Another Update on my Kennedy Collection.

Today is the 58th Anniversary of when a young 16-year-old named Bill Clinton (who later become the 42nd President of the United States) from Hope, Arkansas attended Boy’s Nation (a special youth leadership conference), went with other young men to The White House on July 24, 1963, and met the hero of his boyhood and manhood - the 35th President of the United States: 46-year-old John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

In light of this, I thought this would the best time to share another update on my Kennedy Book Collection. In my previous blog entry, I mentioned that I went to visit Mount Auburn Hospital to visit the actual birthplace site of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand and then went to visit the Harvard Coop in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Before I returned to the place where I live, I took some photos of the interior of the Harvard Coop. However, the photos I want to share in this entry are of John F. Kennedy as a young college student at their winding staircase and of the books that they were selling either by him or of him (since this blog entry is in part dedicated to him).

When I had returned around 5:30 in the afternoon, I received a message through Facebook from a woman name Catherine who was selling me her bookcase for only twenty dollars.

She wanted to bring the bookcase to the place where I live by 6:15 that very evening. I replied that this was fine. She arrived with the bookcase with a friend and paid her twenty dollars and an extra five dollars for her trip. She said it wasn’t necessary, but I insisted and she eventually accepted. When our transaction has been completed, I took the book case inside, took out my then current Kennedy Book Collection, removed my smaller bookshelf to outside my room, moved my new bookcase to the inside of my room and then moved my Kennedy Book Collection onto the new bookshelf.

Now it has been eight days since my new bookcase was installed in my room and in those eight days, twelve more books have arrived. The books are:

• “Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye” by Kenneth O'Donnell and David Powers
• “Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis” by Dino A. Brugioni
• “The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy” by Larry J. Sabato
• “Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours that Made History” by Andrew Cohen
• Rising Star, Setting Sun Rising Star, Setting Sun: Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and the Presidential Transition that changed America” by John T. Shaw
• “The Kennedy Legacy: Jack, Bobby and Ted and a Family Dream Fulfilled” by Vincent Bzdek
• “Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: The Untold Story” by Barbara Leaming
• “Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir” by Clint Hill and Lisa McCubbin
• “Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit” by Chris Matthews (which I found today and bought $2.00 at the Framingham Public Library)
• “Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary” by Ray E. Boomhower
• “Edward Kennedy and the Camelot Legacy” by James MacGregor Burns
• “The Shadow President: Ted Kennedy in Opposition” by Burton Hersh

And of course, they have been added to my “Kennedy Library” in my “Kennedy Korner.”

(Note: I also received another bookcase two days later, but that's another story for another time.)

I have ordered and am waiting for the arrival of a few more books, which are “The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis” edited by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, “Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade” by Jeff Shesol, “JFK and the Masculine Mystique: Sex and Power on the New Frontier” by Steven Watts, “American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family” by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “Jacqueline Kennedy: First Lady of the New Frontier (Modern First Ladies)” by Barbara A. Perry, and “Mrs. Kennedy: The Missing History of the Kennedy Years” by Barbara Leaming (which I ordered today).

After these six books arrive, I think I will then put a hold on buying Kennedy books to add to my Kennedy book collection as I don’t want to have too many books and need to save money. There are only two more books I wish to purchase upon their future publication that being the second volume of Frederik Logevall’s biography of President John F. Kennedy and the second volume of Neal Gabler’s biography of Edward M. Kennedy. In the meantime, I’m going make time to read the books I collected on the Kennedys while being inspired by my meeting with Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith. I hope that the knowledge that I glean from the pages of all the books I ordered, bought in person, and received as gifts (Thanks, Mai Lee!) can be used not merely to share anecdotes, but to learn and share powerful lessons that all of us can benefit from and perhaps make a positive impact in the process.

With nothing more to add this blog entry, I want to conclude by sharing the words that former President of the United States, Bill Clinton, shared on his meeting with President Kennedy 58 years ago today at The White House in his memoirs entitled “My Life”: "On Wednesday, July 24, we went to the White House to meet the President in the Rose Garden. President Kennedy walked out the of Oval Office in the bright sunshine and made some brief remarks, complementing our work, especially our support for civil rights, and giving us higher marks than the governors, who had not been so forward-leaning in their annual summer meeting. After accepting a Boys Nation T-Shirt, Kennedy walked down the steps and began shaking hands. I was in the front and being bigger and a bigger supporter of the President’s than most of the others, I’d made sure I’d get to shake his hand even if he shook only two of three. It was an amazing moment for me, meeting the President whom I had supported in my ninth-grade class debates, and about whom I felt even more strongly after his two and a half years in office. A friend took a photo for me, and later we found film footage of the handshake in the Kennedy Library."

"Much has been made of that brief encounter and its impact on my life. My mother said she knew when I came home that I was determined to go into politics, and after I became the Democratic nominee in 1992, the film was widely pointed as the beginning of my presidential aspirations. I’m not sure about that. I have a copy of the speech I gave to the American Legion in Hot Springs after I came home, and in it I didn’t make too much of the handshake. I thought at the time I wanted to become a senator, but deep down I probably felt as Abraham Lincoln did when he wrote as a young man, 'I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come.' ”