JFK

Happy Birthday, Mr. President By ALEXANDRA S. LEVINE AND JONATHAN WOLFE President John F. Kennedy in his famed Oval Office rocking chair. Corbis, via Getty Images Good morning on this wet Thursday. This Memorial Day is a milestone in our presidential history: It would have been the 100th birthday of John F. Kennedy. The 35th president, though born in Massachusetts, was a New Yorker in many ways. “New Yorkers just accept him as an honorary New Yorker because he was here so much,” said David Nasaw, a history professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and the author of a biography on the Kennedy family. “And because he had this sophistication, this humor, this glamour, this wit and these smarts.” (Just like we city folk do, right?) Kennedy spent some of his formative years living in Riverdale and Bronxville. Later, in 1954, he stayed for several months at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Midtown Manhattan, where he underwent major spinal surgery and nearly died. But Kennedy’s more positive moments in New York — his best ones, according to Mr. Nasaw — were during the years that followed, while he was campaigning ahead of the 1960 election. “We overlook the fact that he wouldn’t have been president without New York City,” Mr. Nasaw said. “Everybody thinks that New York is this staunch, always-Democratic state.” It wasn’t always so: Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, had carried New York in the previous two elections, and Richard M. Nixon had a good chance of beating Kennedy in New York in 1960, one of the closest presidential elections in the nation’s history. Kennedy turned that around when he spoke at the Al Smith dinners in Manhattan in 1959 and 1960. Senator John F. Kennedy, center, speaking at an Al Smith dinner. Joseph Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images “He handled the Al Smith dinners as a comedian would, and he made Nixon look like a stiff fool,” Mr. Nasaw said. “Those speeches were widely covered, and three weeks before the election, I think that helped him a great deal.” Enough to earn New York State’s vote — 53 percent to Nixon’s 47 — and ultimately to help win the presidency. As president, Kennedy visited Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962, for a fund-raiser and dinner in honor of his birthday, where he made a speech and Marilyn Monroe famously took the stage to sing “Happy Birthday” to him. The next day, he returned to the Garden to give another speech to older New Yorkers on the need for the government to help them with health care. “When you look at those two speeches juxtaposed, it tells you a lot about this guy,” Mr. Nasaw said. “It tells you that he was interested in policy, and he was also the first president who was a celebrity.” More than a half-century since Kennedy’s assassination, one of the most significant memorials to him in New York City is the airport that bears his name, Mr. Nasaw said. “It’s a shame,” he added. “We go out and we curse at J.F.K. Airport, which is sort of a great irony that one way New Yorkers were going to honor him turned out to be much less of an honor than this man deserves.” You can honor him by continuing to learn about his legacy. One way to start: Check out a Kennedy-themed walking tour in Manhattan, taking place on his centennial on Monday.