989 — The author at the John F. Kennedy Library, Columbia Point, Boston.
Standing near JFK’s iconic sailboat, 1989 marked the Library’s tenth anniversary, a moment when the institution shifted from a young presidential repository into a fully established center of civic education, political legacy, and architectural study. Its most enduring milestone of 1989 was the formal creation of the Profile in Courage Award by members of the Kennedy family. Just five weeks before this photograph, Columbia Point hosted a major family gathering on May 25, 1989, attended by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Senator Ted Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy Jr., underscoring the Library’s growing national prominence a decade after its opening
John F. Kennedy Family House (1957), 3307 N Street, Georgetown, Washington, D.C. (October 2003):
Author’s photograph.
June 1957 — A Georgetown Purchase In June 1957, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy bought this three‑story Federal‑style house as a gift for his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy after the birth of their daughter, Caroline. Their son, John Jr., was also born while the family lived here.
Campaign Life at 3307 N Street During JFK’s 1958 Senate re‑election and the 1960 presidential campaign, Jackie hosted teas in the home’s double living room. The front entrance became nationally recognizable when President‑elect Kennedy stepped outside to announce major appointments — including naming his younger brother and campaign manager, Robert F. Kennedy as U.S. Attorney General.
President-Elect John F. Kennedy and Chester Bowles emerge from a breakfast conference at Kennedy’s Georgetown home in Washington, on Nov. 29, 1960. Bowles was appointed Under Secretary of State and later was Kennedy and Johnson’s ambassador to India.
January 20, 1961 — Departure for History On the morning of January 20, 1961, Kennedy famously left from this doorstep to travel to the U.S. Capitol for his swearing‑in as the 35th President of the United States. The house was sold later that year when the family moved into the White House.
Early 19th‑Century Origins Beyond its presidential associations, the home was originally built in 1811–12 for William Marbury (1762–1835), the financier and plaintiff in the landmark 1803 Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison — the decision that established the foundational principle of judicial review.
The Garden Refuge The Kennedys used the brick‑walled garden at 3307 N Street as a quiet refuge, especially during the 1960 campaign. With JFK traveling constantly, he rarely found time for his painting hobby, though he did spend occasional Sunday afternoons in the garden with Jackie and Caroline, away from the public spotlight.
Aesthetic Balance Inside the home, Jackie’s classical European taste was balanced with historical maritime art and paintings of naval vessels — a nod to Kennedy’s U.S. Navy service and lifelong passion for the sea.
Massachusetts: The John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site (Birthplace, 1917), Brookline, Massachusetts (July 1989) (August 2005):
July 1989 — The John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site at 83 Beals Street preserves the birthplace and early childhood home of the 35th president. The house, built in 1909 by local architect‑builder Robert M. Goode, is a two‑and‑a‑half‑story Colonial Revival structure with a green‑shingled exterior, an asymmetric cross‑gabled roof, prominent dormers, and a front porch topped by an upper balustrade deck. It stands in Brookline’s Coolidge Corner neighborhood, a dense early‑20th‑century streetcar suburb of tree‑lined residential blocks bordering Boston.
Three Kennedy children were born in the second‑floor master bedroom: John F. Kennedy on May 29, 1917; Rosemary Kennedy on September 13, 1918; and Kathleen Kennedy on February 20, 1920. Their older brother, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., was born in Hull, and the later five siblings — including Bobby and Ted — were born around the corner in the larger family home on Abbottsford Road.
August 2005 — The John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site in Brookline, Massachusetts. Author’s photograph.
JFK’s birthplace and childhood home—stands on Beals Street in the Boston suburbs. Joseph Patrick Kennedy purchased the house in August 1914, just ahead of his October marriage to Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald. A driven, opportunistic young bank president and businessman, he began building his fortune during World War I through shipbuilding contracts in the Quincy yards. In Brookline, Joe Kennedy was an affectionate father who fostered a spirited sense of competition among the Kennedy children, shaping the family ethos that would define their later public lives.
August 2005 — The John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site in Brookline, Massachusetts. Author’s photograph.
John F. Kennedy was born in this upstairs master bedroom of this Beals Street home in the mid-afternoon (3 p.m.) on Tuesday, May 29, 1917, an unseasonably cold (44 degrees), overcast, and rainy day. The family lived on Beals Street until 1920, then moved a short walk away to a larger house on Abbottsford Road, where they remained until 1927 before relocating to New York. Rose Fitzgerald—daughter of Boston’s first American‑born Irish mayor—had seven of her nine children in Brookline and was reluctant to leave. John F. Kennedy was her second child and son.
In Brookline, Joe Kennedy, son of a local pol and saloonkeeper, instilled a competitive spirit in his children, while Rose, who had studied in Europe, taught them an appreciation for the arts and history. A devout Catholic, Rose took her children on weekday walks to market and then to church, reinforcing their faith as part of daily life, not just Sundays.
After Joseph P. Kennedy sold the Beals Street house to family friend Edward Moore, the property passed through several owners over the next four decades. Following JFK’s assassination in 1963, thousands of mourners visited the home, turning it into an impromptu pilgrimage site. In 1966, the current owners agreed to sell the house back to the Kennedy family so it could be preserved as a permanent memorial.
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy then led a full restoration of the interior, working from her own memories and period décor to recreate the exact appearance of the home as it looked on the day John F. Kennedy was born in 1917. When the project was complete, the Kennedy family donated the property to the National Park Service in 1969, establishing what is now the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site. Rose Kennedy said she gave the house to the American people so that “future generations will be able to visit it and see how people lived in 1917 and thus get a better appreciation of the history of this wonderful country.” see – https://www.nps.gov/jofi/index.htm – retrieved May 29, 2025.
February 26, 1962 — Voice of America speech:
(56 seconds). “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” -John F. Kennedy, Voice of America speech, February 26, 1962.
In a 1962 address to the Voice of America, President John F. Kennedy defined the organization’s mission as a duty to champion truth, transparency, and the free flow of information, even when revealing internal “blemishes and warts.” He emphasized that a free nation must not fear truth and that the “burden of truth” serves the cause of freedom.
SPEAKING OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION IN A FREE COUNTRY TO THE ENTIRE WORLD: “The Voice of America speaks. Today America has been at war for 79 days. Daily at this time we shall speak to you about America and the war, and the news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth”… …We seek a free flow of information across national boundaries and oceans, across iron curtains and stone walls. We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. The Voice of America thus carries a heavy responsibility. Its burden of truth is not easy to bear. …And as you tell it, it spreads. And as it spreads, not only is the security of the United States assisted, but the cause of freedom.” See – https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-20th-anniversary-the-voice-america – retrieved May 29, 2025.
November 22, 1963 — Fort Worth Remarks Before the Texas Hotel:
On a rainy morning in front of the Texas Hotel in Fort Worth, President John F. Kennedy delivered brief remarks at a citizen’s rally. He outlined three pillars of national security: military strength, economic prosperity, and superiority in space exploration, noting that Fort Worth would again “play its proper part.”
KENNEDY: “What we are trying to do in this country and what we are trying to do around the world, I believe, is quite simple: and that is to build a military structure which will defend the vital interests of the United States. And in that great cause, Fort Worth, as it did in World War II, as it did in developing the best bomber system in the world, the B‑58, and as it will now do in developing the best fighter system in the world, the TFX, Fort Worth will play its proper part. And that is why we have placed so much emphasis in the last 3 years in building a defense system second to none, until now the United States is stronger than it has ever been in its history. And secondly, we believe that the new environment, space, the new sea, is also an area where the United States should be second to none.”
November 22, 1963 — The Johnsons Telephone Their Condolences to Rose Kennedy in the Immediate Aftermath of the Assassination:
November 22, 1963 — Rose and Joe Kennedy at Hyannis Port
On a clear “bluebird” morning at the Hyannis Port compound, Rose Kennedy followed her usual routine, attending morning Mass before returning home for lunch with Joe, who remained severely impaired from his 1961 stroke. After a short drive together, Rose received a call from her son, Attorney General Robert Kennedy: the President—her son Jack—had been shot in Dallas. A second call soon followed, confirming he was dead.
Rose withdrew to grieve in solitude, walking the beach and sitting quietly in her room, later reflecting that she asked God how decades of preparing her children for service could be undone in seconds. At approximately 4:15 p.m., she took a call from the new president, Lyndon Johnson, speaking from Air Force One shortly after being sworn in and as he returned to Washington with President Kennedy’s body. Composed, Rose addressed him as “Mr. President.”
June 11, 1963 — Oval Office Report to the American People on Civil Rights:
This nation was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.
May 27, 1963 — Supreme Court Signals an End to Evasion of Brown v. Board
On May 27, 1963, the Supreme Court declared that it would no longer tolerate evasions of its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The statement came in another desegregation case involving public parks. When the Court issued Brown in 1954, it could not have foreseen the years of delay and resistance that followed.
June 5–10, 1963 — Federal Orders and Kennedy’s Warning to Wallace
On June 5, a federal court enjoined Alabama Governor George Wallace from obstructing the admission of two qualified Black students to the University of Alabama. President John F. Kennedy reinforced the order on June 10, writing to Wallace and urging him not to interfere.
June 11, 1963 — Wallace “Stands in the Schoolhouse Door”
On June 11, Wallace carried out his pledge to “stand in the schoolhouse door,” physically blocking the students from enrolling. When he refused to yield to federal marshals, Kennedy nationalized the Alabama National Guard. Guard troops arrived, Wallace stepped aside, and the students entered and registered for classes.
June 11, 1963 — Kennedy’s Civil Rights Address from the Oval Office
That evening, Kennedy delivered his “Report to the American People on Civil Rights” from the Oval Office. In a 13‑minute address, he set out the moral and legal issues surrounding civil rights and previewed legislation that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. After two cautious years, the speech marked a decisive shift: Kennedy gave a full‑throated endorsement of civil rights and federal action to secure them.
June 12–13, 1963 — The Murder of Medgar Evers and Local Repression
In the early hours of June 12, civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who had listened to Kennedy’s remarks, was assassinated outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. On June 13, Jackson police arrested 82 Black marchers protesting Evers’s murder. Within a week, a white suspect was arrested and charged.
June 19, 1963 — Kennedy Sends His Civil Rights Bill to Congress
On June 19, Kennedy asked Congress to introduce his civil rights bill, seeking desegregation of public facilities, federal action to end job discrimination, and authority for the Attorney General to initiate desegregation suits.
Summer 1963 — Civil Rights Leaders Reject a Pause in Demonstrations
As Congressional debate and filibuster began, Kennedy asked civil rights leaders to suspend protests and marches. They refused. Instead, they announced a March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, D.C., to take place in August 1963.
See- Kennedy and the Press, edit. Harold W. Chase and Allen H. Lerman, introduction by Pierre Salinger, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, 1965, p. 452.
June 26, 1963 — Berlin speech at Rudolph Wilde Platz November 21, 1963 —Texas motorcade & remarks at the dedication of the Aerospace Medical Health Center, San Antonio August 1, 1963—color recording of remarks for “Seas Around Us” September 12, 1962—Moon speech, Rice University, Houston, Texas
(27 seconds).
April 27, 1961 — Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City:
On April 27, 1961, President John F. Kennedy delivered his 2400-word+ major speech known as “President and the Press” before the American Newspaper Publishers Association at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. In the speech delivered just days after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion the new president made a plea for responsible journalism in the face of Cold War threats. The remarks remain relevant today on the topics of press freedom, misinformation, and national security.
I am not asking your newspapers to support the Administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. For I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed. see – https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-newspaper-publishers-association-19610427#:~:text=This%20Administration%20intends%20to%20be,out%20when%20we%20miss%20them. – retrieved March 25, 2025.It was early in the 17th century that Francis Bacon [1561-1626] remarked on three recent inventions already transforming the world: the compass, gunpowder and the printing press. Now the links between the nations, first forged by THE COMPASS have made us all citizens of the world, the hopes and threats of one becoming the hopes and threats of us all. In that one world’s efforts to live together, the evolution of GUNPOWDER to its ultimate limit has warned mankind of the terrible consequences of failure. And, so, it is to the PRINTING PRESS–to the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news–that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent. I not only could not stifle controversy among your readers–I welcome it. This Administration intends to be candid about its errors; for as a wise man once said: “An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.” We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors; and we expect you to point them out when we miss them.
John F. Kennedy 1960 Campaign Ad For Social Security:
When Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on August 14, 1935, he called the new federal retirement program a “cornerstone.” It became one of the central pillars of the New Deal and a defining feature of modern American social policy.
A Personal Reflection from 1998
In 1998, at a Chicago book signing for The Virtues of Aging, I met former President Jimmy Carter and asked whether he believed Social Security was destined to disappear. Carter replied that he did not think so, a view reflecting the long‑standing bipartisan commitment to the program’s survival.
Social Security Under Strain in 2026
By 2026, Social Security faces unprecedented pressure. The aging population has surged: 75 million seniors now receive benefits—three times the number in 1975. Meanwhile, a smaller workforce contributes payroll taxes to support a rapidly growing pool of beneficiaries. Trust‑fund reserves are being depleted, and insolvency is projected for the mid‑2030s.
Kennedy’s 1960 Visit to Hyde Park
During the 1960 presidential campaign, Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy visited Hyde Park, New York, the national shrine home of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The occasion marked the 25th anniversary of the Social Security Act. Kennedy addressed 2,000 senior citizens gathered to honor Roosevelt and hear the young senator outline his vision for strengthening the program.
Kennedy’s Proposals for America’s Aging Population
In his remarks, Kennedy advanced a series of proposals aimed at improving the lives of older Americans and modernizing Social Security. Among them:
Federal medical care — a precursor to Medicare, which would be enacted in 1965.
Cost‑of‑living adjustments — automatic increases to keep pace with inflation, implemented in 1975.
Incentives for continued work — allowing older Americans to earn more without losing benefits.
Vocational guidance — support for retirees seeking new roles or training.
Adequate housing — expanding federal efforts to provide safe, affordable homes for seniors.
Medical research — increased study of diseases associated with aging.
Higher survivor benefits — expanded support for spouses caring for under‑age children.
A Continuity of Purpose
Kennedy’s 1960 message echoed Roosevelt’s original vision: Social Security was not merely a retirement program but a national commitment to dignity, security, and opportunity in old age. His proposals anticipated many reforms that would shape the program in the decades to come.
March 29, 1962—News Conference 29:
The Tax Cut Bill Advances in Congress
The press conference occurred the same week the House Ways and Means Committee approved President Kennedy’s tax cut bill. At the same time, Kennedy emphasized the need to close tax loopholes that permitted and encouraged American industries to invest overseas.
Revenue Neutrality as a Central Congressional Concern
Congress was focused on balancing the revenue lost from tax cuts with revenue gained through tax reforms, aiming to produce a revenue‑neutral bill. The effort was conceived as a targeted economic stimulus—not the broad‑brush solution tax cuts later became in national economic debates, nor the inverse approach of sweeping tax hikes.
Balancing Cuts and Reforms in the 1962 Legislation
The 1962 tax bill was modified and passed with this balancing principle in mind. Kennedy proposed significant reductions in tax rates for individuals and corporations, acknowledging that such cuts would initially reduce federal revenue. Broadly pro‑growth, the plan was not a modern‑style tax giveaway; policymakers believed the country could not afford such an approach. Instead, the goal was to offset revenue losses through reforms that generated compensating gains.
Sources of Revenue Gains
Revenue increases for the government came from several reforms, including:
Eliminating the dividend credit and exclusion
Introducing withholding taxes on dividends and interest
Restricting business expense deductions, particularly for entertainment and meals
Adjusting tax treatment for cooperatives and financial institutions
Revising taxation of gains from the sale of depreciable property
Short‑Term Losses and Long‑Term Contrast
Although the final Revenue Act of 1962 resulted in a short‑term net revenue loss, it still reflected Kennedy’s intent to pair tax cuts with offsetting reforms. Later economic approaches—particularly those associated with Reagan‑era tax policy—introduced large tax cuts skewed toward higher‑income earners without corresponding revenue‑generating reforms, relying exclusively on growth‑driven revenue effects to offset massive revenue losses. Combined with increased federal spending, this produced persistent deficit financing that Kennedy could not have imagined.
Kennedy’s Fiscal Aim in 1962
In 1962, Kennedy sought both a tax cut and a balanced budget, a pairing that underscores how different his fiscal strategy was from later eras of tax policy.
March 7, 1962—News Conference 26:
On February 22, 1962, Soviet Premier Khrushchev proposed that at the upcoming U.N.-sponsored Geneva Disarmament Conference on March 14 that the heads of government meet.
Kennedy rejected the offer, though he was afterwards pressured by European allies to reconsider and probed by the U.S. press if he would possibly attend and so backtrack on his statements. He maintained his firm position against attending the opening of the Geneva Disarmament Conference on March 14, 1962. Instead of traveling to Switzerland himself, Kennedy appointed Arthur H. Dean as the Chairman of the U.S. Delegation and sent Secretary of State Dean Rusk to handle the initial high-level negotiations.
Kennedy later outlined the manner of his going to any sort of summit conference in the near future— 1. to ratify an agreement 2. if there was a serious international crisis or the U.S. was on the brink of war 3. To aid the national interest.
The outcome to that spring’s lengthy Geneva talks was announced by Kennedy about 5 weeks after its opening: that negotiators had reached a broad outline for the objectives and principles, basic provisions and timings of a general treaty on nuclear disarmament.
Six months later the Cuban Missile Crisis took place.
April 30, 1963 — April 30, 1963 — Kennedy’s Remarks to Choate Alumni:
On May 4, 1963, President Kennedy broadcast taped remarks to the alumni of his alma mater, The Choate School, commemorating the unveiling of his official portrait on the campus in Wallingford, Connecticut.
The phrase most associated with John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Inaugural Address—“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”—endured as a defining call to civic action. Delivered by the nation’s first Catholic president, it urged Americans to see national progress as a shared personal duty rather than a service provided by government.
Echoes in Years of Lightning, Day of Drums (1965)
Its resonance appears again in the 1965 documentary Years of Lightning, Day of Drums, one of the earliest films to chronicle Kennedy’s presidency and assassination. Near the conclusion, narrator Gregory Peck reflects, “All this took place in the early 1960s, and someday the early 1960s will be a long time ago.” Hearing that line as a child, I felt its existential reminder: even the most vivid present moments eventually recede into memory and become history.
Possible Origins at Choate
Some historians have suggested that Kennedy’s inaugural exhortation may trace back to his years at Choate, the Connecticut boarding school he entered in 1931 as a ninth‑grade student. In his chapel addresses, headmaster George St. John frequently reminded students: “The youth who loves his alma mater will always ask not ‘what can she do for me?’ but ‘what can I do for her?’” Kennedy would have heard this refrain repeatedly during his formative years.
A Frail Student with a Mischievous Streak
Kennedy arrived at Choate following his older brother, Joe Jr., a standout athlete two years ahead of him. By contrast, Kennedy was frail, thin, and saddled with the nickname “rat face” among classmates. His early years were marked less by distinction than by mischief. He gathered around him a circle of friends he called “The Muckers Club,” a tongue‑in‑cheek embrace of St. John’s term for troublemakers. Their antics were largely harmless—witty pranks and playful irreverence—and the group included Kennedy’s roommate and lifelong friend, Lem Billings.
A Shift in Trajectory
Despite his unremarkable start, Kennedy’s trajectory at Choate changed. By the time he graduated in 1935, he was not valedictorian, but his peers voted him “Most Likely to Succeed,” a judgment that reflected what followed.
JFK, May 4, 1963: First, it is to make sure that our private schools are increasingly representative of the diversity of American life. These schools will not survive if they become the exclusive possession of a single class or creed or color. They will enlarge their influence only as they incorporate within themselves the variety which accounts for so much of the drive and the creativity of the American tradition. The second is to make sure that our private schools prepare young men and women for service to the community and to the Nation. The inheritance of wealth creates responsibilities; so does privilege in education.
May 19, 1962 — Birthday Party for President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden:
On May 19, 1962—ten days before President Kennedy turned 45—more than 15,000 people packed Madison Square Garden for his birthday celebration, a star‑studded night of politicians, entertainers, and Hollywood royalty. The evening became legendary when Marilyn Monroe stepped onto the main stage in a sheer, flesh‑colored gown studded with 2,500 rhinestones and delivered her breathy rendition of “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” as a giant cake was brought out.
Kennedy followed her to the microphone and quipped, “I can now retire from politics after having had Happy Birthday sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way,” a wink at Monroe’s sultry delivery and famously skintight dress.
Monroe had flown to New York with jazz pianist Hank Jones, leaving the troubled production of Something’s Got to Give to make the cross‑country appearance. The decision cost her: 20th Century‑Fox fired her in June 1962 for violating her contract. Kennedy attended the event alone; Jackie Kennedy skipped the celebration entirely, spending the day at the Loudoun Benefit Horse Show in Virginia with Caroline and John Jr.
The Madison Square Garden performance would become one of Monroe’s final public appearances before her death that August.
February 26, 1962 — President John F. Kennedy presented astronaut John Glenn with the NASA Distinguished Service Medal at the White House:
Astronaut John Glenn, born July 18, 1921, was part of NASA’s first astronaut group and became the first American to orbit Earth three times on February 20, 1962. Six days later, on February 26, 1962, President John F. Kennedy presented him with the NASA Distinguished Service Medal at the White House—a ceremony meant both to honor Glenn and to bolster national confidence during the Space Race.
The color footage (no sound) shows Kennedy awarding the medal with Glenn’s wife, Annie, and their children, John David (16) and Carolyn “Lyn” Glenn (14), standing beside him.
Glenn visited the Kennedy White House at least four times. He returned on May 3, 1962, as JFK welcomed Glenn and Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov to the Oval Office to discuss their historic flights and encourage international space cooperation. About six weeks before Dallas, on October 10, 1963, Kennedy presented Glenn, joined by the rest of the Mercury Seven astronauts, with the National Aeronautic Association’s 1962 Robert J. Collier Trophy for pioneering American manned spaceflight.
Glenn retired from NASA in 1964 and became A US Senator from Ohio for a quarter of a century (1974-1999). As a sitting senator, 77-year-old Glenn returned to space in 1999 on shuttle Discovery. John Glenn died on December 8, 2016, at the age of 95
June 23-July 2, 1963 — President Kennedy’s 1963 European Tour:
In June and July 1963, President John F. Kennedy embarked on a historic ten-day European tour, beginning with a four-day visit to West Germany and West Berlin. During a stop in Hanau on June 25, Kennedy stepped out of his motorcade to personally shake hands with the German police motorcycle escort that had guided him through streets lined with dense cheering crowds. The following day, June 26, he traveled to Berlin to deliver his celebrated “Ich bin ein Berliner” address on the steps of Rathbone Schöneberg that was attended by a crowd of 500,000. The trip continued as a triumphal circuit through Western Europe. In Ireland, Kennedy visited his ancestral homestead in Wexford and addressed the Irish Parliament. Moving on to the United Kingdom, he attended Sunday Mass at a small parish church in East Sussex (“Our Lady, Help of Christians”) before meeting with Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Finally, Kennedy concluded his journey in Italy on July 2 with a private audience with Pope Paul VI—securing a vital diplomatic meeting while carefully avoiding the new Pope’s formal installation ceremony just days prior.
FEATURE image: Late afternoon at Leon’s Frozen Custard in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. June 2017.Author’s photograph. (4.53mb, DSC_0728).
Leon’s original sign. By victorgrigas – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Leon’s is a family-owned drive-in in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that opened 83 years ago – in 1942. The building was remodeled in the early 50’s and is what is seen today. Leon’s was inspiration for the original Arnold’s Drive-In in the 1970’s ABC television sitcom, Happy Days, that was also set during the 1950’s in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The Happy Days season 2 intro settles into the warm glow of Arnold’s Drive‑In, where the cast dances, jokes, and moves through the set like regulars in a familiar hangout. The sequence plays over a freshly recorded version of “Rock Around the Clock”, a choice that instantly anchors the show in a 1950s jukebox mood. The season 2 also marks a shift in the show’s rising star power: Henry Winkler’s Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli steps into the opening credits beside Ron Howard, reflecting what would be his iconic popularity with viewers.
Although the tune is the same one Bill Haley & His Comets first cut in 1954, the version heard in Happy Days wasn’t that original hit. The song had begun modestly as the B‑side of a single that only reached No. 23, but everything changed when it blasted through the opening credits of Blackboard Jungle in 1955. Practically overnight, it became a cultural earthquake, soaring to No. 1 that July and helping ignite the rock‑and‑roll era.
Nearly twenty years later, in the fall of 1973, ABC asked the band to re‑record the song specifically for the new TV series. When Happy Days became an instant sensation, viewers went hunting for the version they heard each week—only to discover it wasn’t sold in stores. Their search sent them back to the original 1954 single instead, giving that two‑decades‑old record an unexpected second wind and pushing it back into the Top 40 in 1974, a rare encore for a rock‑and‑roll classic.
Fonzi played by Henry Winkler was a new character for the ABC TV series. He had just 6 lines in the first episode of “Happy Days” whose debut broadcast was January 15, 1974. In the series, Fonzie’s full name was Arthur Fonzarelli and called that by Richie’s mom. The original family name of series’ creator Garry Marshall (1923-2016) was Masciarelli and changed before Garry was born by his father, a man of Italian descent.“TV Guide #1189” by trainman74 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
At the 2024 Emmy Awards on September 15, Ron Howard and Henry Winkler reunited to mark Happy Days’ 50th anniversary. The longtime friends presented the award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series from a lovingly recreated Arnold’s Drive‑In set, complete with a vintage jukebox, red‑leather booths, and classic sports pennants.
Leon’s is still owned and operated by the original family. The main focus of the business is, and always has been, to serve the freshest and finest frozen custard available anywhere. The business is open all year round and they have full soda fountain service, a sandwich menu, daily special flavors and take-out service.
June 2017. Late afternoon at Leon’s, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Leon’s was inspiration for Arnold’s on Happy Days, a popular 1970’s TV series set in Milwaukee in the 1950’s. Author’s photograph. 4.53 mb
Arnold’s was the name of the local Milwaukee drive-in hang out for most of the characters in Happy Days. Fair Use.
Ron Howard Signs On (1973)
At just 19 years old, Ron Howard signed a seven‑year contract to star in Happy Days. At the time, he was juggling an unusually heavy load: filming American Graffiti, attending USC, and mapping out an early directing career.
Becoming Richie Cunningham
Cast as Richie Cunningham, Howard earned $3,500 per episode—roughly $25,000 in 2025 dollars. He had already played Richie once before, in the February 1972 Love, American Style segment that inspired the new series, but still had to audition again for the TV version. At the first read‑through, Howard reunited with Anson Williams (“Potsie”) and Marion Ross (Richie’s mother)—both of whom had appeared with him in the Love, American Style pilot. He also met the rest of the soon‑to‑be iconic cast: Tom Bosley (“Richie’s dad”), Donny Most (“Ralph Malph”), and Henry Winkler, a 28‑year‑old Yale School of Drama graduate who would become “Fonzie”
A 1970s TV Powerhouse
Alongside M*A*S*H, All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and The Bob Newhart Show, Happy Days became one of the defining sitcoms of the 1970s. It aired for 11 seasons from January 15, 1974, to July 19, 1984 on the ABC network. There was a total of 255 half-hour episodes.
SOURCES:
Ron Howard & Clint Howard , The Boys A Memoir of Hollywood and Family, William Morrow, 2021, pp. 275-277.
Attributed to Michelangelo Buonarotti, 1513, terracotta, Casa Buonarroti, Florence, Italy. The work is a study of a male torso, conceived to be without the head and upper and lower limbs. The work has been identified as a preparatory model for one of the figures of the Prisoners, intended to decorate the tomb of Julius II in Rome. see – https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/torso-virile/zQGx46asE5jBIg?hl=it&ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A9.086882915528859%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A3.3866676762513332%2C%22height%22%3A1.2375000000000005%7D%7D – retrieved March 6, 2025. Michelangelo Buonarotti, Madonna della Scala, 1490. Casa Buonarroti, Florence, Italy. Though it is small-sized the relief subject of the Madonna and child presents a monumental scope. The female figure fills the entire space. The meaning of the ladder (“scala”) in the title is ambiguous and may have reference to the children playing and holding a drape behind the Madonna. The date of the relief has been much discussed. However, a placement around 1490, before the Battle of the Centaurs, seems to be confirmed.see – https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/madonna-della-scala/xQF2nwLhAXd26w?hl=it – retrieved March 6, 2025. Michelangelo Buonarotti, Nude female, 1533, Casa Buonarroti, Florence, Italy. This figure of a female nude is linked to the New Sacristy in Florence to accompany the marble effigy of Giuliano de’ Medici. It has been linked to the figure of the Earth that, together with the Sky, was to be part of Giuliano’s marble effigy. The project of building a proper Medici family mausoleum was conceived in 1520, when Michelangelo began work on the New Sacristy upon the request of Cardinal Giulio de Medici, the future Pope Clement VII, who expressed a desire to erect the mausoleum for some members of his family including Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano assassinated in Florence’s Duomo in 1478. After completing the architectural works in 1524, Michelangelo worked until 1533 on the sculptures and the sarcophagi that were to be featured on the chapel walls. The only ones actually completed were the statues of Lorenzo, the Duke of Urbino; Giuliano, the Duke of Nemours; the four statues of the allegories of Day and Night, and Dawn and Dusk; and the group representing the Madonna and Child. see – https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/nudo-femminile/xgHfNWIKU6r13g?hl=it – retrieved March 6, 2025 and http://www.museumsinflorence.com/musei/Medici_chapels.html#:~:text=The%20project%20of%20building%20a,the%20Magnificent%20and%20his%20brother – retrieved March 6, 2025. Michelangelo, crucifix, 1493, wood, Santo Spirito, Florence. It was placed by the artist in 1493 above the lunette of the high altar and has been there since.
The Italian Renaissance artist was born in Florentine territory in Caprese in the provinces of Tuscany where his father was a government bureaucrat. The family soon relocated to Florence where Michaelangelo grew up. Becoming friends with Francesco Granacci (1469-1543) who saw Michaelangelo’s drawing talent, at 13 years old Michelangelo announced he wanted to be an artist. Despite his parents objection, they eventually yielded to their son’s aspirations, and he was apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448-1494) for the next three years.
Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448-1494), Expulsion of Joachim From the Temple, fresco (detail), 1486-1490. Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Tornabuoni, Florence. In the background, the mitered high priest receives sacrificial lambs at the altar where a fire burns. Joachim, according to sacred tradition, father of the Virgin Mary and grandfather of Jesus Christ, is sent away at this time since he is childless. He is married to Anne. To the right Ghirlandaio depicts an assembled group of contemporary Florentines including, second from right, Ghirlandaio himself. In 2nd century apocryphal writings, childless Joachim left for the desert where he prayed and fasted for 40 days. Angels appeared to Joachim and his wife Anne, and promised them a child. Joachim then returned to Jerusalem and embraced Anne at the city gate, a scene popularly depicted in medieval and Renaissance art. After this, Anne became pregnant and became the mother of the Virgin Mary and Jesus’s grandmother. This apocryphal relating of Joachim and Anne to Biblical figures Elizabeth and Zechariah and the birth of their son, John the Baptist (Luke 1) and Abraham and Sarah and the birth of their son, Isaac (Genesis 21) was a popular subject depicted in Christian art until the Council of Trent (1545–1563) when the church restricted public displays of these simple stories and events from apocryphal sources in a severe reaction to the Protestant reformation.
Michelangelo’s training was erratic, likely having left Ghirlandaio before his contract was complete, and working under the city’s ruler, Lorenzo de Medici for his contracted master, Bertoldo (1420-1491). Later in life Michelangelo did not advertise his training credentials as he believed art – such as freeing subjects from stone – emerged by the sheer artistic power of the individual. In this period, as a teenager, Michelangelo learned the art of fresco painting and drawing, copying previous masters such as Giotto (1267-1337) and Masaccio (1401-1428). Michelangelo absorbed the artwork of the naturalists, such as Paolo Uccello (1397-1475), whose artwork looked to present subjects with a viewpoint like a scientist interested in objective fact rather than looking to convey some established figural attitude. Where young Michelangelo was materially as great as Giotto and Masaccio, he also possessed a new means undreamt by those previous masters, as he drunk of the art of Donatello (1386-1466), Pollaiuolo (1429-1498), Verrocchio (c.1435-1488) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Further, Michelangelo understood better than these others, that the epitome of these Renaissance artistic studies was to be expressed by one subject above all: the human nude.
Bernard Berenson described Michelangelo as “the pupil of nobody, the heir of everybody, who felt profoundly and powerfully what to his precursors had been vague instinct, who saw and expressed the meaning of it all.”
Giotto, The Arrest of Christ (Kiss of Judas ), 1304, Padua, Scrovegni Chapel.
The Arena, or Scrovegni Chapel, was commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni in 1303. A nobleman of Padua, Enrico dedicated the chapel as an act of atonement for the sins of his father, Reginaldo, a moneylender whom Dante placed among the damned in the Inferno. The exterior of the chapel is austere, but its interior is filled with Giotto’s frescoes, completed by the time of the chapel’s dedication in late March 1305, with remaining work finished by March 1306. By this point, Giotto—then in his late thirties—was already a mature master, and in this cycle he transformed the course of Italian painting.
What had appeared as youthful brittleness and restlessness in his frescoes at Assisi in the late 1290s—works that had secured his fame and led to the Padua commission—has here developed into a fully realized visual language of narrative concision, solemnity, and decisive, almost fatalistic, plastic form. Although the subjects of the Life of the Virgin, the Life and Passion of Christ, and the Last Judgment draw upon a venerable medieval tradition, Giotto renders them with a striking immediacy. Human emotion, individualized gesture, and the presence of everyday life infuse the sacred narratives with a naturalism that conveys profound dignity and emotional gravity rather than rhetorical flourish.
The dramatic center of the Betrayal fresco is the confrontation between Christ and Judas. Once Christ accepts His fate in the agony of the garden, the world wastes no time in presenting Him with the cross He has embraced. One of His own apostles—an unsettling reminder of the failures of religious leaders across the ages—betrays Him with a kiss. Christ’s body nearly disappears beneath Judas’s enveloping cloak, yet His classical profile remains visible, fixed in a calm, penetrating gaze upon His betrayer. Judas’s pursed lips embody the chilling intimacy of treachery. As John 13 recounts, the devil—whether through possession or the alignment of Judas’s will with Satan’s designs—provides the impetus for the betrayal.
Giotto had previously depicted Judas as youthful and handsome, but here the apostle’s features bear the accumulated marks of moral decay. At the left, Peter lashes out at Malchus, the high priest’s servant, severing his ear; at the right, the high priest himself gestures toward the betrayal, yet his posture suggests a momentary hesitation before the full enormity of the act. Through these figures, Giotto constructs a scene of moral and emotional complexity, capturing the decisive moment when divine purpose and fallen humanity collide.
Michelangelo after Giotto, Drawing from “Ascension of the Evangelist,” 1490-1492. Louvre. see – https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl020001224 – retrieved March 6, 2025. Paolo Uccello, Sacrifice of Noah And Noah’s Drunkenness (detail), 1447-48. Uccello was not interested primarily in conveying in art the possible “artistic” intention of this story’s scene. Instead, as Bernard Berenson described it, the artist produced “nothing but the scientific intention to find out how a man swooping down head-foremost would have looked if at a given instant of his fall he had been suddenly congealed and suspended in space.” These studies of reproducing objects as they really are, in anatomy and perspective, had a great bearing for the art of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. quoted in Berenson, p.54.Masaccio, Distribution of Alms and Death of Ananias (detail), 1425-1427, Brancacci Chapel, Florence. An episode from Acts of the Apostles (4:43-37 and 5: 1-11) depicting Ananias’s wife and child whose husband withheld their tithe from the early church leaders with the outcome being that Ananias dropped dead in divine retribution. When it was painted, viewers in the 1420’s and afterwards, read it as an artistic display of a New Testament endorsement of the equitable redistribution of wealth and the divine punishment of death forthwith for those who falsely withheld their fair share. 67% 7.95mb
When the Medici fell and Florence became a theocracy under Savonarola (1452-1498), 19-year-old Michelangelo decided to leave Florence. He lamented the fall of Lorenzo the Magnificent, his artistic patron, and the young artist lived hand to mouth going to Bologna, then to Venice, and back to Bologna, and finally to Rome in June 1496. The popes’ tremendous influence in capitalist Italy started in the 13th century and augmented into the 17th century, leading to what art critic Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) called an encroachment of “soulless Vaticanism” towards modern art. But clearly Rome had no use for a firebrand friar who refused to support the pope’s troops against the invading French army. As Columbus set out to discover America, It was the unpleasant chapter of the Italian War of the 1490s that helped fill the times with ongoing brutality, duplicity, complicity, intrigue, opportunism and expedience. A looming danger of looting and violence of the invading French army were emphasized by the impassioned sermons of Girolamo Savonarola that frightened the people and led to their heightened resentment against the ruling Medici. Florence was traditionally pro-French, but Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici (“Piero the Unfortunate”) (1472-1504), son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, had deployed against them to defend Naples. Under pressure from citizens and outside French forces promising church reforms and civic transparency, the Medici was forced to flee and the city was proclaimed a Republic. The Florentines, with Savonarola in the lead, facilitated the invasion of French king Charles VIII (1470-1498) and against the pope which they considered corrupt. Pope Alexander VI (1431-1503), a Borgia and one of the most corrupt popes in history, ascended to the papal throne in 1492 and was immediately condemned in fiery sermons by Savonarola. Yet all was not well between “liberator” Charles VIII and his Florentine supporters. Immediately the French king demanded a huge sum of money, a ransom payment of sorts, from the Florentines in appreciation, as well as to pay for, the pro-French liberation. The Florentine government refused and the king threatened to loot the city. Faced with a backlash and real threat of popular revolt, the French bully relented and continued onto Rome. Charles postured, but was constantly fearful of antagonizing the European powers and announced his decision that he would not depose the corrupt old pope after all. By having kidnapped the pope’s mistress Giulia Farnese, wife of the pope’s military ally Orsino Orsini, who commanded 4,000 Neapolitan soldiers freshly landed to defend papal interests on the peninsula, Charles VIII was able to extract full entry into Rome in exchange for her release. Once in Rome the French troops looted the city. The pope, in a panic, arranged a quick safe passage for Charles VIII out of the Papal States towards Naples during which the king’s army massacred many hundreds of local inhabitants.
Charles VIII, roi de France, anonymous, c. 1550. Entering Florence in a power vacuum the invading French king demanded a huge sum of money from the citizens who refused to pay and leading to a stand-off. Public Domain. Domenico Ghirlandaio’s 15th century portrait of Piero the Unfortunate. Eldest son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medicisucceeded him as ruler of Florence in 1492. When Piero determined in 1494 to stay neutral during French king Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy, effectively defending Naples the object of the king’s campaign, he was challenged. Suffering from an abandonment of the Florentine elite under the spell of Savonarola, Piero totally capitulated to Charles VIIi’s demands. Having succeeded in alienatating everyone in Florence, Piero fled to Venice, aided by a French diplomat, in November 1494. Attempting to make a comeback several times to Florence he was constantly rebuked, Piero drowned in the Garigliano River while attempting to flee the aftermath of the Battle of Garigliano in 1503, Public Domain.Pope Alexander VI Borgia, c.1495, attributed to Spanish painter Pedro Berruguete (c. 1450-1504), Vatican Museums. Alexander Vi was a wily politician from a prominent family who practiced nepotism and sired several children by way of his many mistresses.
Savonarola played an important role in this French infiltration in Italy — and Rome did not forget. Then, in February 1497, during Mardi Gras of that year, Savonarola, whose message was a combination of religious purist and civic republican preached his most dramatic act of cultural desecration by seeking that artworks, books, clothing items and cosmetics were thrown into a bonfire of the vanities as a sign of monied and other social decadence. The flames became his final undoing: Savonarola was excommunicated for heresy and sedition by Pope Alexander VI on May 12, 1497 after the preacher called “the contemporary Church leadership…a pockmarked whore sitting on Solomon’s throne.” The pope also threatened Florence with severe interdictions if they continued to be a sanctuary for Savonarola and his ilk. Savonarola was imprisoned on April 7, 1498 after failing a literal public trial by fire (it rained). Finally, he was dragged from his prison cell and with two other contemptible friars was condemned as a heretic and schismatic and hanged and burned at the stake on May 23, 1498, with the Vatican and the Medici observing it all from a safe distance. Yet the cult of Savonarola, his person as well as his political and religious ideas, did not go quietly up in smoke. Though seen today as a sort of vile figure, his supporters around 1500 and afterwards saw him as a martyr and encouraged his veneration as a saint to which many complied. In Florence Savonarola’s disputed legacy went on until the Medici more or less permanently re-installed themselves in 1530. Yet Protestant reformers in Germany and Switzerland were intrigued and influenced by Savonarola’s ideas and, in 1558, even Pope Paul IV, who was 22 years old when Savonarola was executed, declared him not a heretic and always in communion with the Catholic Church. Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595), a Florentine established in Rome, and regularly characterized as a most relatable prelate of and for the masses, also defended Savonarola’s memory.
Francesco Rosselli (1445-1513), The Execution of Savonarola and Two Companions at Piazza della Signoria, 16th century, oil on canvas, Galeria CorsiniBernard Berenson as a young man, Berenson described Michelangelo as “the pupil of nobody, the heir of everybody, who felt profoundly and powerfully what to his precursors had been vague instinct, who saw and expressed the meaning of it all.” quoted in Berenson p. 72. Public Domain. “Donatello – David – Florença” by original file by Patrick A. Rodgers is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Verrocchio, Equestrian Statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, 1480s, Venice. Bartolomeo Colleoni (1400-1475) was an Italian condottiero, who became captain-general of the Republic of Venice. Colleoni gained a reputation as the foremost tactician and disciplinarian of the 15th century. “Bartolomeo Colleoni by Andrea del Verrocchio” by Didier Descouens is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Nude Dancers, 1470s, Fresco Arcetri, Villa La Gallina. A fresco frieze of dancing nude figures, in a villa near Florence, shows the artist’s same interest in extreme body poses. Public Domain.
Meanwhile, in Rome, Michelangelo sculpted his first major marble works. The first, Bacchus, was commissioned by Cardinal Raffaele Riario (1461-1521) in partnership with Jacopo Galli, a Roman collector, that was displayed in Galli’s garden until it was sold in 1572 to the Medici and is today in the Bargello. The second is the sublime Pietà (St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City) that was commissioned by a French cardinal in Rome and placed in the Santa Maria della Febbre. Vasari described the Pietà as “a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture.” Though the Pietà made Michelangelo famous in Rome, he returned to Florence following its installation to work on the David, a commission made by the Florentine republic after the expulsion of the Medici.
Michelangelo, Bacchus, marble. 1497, Bargello, Florence.Michelangelo, Pietà, marble, 1498-1499, St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. A 24-year-old Michelangelo was all the rage in Rome as an artist in the late 1490’s and wrote his name promonently across the sash of the Blessed Mother. The artist did this after it was completed and heard a group admiring the artwork and attributing it to a different artist. Michelangelo was having none of it and one night whet into the chapel and chiseled his name for none to miss seeing. “Pieta (Michelangelo)” by elixirk is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence, Italy, May 1983. Author’s collection.
Michelangelo’s David, created in c. 1501-1504, has been in the Galleria dell’Accademia since 1873, The biblical figure of David came to symbolize the defense of civil liberties embodied in the 1494 constitution of the Republic of Florence, an independent city-state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states and by the political aspirations of the Medici family.
This explanatory article may be periodically updated.
SOURCES:
Bernard Berenson, The Italian Painters of the Renaissance, Phaidon, New York, 1959.
Ornella Casazza, Masaccio and the Brancacci Chapel, Scala, 1990.
Enzo Carli, translated by Susan Bellamy, Giotto and His Contemporaries, Crown Publishers, 1958.
Andreas Quermann, Ghirlandaio, Könemann, 1998.
A Dictionary of Art and Artists, Peter and Linda Murray, Penguin Books; Revised,1998.
Giorgio Vasari, trans. George Bull, Lives of the Artists, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1965.
Feature image: The site of the Wilson family home in Hawthorne, California, where Brian Wilson composed Don’t Worry Baby with lyrics by Roger Christian (a DJ at KFWB in L.A.) ver the course of a couple days in late 1963 or early 1964. The family home where Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson grew up with their parents Murray and Audree Wilson is where they honed their musical skills and formed the Beach Boys with cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine in 1961. The house along with much of the neighborhood was lost to development (a new highway) in the 1980’s. Thoogh the Beach Boys had the no. 1 single of 1963 (Surfin’ U.S.A.) they had to rethink the direction of their music literally overnight following the Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. The broadcast drew an estimated 73 million viewers, around 60% of all television sets in the nation, and ushered in the British Invasion that changed rock and roll and the recording industry with it forever. PHOTO: “Beach Boys Landmark – Plano general I” by tkksummers is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Beach Boys in 1963. Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, David Marks, Mike Love. Since spring of 1963 they had 3 top-5 hits (and two more top-10 hits). “Surfin’ U.S.A.” peaked at no. 3 in May 1963 and became Billboard’s no.1 song for the year. “Little Saint Nick” released in December 1963 peaked at no. 3 on the Billboard Christmas Singles chart. It was in this time period that Brian Wilson with Roger Christian wrote “Don’t Worry Baby,” one of the Beach Boys’ finest songs pre-British Invasion about a guy who agrees to drag race but regrets it and, confiding his situation to his girlfriend, is tenderly consoled by her with the song’s title phrase. Public Domain. This is a publicity still taken and publicly distributed to promote the subject or a work relating to the subject. As stated by film production expert Eve Light Honathaner in The Complete Film Production Handbook (Focal Press, 2001, p. 211.): “Publicity photos (star headshots) have traditionally not been copyrighted. Since they are disseminated to the public, they are generally considered public domain, and therefore clearance by the studio that produced them is not necessary.” Nancy Wolff, in The Professional Photographer’s Legal Handbook (Allworth Communications, 2007, p. 55.), notes: “There is a vast body of photographs, including but not limited to publicity stills, that have no notice as to who may have created them.” Film industry author Gerald Mast, in Film Study and the Copyright Law (1989, p. 87), writes: “According to the old copyright act, such production stills were not automatically copyrighted as part of the film and required separate copyrights as photographic stills. The new copyright act similarly excludes the production still from automatic copyright but gives the film’s copyright owner a five-year period in which to copyright the stills. Most studios have never bothered to copyright these stills because they were happy to see them pass into the public domain, to be used by as many people in as many publications as possible.” Kristin Thompson, committee chairperson of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies writes in the conclusion of a 1993 conference of cinema scholars and editors[1], that: “[The conference] expressed the opinion that it is not necessary for authors to request permission to reproduce frame enlargements… [and] some trade presses that publish educational and scholarly film books also take the position that permission is not necessary for reproducing frame enlargements and publicity photographs.”
Brian Wilson’s first car was a light burgundy Mercury. It was passed down from his mother and Wilson called it “the Merc.” He failed his first driver’s test and got a reputation for being a bad driver because he was constantly distracted thinking about other things. His father tutored him behind the wheel and Brian started to get the hang of driving when he compared the car’s controls to playing a musical instrument. As the comparison dawned on him, it developed: like a musical instrument a driver had to play the car just right – not to hard or fast – so to get the results desired. But the comparison was also limited: Brian realized you could do a lot more unique things playing a musical instrument than driving a car. After he passed his driving test the second time, he drove “the Merc” for a year until he acquired a used 1957 Ford Fairlane. For Hawthorne, Brian knew it was a great car but he saw there were greater cars driven by other guys. He loved his used ’57 Ford and it was when he was in it that he first heard the Beach Boys’ first single, Surfin‘, playing on the radio in 1962. Brian said he revved and raced his Ford fast – but nobody believed it. (i am Brian Wilson a memoir, pp. 115-116).
At an August 1961 audition with Hite Morgan, a L.A. music publisher, Dennis Wilson said that Brian was working on a song about surfing. The truth was that no song existed. But the music publisher was intrigued and told the soon-to-be Beach Boys to come back when they had their new surfing song ready. “Surfin'” was recorded in October 1961 with Mike Love doing lead vocals, Brian on percussion/vocals, Carl Wilson on guitar/vocals, Al Jardine on acoustic bass/vocals and Dennis Wilson doing vocals. It was released in November 1961 on the independent label Candix. Though it peaked at no.75 on the Billboard Hot 100, its lyric which included the line”Surfin’ is the only life, the only way for me” capitivated listeners and was unique on the radio in late 1961. (Beach Boys FAQ, pp.25-26)
LYRICS Surfin’ is the only life, the only way for me Now surf Surf with me I got up this mornin’, turned on my radio (Ooh, surfin’) I was checkin’ out the surfin’ scene to see if I would go (Ooh, surfin’) And when the DJ tells me that the surfin’ is fine (Ooh, surfin’) That’s when I know my baby and I will have a good time We’re goin’ surfin’, surfin’ Surfin’, surfin’, surfin’ Surfin’, surfin’, surfin’ Surfin’ is the only life, the only way for me Now surf Surf with me From the early mornin’ to the middle of the night (Ooh, surfin’) Any time the surf is up, the time is right (Ooh, surfin’) And when the surf is down to take its place (Ooh, surfin’) We’ll do the Surfer’s Stomp, it’s the latest dance craze We’re goin’ surfin’, surfin’ Surfin’, surfin’, surfin’ Surfin’, surfin’, surfin’ Surfin’ is the only life, the only way for me Now surf Surf with me Now the dawn is breaking and we really gotta go (Ooh, surfin’) But we’ll be back here very soon, that you better know (Ooh, surfin’) Yeah, my surfer knots are rising and my board is losing wax (Ooh, surfin’) But that won’t stop me, baby, ’cause you know I’m comin’ back We’re goin’ surfin’, surfin’ Surfin’, surfin’, surfin’ Surfin’, surfin’, surfin’ Surfin’ is the only life, the only way for me Now come on, pretty baby and surf with me, yeah
Brian Wilson soon associated girls and cars. He was also beginning to understand the association of music and emotions after he heard Be My Baby by The Ronettes on the radio. Brian was also impressed by how simple vocal gestures, such as was achieved by Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick, could get maximum mileage from a listener’s reaction. (i am Brian Wilson a memoir, pp. 172).
In 1963 Brian Wilson offered Don’t Worry Baby to girl-group The Ronettes after the 21-year-old Wilson had become obsessed with their Be My Baby – a no. 1 hit (Cash Box) in August 1963. But they declined it and the Beach Boys produced it for themselves instead. It became one of the Beach Boys’s classics of the period. Wilson wrote Don’t Worry Baby as a response to Be My Baby and both songs have an affinity in pacing, structure, melodic lilt, and subject matter. Wilson wrote Don’t Worry Baby with lyrics by then-collaborator Roger Christian (1934-1991), a DJ at KFWB in L.A., over the course of a couple days at the Wilson family home in Hawthorne, California. It is ostensibly about a guy’s race car and his caring girlfriend, of which Wilson observed later: “It was a very simple and beautiful song. It’s a really heart and soul song, I really did feel that in my heart.” see – https://americansongwriter.com/brian-wilson-gods-messenger/4/ – retrieved February 24, 2025.
LYRICS Well, its been building up inside of me For, oh, I don’t know how long I don’t know why, but I keep thinking Something’s bound to go wrong But she looks in my eyes And makes me realize And she says (now don’t) (don’t worry, baby) Don’t worry, baby (don’t you worry) (don’t worry, baby) Everything will turn out alright (now don’t) (don’t worry, baby) Don’t worry, baby (don’t you worry) (don’t worry, baby) I guess I should’ve kept my mouth shut When I started to brag about my car But I can’t back down now, because I pushed the other guys too far She makes me come alive And makes me wanna drive When she says (now don’t) (don’t worry, baby) Don’t worry, baby (don’t you worry) (don’t worry, baby) Everything will turn out alright (now don’t) (don’t worry, baby) Don’t worry baby (don’t you worry) (don’t worry, baby) She told me, “Baby, when you race today Just take along my love with you And if you knew how much I loved you Baby, nothing could go wrong with you” Oh, what she does to me When she makes love to me And she says (now don’t) (don’t worry, baby) Don’t worry, baby (don’t you worry) (don’t worry, baby) Everything will turn out alright (now don’t) (don’t worry, baby) Don’t worry, baby (don’t you worry) (don’t worry, baby) Everything will turn out alright (now don’t) (don’t worry, baby) Don’t worry, baby (don’t you worry) (don’t worry, baby)
Feature Image: The Beach Boys in 1964; clockwise from left: Al Jardine, Mike Love, Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson. Trade ad for The Beach Boys’s single “California Girls”/”Let Him Run Wild.” Public Domain. Permission details The ad appeared in the 11 September 1965 issue of Billboard and can be dated from that publication; it is pre-1978. There are no copyright markings as can be seen at the full view link. The ad is not covered by any copyrights for Billboard. US Copyright Office page 3-magazines are collective works (PDF) “A notice for the collective work will not serve as the notice for advertisements inserted on behalf of persons other than the copyright owner of the collective work. These advertisements should each bear a separate notice in the name of the copyright owner of the advertisement.”
Don’t Worry Baby was one of Brian Wilson’s strongest lead vocals countered by Mike Love singing bass, and Al Jardine, and Dennis and Carl Wilson singing back up. It was one of the last songs recorded before the Beatles’ appearances on Ed Sullivan that changed rock music’s trajectory. After the Beach Boys’ Surfin’ U.S.A. was ranked Billboard’s no.1 song of 1963 (Be My Baby was no. 35), Don’t Worry Baby was the second track and likely best song on Shut Down Volume 2, promoted as a “hot rod” album and released in February 1964 that rose to no.13 on the Billboard 200 and was certified Gold. It turned out that it was the final Beach Boys’ album exploring the dark and light of the California sound before the British invasion that shook things up fundamentally. Through the demise of their car and surfer music hastened by the Beatles – it can’t be known for sure what might have happened otherwise – Brian Wilson understood that a gauntlet for musical supremacy was thrown down to which he must respond. At first Wilson thought about quitting for he was so disappointed that what they had been working on and striving for since 1961 was eclipsed overnight. After Fun, Fun, Fun peaked at no. 5 in March 1964, I Get Around was released in May 1964 with Don’t Worry Baby on the B-side. I Get Around became the no. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in July 1964 while Don’t Worry Baby charted on its own at no.24.
With the Beatles in mind Brian Wilson set to work on new material, this time integrating older musical sources into something new, as well as being more open than ever before to experimenting with arrangements and instrumentation so to achieve a new sound. Wilson worked to reinvent the Beach Boys just as he had been succeeding in inventing them. By the end of 1964 it was the Beatles that secured not just the top spot on Billboard’s year-end singles (I Want To Hold Your Hand) but the second spot as well (She Loves You) though the Beach Boys were still in the top 5 with I Get Around.
This cover by Foxes and Fossils is a good one of the Beach Boys’ 1964 top-40 hit “Don’t Worry Baby.” The song has been covered many times through the years and Brian Wilson would probably like this cover since his song was originally inspired by, and intended for, a girl group. But also because the Beach Boys were always thrilled when a new generation was introduced to their music and embraced it as their own.
SOURCES:
The Beach Boys: America’s Band, Johnny Morgan, Union Square & Co.; Illustrated edition, 2015, p. 67.
Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy, Penguin Publishing Group, Mike Love, 2016, pp. 64-65, 96-97, and 248.
The Beach Boys FAQ, All That’s Left to Know about America’s Band, Jon Stebbins, Backbeat Books, 2011, pp. 8 and 49.
The Beach Boys: The Definitive Diary of America’s Greatest Band on Stage and in the Studio, Keith Badman, Backbeat Books; First Edition, 2004., p. 53.
Brian Wilson with Ben Greenman, Da Capo Press, Boston, Massachusetts. pp. 115-116
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a nearly 40-day battle campaign fought by the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy against the Japanese Imperial Army on the island of Iwo Jima in the Pacific. With 110,000 total battle personnel (over 70,000 troops), the American objective of their invasion (called “Operation Detachment”) was to capture the island and its airfields. Iwo Jima was situated between Japan and the American bomber bases in the Mariana Islands. Since summer 1944 unescorted American B-29 bombers were flying nearly 3000 miles roundtrip to bomb Japan and being lost at sea from entrenched Japanese defenses. With Iwo Jima in American hands U.S. fighter planes could escort the long-range bombers as well as have any damaged aircraft find sanctuary on the island. The American victory after a five week campaign resulted in the capture of Iwo Jima with its immediate benefit that, by war’s end, 2,400 B-29s were able to make safe forced landings on the island.
There were 20,000 or so heavily-fortified Japanese defending the island to the death while U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aircrews had complete air superiority. The U.S. Navy provided heavy artillery gunfire support from the sea. The Battle of Iwo Jima, an American victory, took place from February 19 to March 26, 1945, and was one of the fiercest of World War II. That Americans could take the island was not the question. Its exact cost was. The casualty toll was heavy for both sides. The Japanese had 216 taken prisoner and up to 18,375 killed or missing in action. The American combat toll was also staggering: 6,821 killed in action, 19,217 wounded, and 2,648 experiencing battle trauma.
Joe Rosenthal (1911-2006), with his camera hanging at his side, surveys the landing beaches at Iwo Jima on March 7, 1945. Rosenthal was awarded the U.S. Navy Distinguished Public Service Award, as well as the Marine Corps Distinguished Public Service Award by the Marine Corps, for his war photography. Photo by AP/U.S. Marine Corps. Public Domain.
On Friday, February 23, 1945, Rosenthal landed on the island and heard that they were going to raise a flag on the highest point on the island which was the old volcano at the southwest end called Mount Suribachi. Rosenthal carried a Speed Graphic camera that was press standard issue and joined other photographers ready to ascend to the top. Halfway up they met a marine photographer coming down whose camera was obliterated by an enemy grenade explosion. Rosenthal and the others were told that the marines had already raised the flag. But the views were good from the summit anyway and still worth the climb. Once at the top Rosenthal and the rest saw marines who were working to affix a larger flag to a pipe under orders from a captain who wanted to replace it for the earlier smaller flag just raised. When the six marines started to raise that second larger flag on the heavy pole Rosenthal pushed his camera’s shutter. After taking the flag-raising photo, Rosenthal made his way back down Mount Suribachi to the shoreline. There, he took a transport boat out to the command ship, where he wrote captions for his photos and sent them, sight unseen, with the undeveloped film by seaplane to Guam.
“I took the picture. But the Marines took Iwo Jima.”
In February 1945 Joe Rosenthal was a 33-year-old American photographer for the AP. Rosenthal’s poor eyesight prevented him from fighting in combat though his task as an embedded photographer placed him in Harm’s Way. Before Iwo Jima, Joe Rosenthal had landed with the marines on Guam and Peleliu. His Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima became a sign of hope for a war-weary American home front that victory in the Pacific would be theirs. It also became the iconic symbol of everything U.S. Marines. Rosenthal was very proud of his photograph of the six marines and the Marines overall, though modest about any accolades that came his way. Rosenthal put his role in perspective, saying: “I took the picture. But the Marines took Iwo Jima.” Yet it is not to be forgotten that Rosenthal was exposing himself to the same dangers as the six marines that day when he took his iconic photograph for history of the flag raising on Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945.
Original photograph by Joe Rosenthal, February 23, 1945. Public Domain.
Iwo Jima Flag Raising 1945 – Rare Color Film by Sgt Genaust [#Upscaled#1080p#60FPS#ww2]. Three feet to Joe Rosenthal’s right, Sgt. Genaust captured the flag-raising from nearly the same angle using color motion picture film.
Unveiled in November 1954, the Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington, D.C. was dedicated to all Marines who have given their lives in the defense of the U.S. since 1775. see – https://www.nps.gov/gwmp/learn/historyculture/usmcwarmemorial.htm – retrieved February 19, 2025. Author’s photograph, October 2003.
US Marine Corps War Memorial, Washington, D.C. The centerpiece of the memorial is a colossal sculpture group by Felix Weihs de Weldon (1907-2003), then on duty with the U.S. Navy, depicting the six Marines who raised the second larger U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945. The memorial was designed by Horace Whittier Peaslee, Jr. (1884-1959) and dedicated in November 1954 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.Author’s photograph, October 2003.
US Marine Corps War Memorial, Washington, D.C., was based on the iconic AP photograph by Joe Rosenthal taken on February 23, 1945 of the raising of the U.S. flag at the top of Mount Suribachi at the start of the Battle of Iwo Jima (February 19- March 26, 1945). Rosenthal’s photograph was flashed around the world for the first time on Sunday, February 25, 1945, and instantly became a symbol of the American war effort in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. The Marine Corps War Memorial Foundation organized the fundraising and creation of the monument. The complete cost of the memorial was $850,000 (about $10 million in 2025). The 32-foot-high bronze figures are erecting a 60-foot flag pole onto Mount Suribachi. Important dates in the history of the Marine Corps are burnished in gold into the Swedish marble base.The six marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima have all been identified and include a sergeant, 2 corporals, and 3 privates first class. Unveiled in November 1954, the Marine Corps War Memorial was dedicated to all Marines who have given their lives in the defense of the U.S. since 1775.Author’s photograph, October 2003.
Flags of Our Fathers (2006) is an American war film about the Battle of Iwo Jima (February 19 – March 26, 1945) and its aftermath. The film was directed and co-produced by Clint Eastwood (who also composed the film’s score) and released with his smaller companion film Letters from Iwo Jima about the same battle from the Japanese viewpoint. Distributed by Paramount Pictures (U.S.) and Warner Bros. Pictures internationally, the films basically broke even at the box office as each received favorable critical reviews. Flags of Our Fathers is based on a 2000 book of the same name by James Bradley (with Ron Powers) about Bradley’s Navy corpsman father, John, and the five U.S. Marines who raised the flag at the top of Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945 and that was made world famous by Joe Rosenthal’s AP photograph. (In 2016 the U.S. Marines announced that Bradley and others originally believed to be in the photograph, in fact, were not). In addition to its fierce battle depictions, Flags of Our Fathers dramatizes the ups and downs of the home front. Though three of the marines in the photograph – a private, corporal and the sergeant – had been killed in action less than a week after the iconic photograph, the photograph’s surviving marines became celebrities who returned stateside to participate in a war bond selling tour. With World War II ending in Europe, the Iwo Jima marines and their photograph came to symbolize American heroism and resolve for victory in the Pacific Theatre. Yet their uplifting mission also called for further individual sacrifice from these dedicated men.
Rosenthal told Collier’s magazine: “The sky was overcast, but just enough sunlight fell from almost directly overhead, because it happened to be about noon, to give the figures a sculptural depth. The 20-foot pipe was heavy, which meant the men had to strain to get it up, imparting that feeling of action. The wind just whipped the flag out over the heads of the group, and at their feet the disrupted terrain and the broken stalks of the shrubbery exemplified the turbulence of war.” Quoted in https://www.usfca.edu/magazine/december-2024/feature/man-behind-the-camera – retrieved Feb. 19, 2025. Wire services flashed Joe Rosenthal’s photograph around the world where it was published on the front pages of more than 200 newspapers on Sunday, February 25, 1945. The photo appeared on magazine covers across the country as well. Following the battle of Iwo Jima, the photo was used for publicity in war bond drives from May 11 to July 4, 1945, which raised an amazing $26.3 billion – by far the biggest haul of any of the seven U.S. war loan drives during World War II.. Rosenthal’s photograph became an enduring icon.
FEATURE Image: March 2016. Immanuel United Church of Christ, 1500 Old Church Road, Streamwood, Illinois. Built in 1868, it is the congregation’s second house of worship on the site and remains the congregation’s active sanctuary. 7.49mb _0979
IMMANUEL UCC in Streamwood, Illinois, has a unique history within the context of the similar histories of other early settlers in Northern Illinois beginning in the 1820’s. Though diverse settlement throughout this part of the state was feverish (Chicago incorporated as a city in 1837), the prairie landscape expanse remained sparsely populated into the 1830’s and 1840’s with its mixture of farms, industry, and trade. The Streamwood church and burial grounds were founded in 1852 when W.G. Hubbard donated its five acres of land for “the sole and exclusive use of erecting a house thereon for religious worship and a burying ground.”
It was a group of 13 farmers who organized the church and chose its name: Deutsche Vereingigte, Evangelische Lutherische Immanuael’s Germeinde. Apparently, as Illinois was the edge of the Western frontier, in those days there wasn’t anyone around, or very many, to enjoin them to state it in English. Of course, it translates as “United Evangelical Lutheran Immanuel Congregation.” Today, Streamwood is in Cook County and sits just on the other side of DuPage County to the south that broke off from Cook and was established in its own right in February 1839. The original relatively open site today is surrounded by tract housing and other modern development for as far as the eye can see or vehicle drives with Elgin about 9 miles to the west.
1851 map of Cook and Dupage Counties. Hanover is between Elgin and Schaumburg Townships. Public Domain.
Streamwood, incorporated in 1957, is one of three communities that comprise the so-called “Tri Village” area that includes Bartlett and Hanover Park. This part of Northern Illinois had served as a seasonal hunting and camping ground for the Cherokee, Miami, Potawatomi, and Ottawa Indians. In their turn, the land had been claimed by France, England, Spain, Virginia, and the Northwest Territory before it became part of the State of Illinois in 1818.
March 2016. The ImmanuelUCC church and burial ground were created in 1852 for German settlers in Hanover Township in today’s northwest DuPage/Cook Counties. Three U.S. Civil War veterans are buried here, including from the 127th Illinois Infantry; Volunteer 5th Calvary Illinois Regiment; and U.S. Calvary Co. H, 3rd Regiment. All three died and were buried in the cemetery decades after the war had ended. Author’s photograph.
While the church started out as Evangelical Lutheran, over time the congregation moved towards becoming part of the United Church of Christ. In 1959 the members changed its name to reflect that reality. The first church building that was completed in 1853 was replaced in 1868 and is the present one. Among other buildings added to the church complex, the same historic sanctuary remains this Chicago suburban congregation’s house of worship today.
March 2016. Landscape and grounds near ImmanuelUCC church in Streamwood. Hanover Township was an expansive area of farmland settled by mid-19th century German settlers to Illinois. Author’s photograph.
Sources:
DuPage Roots, Richard A. Thompson, editor, DuPage County Historical Society, 1985.
Bessie Coleman, the first licensed Black female aviator, was born on January 26, 1892, in Texas. Her father, who was American Indian, left the family for Oklahoma when she was seven. Bessie stayed in Texas with her mother while her older siblings moved away. In the deeply segregated America of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, racism shaped nearly every aspect of life. Even so, Bessie’s mother encouraged her to excel in school, where Bessie became an avid reader.
Education and Early Work
At 18, Bessie attended what is now Langston University for one semester but lacked the funds to continue. She returned home to work alongside her mother, who labored as a maid and sharecropper.
At 23, ambitious and restless, Bessie moved to Chicago to live with her brothers. She worked menial jobs — manicurist, restaurant server — but found the city’s atmosphere freer than the Jim Crow South.
A New Possibility: France
During World War I, her brothers served in France and returned with stories of a society where women and Black people were treated with more dignity than in the United States. They told her that in France, women even flew airplanes — a revelation that electrified her.
In America, flying was largely a pastime for wealthy white men. Still, Bessie applied to U.S. flight schools and was rejected everywhere.
Support from Robert Abbott
Enter Robert Abbott, the influential Black Chicago newspaper owner of the Chicago Defender. Impressed by her determination, he urged her to go to France to earn her license. The French accepted her application, and Bessie crossed the Atlantic to begin training.
Training in a Dangerous Era
Flying in the 1910s was perilous. Open cockpits had no seat belts, aircraft were fragile, and accidents were common. Despite the risks, Bessie excelled. She became the first Black and American Indian woman to earn a pilot’s license.
She returned to the United States determined to build a career — but she lacked money and access.
Barnstorming Dreams and Barriers
To earn enough to buy her own plane and inspire other women and people of color, Bessie sought work as a stunt pilot. But once again, American flight schools refused to train a Black woman, even one already licensed.
Her dream would require the same persistence that had carried her from Texas to Chicago to France — and back again.
Bessie Coleman’s photo on her first pilot’s license, issued June 15, 1921. Public Domain.
Returning to France for Advanced Training
Bessie returned to France to get the specialized aviation training she still couldn’t access in the United States. Her determination — and the barriers she faced — had not gone unnoticed back home. By the time she returned to America for the second time, now a licensed pilot and trained stunt performer, the press greeted her with mostly positive attention.
1922: A Breakthrough Year
It was 1922, and Bessie was ready to take off. Her longtime supporter Robert Abbott arranged her first major air show in New York City, which immediately set reporters buzzing. Back in Chicago, her adopted home, Bessie began performing in more and more air shows, each one building her reputation.
A Rising Star of the Air Shows
To be a stunt pilot required absolute fearlessness, and Bessie’s daring routines — her figure eights, her loop‑the‑loops — made her a sensation across the country. She wanted to maintain and eventually own her own plane, but she didn’t yet have the money. So she borrowed whatever aircraft she could, determined to keep flying and to keep proving what a Black woman pilot could do.
“Queen Bess” Takes the Roaring Twenties by Storm
While some women performed wing‑walking stunts, none piloted the plane and performed aerial maneuvers the way Bessie did. Her skill, charisma, and courage made her a cultural phenomenon. Americans began calling her “Queen Bess” and “Brave Bess,” names that captured her place in the imagination of the roaring 1920s.
Bessie Coleman and airplane, 1922. Public Domain.
Aviation as Activism
As she was determined to do so, Bessie Coleman was making a difference in the nation. Of all these remarkable things in the air Bessie was known for, none was more significant than what she also achieved on the ground. Bessie Coleman told show promoters and managers that she would not perform at any show whose audience or performers were segregated by race or anything else. “Brave Bess” insisted that for all shows she performed in, there had to be just one gate for all people to walk through. At the time this was a profoundly radical request, particularly south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Speaking, Teaching, and Inspiring
Beyond stunt flying, Bessie lectured at schools and churches, urging young people — especially Black children — to pursue aviation. She saw flight not only as a career but as a path to dignity, opportunity, and pride.
Setbacks and Recovery
Still hoping to buy her own airplane, Bessie finally purchased one in 1923. But during a test flight, she crashed, breaking her leg and several ribs. She spent a year recovering in Chicago, grounded but not defeated.
A Return to the Skies
By 1926, Bessie was ready to fly again. She had no funds for a new aircraft, but a wealthy businessman donated a used plane. It was far from ideal — rickety, temperamental — and she hired a mechanic, William Wills, to get it into working shape.
Wills flew the plane from Texas to Florida for her next show, but along the way he had to make several emergency landings as the engine repeatedly failed. After repairs in Florida, he and Bessie took the plane up for a test flight on April 30, 1926, the day before the show.
The Fatal Flight
They tested the plane as Bessie hunted for locations for her stunts. During the practice run, Bessie leaned out of the open cockpit — without a seatbelt, standard for stunt pilots — to scout locations for her aerial maneuvers. Something went wrong mechanically. The plane lurched, and Bessie fell to her death. Moments later, the aircraft crashed, killing Wills as well. Bessie was 34. Wills was 24.
A Nation Mourns
By the time of her third memorial service in Chicago, more than 20,000 people had paid their respects. At the Chicago service alone, 15,000 mourners gathered as journalist Ida B. Wells read an essay honoring Bessie’s courage and legacy. Bessie Coleman was laid to rest at Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, among many of Chicago’s Black notables.
A Legacy That Took Flight
In 1929, Black engineer and aviator William J. Powell founded the Bessie Coleman Aero Club in Los Angeles, training Black men and women to fly. By the 1930s, groups of Black female stunt pilots — including the Blackbirds — carried her inspiration into the sky.
In 1940, Bessie’s early champion, millionaire newspaper publisher Robert Abbott, was also buried in Lincoln Cemetery, not far from the woman whose dreams he helped launch.
Bessie Coleman, first Black and American Indian licensed aviator, two days before her 31st birthday, January 24, 1923. Public Domain.
SOURCES:
Bessie Coleman Bold Pilot Who Gave Women Wings, Martha London, 2021, Capstone Press, North Mankato, MN.
FEATURE Image: May 2024. 143 First Street, c. 1863. 7.52 mb_6360. Since the 19th century Batavia, Illinois, 40 miles west of Chicago, was a railroad and manufacturing center in addition to its farmsteads. This mid-19th century limestone factory building is testament to Batavia’s industrial heritage. After the U.S. Civil War, Batavia was a major manufacturer of Conestoga wagons used in the country’s westward expansion.
Text & Photographs John P. Walsh.
May 2024. 143 First Street, c. 1863. 7.52 mb_6360. The square shaped south façade’s stone cut is more grandiose than the longer west side indicating that it is the front face of the building. The tower at the north end likely held the building’s water tank and added more room and height for pulleys and other equipment.May 2024. Batavia is one of the towns along the Fox River settled in the 1830’s between Geneva and St. Charles to the north and larger Aurora to the south. 95% 7.75 mb DSC_6350.July 2016. Fermilab is to the east and adjacent to Batavia. Since 1969 it has housed a herd of bison when Fermilab’s first director, Robert Wilson, established the herd as a symbol of the history of the Midwestern prairie and the laboratory’s pioneering research at the frontiers of particle physics. Each spring new calves are born signaling the herd’s rejuvenation. 4.70mb _0577 see – https://www.fnal.gov/pub/about/bisoncam/ – retrieved 1.24.25.May 2024. Campana Sales Company Factory, Batavia, Illinois, East Elevation, 1936-1937. The Campana Factory was built in the International Style to manufacture cosmetics for The Campana Company. At the time Campana’s “Italian Balm,” heavily promoted on the radio, was the nation’s best-selling hand lotion. The building was designed by Frank D. Chase & Company (founded in 1913) with Childs and Smith in Chicago. Frank David Chase (1877-1937) built newspaper plants in St. Louis, Milwaukee and Oklahoma City and a number of important buildings in Chicago including hospitals and office buildings. The central tower reflects the 19th-century heritage of Batavia’s limestone factories. The one story wings on the extremity of the building were added in the late 1940’s. The factory was purchased by the laundry detergent brand Purex who later closed Campana operations in 1982. 77% 7.72mb _6437.https://www.artic.edu/artworks/102112/campana-sales-company-factory-batavia-illinois-east-elevation – retrieved January 22, 2025.https://www.artic.edu/artworks/102113/campana-sales-company-factory-batavia-illinois-landscape-perspective – retrieved January 22, 2025.May 2024. At the bottom of the tower of Campana Sales Company Factory the main entrance is stainless steel set into black polished marble. 7.48mb _6446.May 2024. The Congregational Church, 21 S. Batavia Avenue, 1856. 89% 7.73mb _6372. The locally quarried limestone central section dates to September 1856. The church displays the eclecticism of New England Colonial and Classical styles. Though the building’s classical detailing of capitals and pilasters is mostly missing, the precisely cut and laid stone are original. These cut ashlar blocks include neatly finished arches, sills, and entablatures. The church’s design is attributed to architect Elijah Shumway Town (1804-1890) who built Batavia’s Bellevue Place Sanitarium in 1853 where Mary Todd Lincoln was committed for 4 months in 1875. When the original steeple was knocked down in a storm in 1877 it wasn’t replaced until 97 years later in 1974 and is the tallest steeple in Kane County. There have been subsequent additions to the church in the last 60 years. Established in Thompson Paxton’s cabin in 1835 as “Church of the Big and Little Woods” and affiliated with the Presbyterians, the church relocated to Batavia Avenue in 1841. Sharing a common belief in the anti-slavery doctrine, the church was supported by church members and the community-at-large so that the church changed its name to “Congregational Church and Society of Bavaria” in 1843.May 2024. 355 First Street, 1852. 96% 7.83mb DSC_6389. This was the Methodist church built in the Greek Revival. The pilasters are Doric order that meet the main beam resting across the tops of columns (architrave), blank frieze, cornice, and classical pediment. After 1886 the building was used as a schoolhouse in the Batavia school system. Today it is law offices. In 1836 a group meeting in William Van Nortwick’s home in Batavia organized the “First Methodist Class” which marked the establishment of the Methodist church in Batavia.July 2013. West wall stone work and window of former Methodust Church built in 1852. 7.02mb _0004Born in Maine, Elijah Gammon (1819-1891) was a spiritual and business powerhouse. After he moved to Illinois he was the Methodist church’s first preacher in 1854. Having to give up preaching because of health in 1858, he changed careers to the manufacture of harvesting machinery. As he substantially contributed to the industry’s development and earned a fortune, his business responsibilities and success in no way limited his spiritual vision.https://aaregistry.org/story/elijah-gammon-supported-black-ministry/ – retrieved January 23, 2025.May 2024. United Methodist Church of Batavia, 8 N. Batavia, 1887. 87%7.91mb _6498. United Methodist Church of Batavia, 8 N. Batavia Avenue, Batavia, Illinois was built in 1887. The rugged eclectic Richardsonian Romanesque-type building was designed by Solon Spencer Beman (1853 –1914) and inspired by a church in France that its donors had admired. The structure was almost entirely the gift of abolitionist Elijah J. Gammon (1819-1891), the church’s first preacher and local businessman, and Captain Don Carlos Newton (1832-1893), another active local businessman who had a house investment property across the street. Beman was an architect of note as he designed the planned Pullman community and adjacent Pullman Company factory complex in Chicago as well as Chicago’s Fine Arts Building (1884) on Michigan Avenue. At the top of the tower is a Palladian window under a pyramidal roof while in the back are hipped roofs. The building’s boulders were taken from the contractor’s farm about a mile from the building site. The new church building replaced the first Methodist church in Batavia built in 1853 in Greek Revival and which still stands today.Born in New York, Captain Newton was a very active businessman. He died unexpectedly at his home in Batavia after attending the Chicago World’s Fair for a week with his family in 1893. He was described as ”a persevering, self-made man.” https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/16849480/don-carlos-newton – retrieved January 23, 2025.Chicago-based architect Solon Spencer Beman designed the United Methodist Church of Batavia in 1887. Beman is an architect of note as he designed the planned Pullman community and adjacent Pullman Company factory complex as well as Chicago’s Fine Arts Building (1884) on Michigan Avenue. Several of his largest commissions, including the Pullman Office Building, Pabst Building in Milwaukee (1891), and the Romanesque Revival Grand Central Station (1890) in Chicago, have since been demolished.A number of architects trained with Beman, including Prairie School architect William L. Steele (1875-1949), church architect Charles Draper Faulkner (1890-1979) and Spencer Solon Beman (1887-1952).May 2024. 415 Main Street, 1860. Eclectic Gothic Revival with Italianate features including scroll-cut square brackets tailored to the pitched roof line, segmental arches above the windows, and the heavy outlines of the door entrance. A polygonal bay and wings are informal features found in the Italianate that balances a formal façade. 89% 7.87mb. July 2011. 415 Main Street (1860). The door is larger than the windows and offset by the small ventilating window at the top in the gable. 2.54mb100_3328 (1)May 2024. 360 Main Street, 1855. 74% 7.72mb DSC_6409. The house is an example of the evolving transition from Greek Revival to Gothic Revival to Italianate. May 2024. 33 S. Lincoln Street, 1850. 73% 7.85mb DSC_6520. The lengthy 1850 Greek Revival is formal and simple. There are four pairs of windows and an architrave, frieze and cornice characteristic of the type as well as its corner pilasters. May 2024. 505 Main Street, 1858. The house is in the Swiss style and has a peacock feather spread motif above the second floor balcony. There are also trifoils set in circles in the gable. The brick sun room was added to the east around 1910. 92% 7.81mb DSC_6426 (1) July 2011. 505 Main Street’s in-vogue late 1850’s peacock feather motif was made by scroll cut boards nailed to a backing and long tubes made by a lathe. To the left under the roof extension there is incised ornamentation with a tall thistle plant motif. 1.54mb 100_3331 (1) May 2024. 356 First Street, c. 1850. 62% 7.80mb DSC_6395. Greek Revival frame clapboard house. May 2024. 637 N. Batavia Avenue, 1906. The Prairie style house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) in 1906. It is frame and stucco with massive chimneys. With its horizontals, low pitched roof, casement windows and thin eaves, it is the Prairie style fully developed. Frank Lloyd Wright in 1903, likely a self-portrait. Public Domain.July 2013. Fabyan Villa was the home of George and Nelle Fabyan from 1908 to 1939. A mid-19th century farmhouse was acquired by the Fabyans in 1905 and extensively remodeled by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1907. The house, on a hilltop looking east to the Fox River was the centerpiece of the Fabyans country estate called “Riverbank.” In 1914, the Fabyans purchased a windmill (photo below) that was located on a farm near Oakbrook, Illinois, and had it relocated opposite Riverbank on acreage that they acquired that same year.May 2024. 111 S. Lincoln Street, c. 1850 92% 7.84mb DSC_6396. Though obscured by modern adaptations, the severe cube of the structure indicates its Greek Revival roots. May 2024. 125 S. Lincoln, 1852. The Greek Revival style with the central section temple like with matching side pilaster ascending to a pediment as an incomplete entablature as one side is merely suggested by returns at the top of each pilaster. The wings include a one-story entrance and a two-story addition with cornice and dormers with window arches and tiny pitched roofs. 88% 7.78 mb DSC_6400May 2024. 432 Main Street, c. 1850. The front porch may or may not be original but befits the broad formal mid-19th century Greek Revival structure. 93% 7.82mb DSC_6431 (1)July 2011. Between Batavia and Geneva, Illinois, The Fabyan Windmill is an authentic, working Dutch windmill dating from the 1850s. It was built by a German craftsman, Louis Blackhaus, and moved to this location next to the Fox River from its original site near Oakbrook, Illinois, in July 1915. 2 mb 100_3357July 2011. 333 S. Jefferson Street, Batavia Institute, Bellevue Mental Hospital, 1853. Following the assassination of her husband, President Abraham Lincoln, Bellevue became the residence of Mary Todd Lincoln briefly in 1875. 2.87mb 100_3332 Mary Todd Lincoln in 1846. Mary Todd was 23 years old when she married 33-year-old Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois on November 4, 1842. Their four sons were all born in Springfield. In 1875 Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926), her eldest son, had her institutionalized following a jury trial. She was committed to this private asylum in Batavia on May 20, 1875. Estranged from her finances and her son, she fell into a deep depression in the mental institution. Making contact with her lawyer and the press, the former First Lady got the wheels of justice and public opinion on her side. The resulting bad publicity for Robert Lincoln prompted the asylum director to pre-emptively change his opinion of Mary’s mental fitness so that in September 1875 she was released into the care of her sister Elizabeth Todd Edwards (1813-1888) with whom she was close and moved to Springfield. Following a second jury trial on June 19, 1876 that declared Mary “restored to reason,” Mary Todd Lincoln was back in charge of her money and freedom and promptly fled the country. She lived in France for the next four years. When she returned to Springfield in poor health in 1880, she lived again with her sister in Springfield. On July 16, 1882. Mary Todd Lincoln died of a stroke in Elizabeth’s home. Mary was 63 years old. Before her burial in Oak Ridge Cemetery next to her slain husband, her funeral was held at First Presbyterian Church in Springfield. Just steps from the Lincoln home, this was the church Abraham Lincoln started attending in 1850 after the death of their second son, four-year-old Eddie. The present church building was dedicated in 1868 and remains standing at 7th Street and Capitol Avenue today. see – https://www.nps.gov/features/liho/25/25.htm – retrieved January 23, 2025. Elizabeth Todd Edwards. She and Mary were long close both in Springfield in the 1830’s and, later, at the White House. In 1875 Elizabeth accommodated her sister and the 64 trunks of her possessions with two rooms in her Springfield mansion. see – https://web.archive.org/web/20171201042129/https://www.civilwarwomenblog.com/elizabeth-todd-edwards/ – retrieved January 23, 2025.July 2013. 333 S. Jefferson Street, Batavia Institute, Bellevue Mental Hospital, 1853. The monumental Italianate structure was designed by Elijah Shumway Town (1804-1890) who built Batavia’s Congregational Church. Projecting two story wings with Mansard roof containing a third story is built of slightly cruder stone and added before 1870. July 2013. details. July 2013. details. 5.11mb 0479 July 2013. 419 Union Street, 1863. The exuberance of the Italianate style is manifest in a soaring polygonal bay on the facade’s one side and a cupola on the other. Large windows are characteristic of the Italianate as are multiple curved brackets. Contrasting textures of stucco and heavy stone provide interest and work to suggest the appearance of more expensive materials and construction than actually used. This was the residence of one of the doctors at the Batavia Institute across the street. 4.77mb _0092 (1)April 2016. Calvary Episcopal Church (222 Main Street), 1880. Designed in the “American Gothic” style, the medieval Gothic forms was a mid-to-late19th century revolt in English protestant churches to the prevailing neo-classicism of the previous 200 years. American influence included the stone building’s overall heaviness and particularly in its square-shaped tower that has a double pitched roof and with a sheet metal zone of bosses and discs between the levels and surrounding steeple dormers. 2.82 mb DSC_0476 (1)
Sources:
A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot, Ira J. Bach, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981, pp. 304-319.
