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Sadly, many focus on JFK’s character flaws

In the fall of 1956 I was in the Augustinian Seminary and wrote on the blackboard that JFK would be elected president in 1960, though most didn’t even know who he was. By 1960 I had left the seminary and become a precinct captain on the Southeast Side of Chicago. I got out the vote, 600 out of 625 in my precinct. The count included the Republican captain and his family! It was a neighborhood of Catholics and Jews, and just as the Catholics wanted one of their own the Jews felt that until a Catholic was president there would be little chance for a Jew. I was invested in JFK and the idea that things could be better and the younger generation was going to be part of history.

I came into conflict with JFK while working at the Adler Planetarium. I was interviewed about Project West Ford, an idea to place a ring of small metal strips (chaff) in orbit. My response was regardless of the president’s approval it was a bad idea because we didn’t have a vacuum cleaner to clear up the mess when it didn’t work. This made national news as “President Kennedy approved Project West Ford but Fred Henning of the Adler Planetarium doesn’t agree ...” I never heard from the White House but did from many others. It never was launched.

I was in an engineering meeting at IIT Research, explaining a project, when we heard the news of the assassination. It was a long weekend of tears and disappointment. I still keep a Sun-Times print of Mauldin’s “Crying Lincoln” on my office wall. Too bad too many have concentrated on the character flaws and not the ideas and ideals that sprang from those few years of Camelot.

Fred Henning

Elk Grove Village

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