John F. Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917. I have two books on John F. Kennedy. One about the day he died, and the other about a time he could have died. I would rather today dwell on the second book.
I have “John F. Kennedy and PT-109” by Richard Tregaskis, 1962. Once again, I dig into my Landmark Books, the series of books found in the library at Westfield, my junior high school. I have always enjoyed reading these books, and have used them frequently as I work out events for the ‘Year in the Library’ with Librarytomes.
This book goes goes right into the story. There are eight pages of achival photographs of the building of the PT 109-some on how the boats worked, then and being sent to the South Pacific, as well as several written pages of how the plywood and mohogany, 80 foot ship was built, and equipped with guns and torpedo tubes. “At the same time,” states the author “the Navy skipper who was later to win fame for his command of PT-109 had not the slightest inkling that she would ever be his boat…he was attending the Navel Reserve Officers’ Training School at Northwestern University, Chicago.”
When JFK went into PT training school he excelled, due mainly into his passion and skill of swimming and yachting. He was promoted to Lieutenant and ordered to stay and be an instructor at the school. Several months later he was sent to the South Pacific. The book then goes into much detail about how PT boats worked at night, to stealthily move in to fire torpedos, and hastily get away. There was also much on the area, in maps and drawings, laying out battles, and locations of ships and islands.
The last trip of the PT 109, was a night that she got separated from the other two boats. She was run over, and split in half by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri. Two men died in the collision, the rest had to bail into the sea. They spent the rest of the night hanging onto a floating part of the hull. In the morning, Kennedy had everyone swim to a nearby island (3.5 miles away). One sailer was badly burned, and Kennedy took lifejacket straps in his teeth and towed him behind, as he swam to the island.
Once on the island, Kennedy again at night tried to flag down help by swimming out to traffic lanes. Several days later he had the team swim to another island that they thought had water and coconuts. He then wrote on a coconut, and gave it to two natives that they came across to pass along for help. After six days at sea, 11 members of the 13 man crew were rescued. The author, Richard Tregaskis tells the story much better than I recap it.
After the PT 109 incident, Kennedy had continued back problems, He stayed active duty for a few months, and then under doctors orders, he retired and went on a long rehabilitation for his back. Politics seemed to be the direction he went to then-we know the rest of the story. (But, if you had asked my mom, she always felt that Kennedy’s success in politics was because of his father Joe Kennedy’s connections with the press, and the resulting constant stories of PT-109, especially when finally printed in Reader’s Digest, years after the war, painting JFK as a hero. She felt his carelessness is what caused the accident in the first place, and it didn’t matter how gallantly he performed afterwards. According to her, Joe Kennedy always wanted his son to be president, and paid to have it happen. This was one of the few times my mom ever talked about politics.)
On a lighter note, May 29 is also National Paperclip Day.
These are a few of the paperclips in my desk. The clip in the middle (our standard clip) is the Gem Paper-Fastener.
A favorite book of mine in the Library is “The Home Library” by Arthur Penn, 1886. In the chapter Hints Here and There, it states “for fastening a bundle of letters, or pages of manuscripts, (use) the Gem Paper-Fasteners.” This paperclip has certainly withstood the test of time.
Thanks for reading.
Librarytomes 