Hilary Iris Lowe
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
Interior Region 1, North Atlantic—Appalachian
“To Keep a Birthplace”
An Administrative History of
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
“To Keep a Birthplace”
An Administrative History of
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
Hilary Iris Lowe
Presented to John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
Interior Region 1, North Atlantic—Appalachian
In Partnership with
the Organization of American Historians/National Park Service
September 2023
Cover Image:
“Children outside of John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site.”
Publisher: U.S. National Park Service; John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Norfolk County,
Massachusetts. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/8BBCB79F-155D-451F-6729A48B42D80053.
Disclaimer: The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of this author and should not
be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the U.S. Government. Mention of trade names or
commercial products does not constitute their endorsement by the U.S. Government.
“To Keep a Birthplace”
An Administrative History of
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
Hilary iris lowe
NatioNal Park service
U.s. DePartmeNt of tHe iNterior
sePtember 2023
Prepared for
the National Park Service
in cooperation with
the Organization of American Historians
“To Keep a Birthplace”
An Administrative History of
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
Hilary Iris Lowe
Presented to John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
Interior Region 1, North Atlantic—Appalachian
In Partnership with
the Organization of American Historians/National Park Service
September 2023
Recommended by:
Manager, Cultural Resources Division, Interior Region 1: North Atlantic—Appalachian Region Date
Recommended by:
Superintendent, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site Date
“To Keep a Birthplace”
An Administrative History of
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
Hilary Iris Lowe
Presented to John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
Interior Region 1, North Atlantic—Appalachian
In Partnership with
the Organization of American Historians/National Park Service
September 2023
Recommended by:
Manager, Cultural Resources Division, Interior Region 1: North Atlantic—Appalachian Region Date
Recommended by:
Superintendent, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site Date
JASON NEWMAN
Digitally signed by JASON NEWMAN
Date: 2024.01.18 10:57:13 -05'00'
JONATHAN MEADE
Digitally signed by JONATHAN MEADE
Date: 2024.01.29 13:34:27 -05'00'
“To Keep a Birthplace”
An Administrative History of
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
Hilary Iris Lowe
Presented to John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
Interior Region 1, North Atlantic—Appalachian
In Partnership with
the Organization of American Historians/National Park Service
September 2023
Recommended by:
Manager, Cultural Resources Division, Interior Region 1: North Atlantic—Appalachian Region Date
Recommended by:
Superintendent, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site Date
JASON NEWMAN
Digitally signed by JASON NEWMAN
Date: 2024.01.18 10:57:13 -05'00'
JONATHAN MEADE
Digitally signed by JONATHAN MEADE
Date: 2024.01.29 13:34:27 -05'00'
v
Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
CHAPTER TWO
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
American Interest in Childhood and Childhood Homes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Washington as a Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Women’s Roles in Preserving and Recreating the Birthplaces of Presidents . . . . . . . . . . 11
The Rise of Childhood Homes and Birthplaces as Sites of National Memory . . . . . . . . . 13
The Birthplaces of Assassinated Presidents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
James A. Garfield’s Birthplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
William McKinley’s Birthplace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
CHAPTER THREE
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
The National Park Service Assesses the Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
“It Would be Nice…for Mother” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Legislation to Establish the Historic Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
The Boston Group Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
“An Undeniable Sense of Nostalgia” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
1969 Dedication and Opening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Changes Ahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
CHAPTER FOUR
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Neighborhood Tensions as the Site Opens to the Public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Personal Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Kowal and Early Studies at the Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Busing and Fire Bombing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
The Carter and Reagan Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Daily Work at the Kennedy Birthplace in the 1980s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Nostalgia"
vi
CHAPTER FIVE
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Reorganization under Diamant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Expansion of Educational Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Rose Kennedy’s Interpretive Voice Silenced . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Structural and Maintenance Concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
1990s Politics and Anxiety for Trisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Kennedy Family at the Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Changes in Administration at the Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
CHAPTER SIX
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017 . 103
New Interpretation: Rose Kennedy as Architect of Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Neighborhood Preservation: St. Aidan’s Catholic Church Threatened . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
General Management Plan: “Only a Mirage” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Staffing at the Kennedy Birthplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Paint, Perseverance, and the Presidency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
CHAPTER SEVEN
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Considerations for Further Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
The Political Legacy of the Kennedy Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
The Boston Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Urban Redevelopment, Federal Preservation, and Gentrification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Multisites as Units of Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Robert T. Luddington Papers (JOFI 1510) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Email Access for Researchers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
1510)
vii
Acknowledgments
I
have been working on this project through some of the most trying years the National
Park Service has been in operation. The last two saw the very sites I relied on for this
study closed to the public due to COVID-19 but still open for much of the research
required for this study. The John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site is still closed as
staff oversee exciting renovations delayed by the pandemic proceed.
1
Working on the
history of the site during such a moment in the history of the NPS has made me thoroughly
aware of the dedication of NPS staff.
I especially owe a great deal to Christine Arato, Paul Zwirecki, Aidan J. Smith, Elena
Rippel, Christine Wirth, and Lee Farrow Cook. Christine first cornered me at a conference
to let me know there was a fascinating history of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National
Historic Site—I blame her entirely for my decision to sign on to find out more. Aidan J.
Smith set me up with all the site’s key players and left us all entirely too soon. So many of us
continue to miss his thoroughly kind and biting humor about all things NPS. I was lucky to
have Paul Zwirecki’s and Derek Duquette’s patient attempts to wrangle this project to
completion. Elena Rippel was the best intern I ever had the chance to work with, and I
know the folks at the Kennedy site agree.
I was lucky to have already discovered the fantastic camaraderie among the staff at
the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, where most of
the records pertaining to the administration of Kennedy’s birthplace are held. Among
them, Beth Law, David Daly, Garrett Cloer, Kate Hanson Plass, and especially Christine
Wirth were essential both as conversationalists and as research partners on this project.
Beth took the time to talk me through the administrative issues and internal grant bidding
system for NPS projects—which is as fascinating as it is frustrating. David’s stories of alien
autopsy birthday parties and collections care reminded me that all NPS employees have
rich lives inside and outside the service. This was a lesson I learned all over again when I
mined the staff logs and hints of historical inside jokes at the Kennedy site. Garrett’s
humor, unflappability, and enthusiasm are still missed at Longfellow. Kate’s epic patience
and detailed memory of all objects and records relating to the Longfellow and Kennedy
sites are as impressive as her kindness. She helped immensely with responses to chapters
behind the scenes, and she tracked down photos right to the end. Chris Wirth, archivist
extraordinaire, helped me track down graves, worried over handwriting transcriptions
1
While the site is physically closed to visitors, staff have continued to offer virtual programs.
Acknowledgments
viii
with me, and helped keep me on track when the research “black holes” were ever threaten-
ing. She was the best archivist and friend you could imagine going on a road trip with to
tackle the ins and outs of far-flung NPS archives.
David J. Vecchioli and Steve Neth worked diligently with me as I tried to track down
records about the elusive Boston Group in the papers at Boston National Historical Park
and Minute Man National Historical Park. Caitlin Jones at the Massachusetts Archives,
Shelley Barber at the Tip O’Neill Papers at Boston College, and Jim Hill at the John F.
Kennedy Presidential Library were extremely helpful with both collections and advice. Jim
Roberts and Jason Atsales were a fantastic team at the Kennedy site. Jim and Jason bent
over backwards to provide everything they could to help the project. Superintendent Myra
Harrison not only was a welcoming superintendent but also agreed to do a long call with
me so I could complete her oral history after she had retired. Alan Banks, Christine Arato,
Lee Farrow Cook, Rolf Diamant, Leslie Obleschuk, Jim Roberts, Jim Shea, Mark Swartz,
and Anna Coxe Toogood were also gracious enough to sit down for an interview with Elena
Rippel or with me to help me make the most of the recent history of the site.
At Temple University, my chairs, Jay Lockenour and Petra Goedde, helped me get
this project set up within a complicated system that did not necessarily recognize its schol-
arly value and helped me keep it on track when the pandemic threatened to derail it and
me. Dean Richard Deeg generously agreed to release me from teaching two courses to
allow a semester of whirlwind archival research in Brookline, Boston, Concord, Waltham,
and Cambridge, Massachusetts, for which I am deeply grateful.
Along the way, I met or had riveting conversations about the history of the Kennedy
site and its partner sites with Paul Weinbaum, Dwight Pitchaithley, Susan Ferentinos, Sara
Patton Zarrelli, Merrill Hassenfeld, and Michelle McClellan. Laura Miller was a lifesaver at
crucial times, as an editorial wiz and as a sounding board for the complicated histories of
National Park historic sites that too often get written in a vacuum.
I am most grateful to have Seth and Junie Bruggeman by my side as I completed this
project. Both have survived my necessary obsession with presidents, mothers, and the
shifting meanings of childhood homes in the United States.
1
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
T
hree-story, gray with white trim and dark green shutters, the house looks like
many fine homes built in the streetcar suburbs in the first two decades of the
twentieth century. Nonetheless, if you miss the visitor’s orientation or merely
beam into the Kennedy birthplace from elsewhere, you would know you were in a house
museum. There are wooden interior gates that keep visitors in the halls of the house rather
than in any of the rooms. It is a modern house with bathrooms, electric lamps, and running
water, but a house old enough to have radiators, phone tables, and linens on the dining
table. Nonetheless, there are no immediate signs on the ground floor of whose home you
are in. It is a comfortable but affluent home—silver on the table, lace curtains, elegant
drapes, and a grand piano. You would need to be a detective looking closely at the family
baby photos upstairs and interpret the monogrammed bedspreads, bathmats, and
children’s porringers to see the family’s prominent last initial: K.
Most visitors who make their way through the visitor’s center, might not recognize
that the house tells multiple Kennedy family histories, until they hear a recording of Rose
Kennedy’s voice in the kitchen. Then it sinks in: this was Rose Kennedy’s house as much as
it was John F. Kennedy’s birthplace. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s birthplace was
also Rose Kennedy’s first adult home, and she left her mark (Figure 1).
The National Park Service (NPS) opened the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National
Historic Site (JOFI), in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1969 to commemorate the life of the
35th president, John F. Kennedy, at the home where he was born in 1917. The site was a gift
from Rose Kennedy, and the Kennedy family, to the nation. It joined the Park Service
initially as part of a unit managed by the Boston Service Group, a regional administrative
unit that managed many parks and units that were in development and several small sites.
None of the group’s units were as small as the Kennedy birthplace. The site would be
transferred over the years to a management structure that included two other small historic
sites. One, the Longfellow National Historic Site (now the Longfellow House-Washington’s
Headquarters National Historic Site), was located in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The other, the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, was also located in
Brookline. Federal support for the Kennedy site was organized both quickly in the wake of
President Kennedy’s assassination and slowly with care by the president’s mother.
Congress approved the site with very little study.
2
Introduction
Figure 1. Rose Kennedy outside her house.
Cecil W. Stoughton, JOFI Dedication, JOFI 1504, Box 10, Folder 8, NPS, 1969.
The site’s Interpretive Prospectus, put together by Nan Rickey in 1969, is a marvel
for helping us understand the key issues at the site from the get-go, including this compli-
cated interpretive one. Rickey was brought to the site as the technical publications editor
from Harpers Ferry to work with Rose Kennedy on that room-by-room audio tour. She was
also charged with helping the site develop its first interpretive plan. She reported that Rose
Kennedy’s tour was “interpretive perfection,” while it was also “reminiscent” of the past
rather than wholly historically accurate.
2
Rose Kennedy’s voice was in nearly every room at
the site, and she gave the site whole cloth to the National Park Service after restoring it to
match her memories. In many ways, however, she was missing as a historical informant in
the park’s planning beyond the audio. And she was, to some extent, missing from the
history that the site interpreted until the mid-2000s as well. Such delicate donor relation-
ships are not uncommon at historic sites that are given to the National Park Service by
family members of a president. Access and influence were primary issues in Rickey’s report,
as was the nation’s emotional response to the tragedy of John F. Kennedy’s murder. What
Rickey recommended and anticipated, on nearly every front, has followed. She cautioned
2
Nan Rickey, Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts,
National Park Service, Department of the Interior (1969), 3.
3
Introduction Introduction
that it would be many decades—she speculated 100 years—before the Park Service would
want to attempt historically accurate reinterpretation at the site.
3
The National Park
Service, instead, would subtly reinterpret things at the house. Someone swapped out an
anachronistic older photo of the young president. After exterior paint research was com-
pleted, the house was painted an “accurate” dark, teal green rather than the gray that it had
been painted under Rose Kennedy’s exacting eye. Books and toys that made up some of the
house’s historic collections that came from after 1920 (the date when the Kennedys moved
away from this early home) were moved into the background of the children’s bedroom.
Site staff carefully rearranged the collections, without exactly censoring them, to match
their understanding of the period of significance at the site—which was primarily defined
as the early years of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s childhood.
These founding documents are prescient both in shaping the future of the site and in
laying out what the essential issues and concerns are that drove the site over the decades.
4
To
understand what has been at stake at the site over the course of the last 50 years, you need
only read Rickey’s report sympathetically and capaciously. Her report was more than a plan
for interpretation at the site; it was a call for all of us to always remember that it was Rose
Kennedy who was directly responsible for what we experience at the site today.
However, Rose Kennedy was not the “single author” at the site. She had great
assistance at the house while she lived there as a young mother—in the form of staff from
maids to nurses.
5
Likewise, she had great assistance in refurbishing the house. Her assistant
was her longtime interior decorator Robert Luddington. Moreover, over the years there
have been many people who have helped steward the site and make small changes that have
altered some of what Rose Kennedy originally envisioned. Edwin Small and Maurice Kowal
in the early years helped set up the site administratively, and more recently Christine Arato
and Myra Harrison worked to elevate Rose Kennedy’s historic role as the creator of the
site. Rose Kennedy’s work at the house and legacy has loomed large over all these stewards’
years at the Brookline house. The changes that they put in place almost always engaged
Rose Kennedy’s work directly, and on occasion, they directly challenged it. However,
before we learn about the administrative work at the site, we should look closely at how the
United States, and especially the National Park Service, has approached historic sites
associated with the nation’s presidential leaders and especially presidential childhood
homes and birthplaces.
3
Rickey, Interpretive Prospectus.
4
Laura Miller, “Things Kept and Cherished”: A History of Adams National Historical Park (Washington, DC:
National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, 2020), 1.
5
Over the last five years, NPS staff at the site have started researching and interpreting the lives of cooks and
maids at the house during the Kennedy era. At the 2017 100th birthday events, costumed interpreters were on site
depicting staff during the Kennedy period. See the site’s page: The Kennedy Family Maids of 83 Beals Street,
Massachusetts, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-kennedy-family-maids-at-83-beals-street-brookline-ma.htm,
accessed May 17, 2021.
4
Introduction
The ways that Kennedy birthplace falls well outside the norm for preserved presi-
dential childhood homes and birthplaces are outlined in Chapter 2. This chapter investi-
gates how many such sites, even those within the National Park Service, are recreations
rather than actual extant historical buildings. Some have been relocated several times;
some have been torn down only to be “reconstructed” later in exacting (or less than exact-
ing) detail. None have been fully restored by the president’s own mother. Even among the
presidential birthplaces that the Park Service manages, the Kennedy site is unique. Today,
as a result, the site recognizes two important periods of historical significance: the early
childhood of President Kennedy and the “memorial period” during which Rose Fitzgerald
Kennedy oversaw the refurnishing and decoration of the house.
The specific history of the Kennedy site under Park Service management begins in
Chapter 3 with an investigation of early commemorative efforts at the house and an explo-
ration of how the service attempted to develop the site alongside Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.
The early history of management after the house opened to the public is covered in
Chapter 4. During this period, the site saw challenges, including arson and a new adminis-
trative home. Chapter 5 takes on the expansion to the unit that managed the Kennedy
birthplace, a much-needed budget increase, and reorganization. Recognition of Rose
Fitzgerald Kennedy’s work as a preservationist at the house and the staff’s quest to support
the site with substantial reports comes to pass in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 leads into John
Fitzgerald Kennedy’s centennial and to areas for further study.
5
Introduction
CHAPTER TWO
Remembering the Childhood Homes
of US Presidents
E
very president is remembered somewhere. These commemorative efforts are
marked in lavish marble monuments, memorials, historically accurate historic
house museums, and presidential libraries. Each of these sites of presidential
memory is unique. They are sometimes administered and founded by individuals in a
president’s hometown, committees of women preservationists, state and local
governments, and of course the federal government—primarily through the National Park
Service (NPS). A significant percentage of the National Park Service’s administered historic
sites is associated with and interpret presidential history in some capacity.
Currently the National Park Service and other departments of the federal govern-
ment (including the National Archives and Records Administration) oversee at least 31
historic sites, memorials, and monuments associated with 19 former presidents, including
George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van
Buren, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, James Garfield, Herbert
Hoover, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S.
Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and
Bill Clinton. Some former presidents, like Washington, Jefferson, and Grant, have more
than one NPS site. Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln each have four (not counting
Mount Rushmore). Twenty-five US presidents are not commemorated through a site
directly administered by the NPS, though most have sites listed on the National Register of
Historic Places. By the time of World War II, National Park Service Director Newton
Bishop Drury was concerned that there was “a long list of presidents of the United States
who have not yet been memorialized” by properties in federal ownership.
1
Today, all but
one (Zachary Taylor) do have historic sites opened to the public; most of these are not
owned and operated by the NPS, but by other state, local, or nonprofit organizations. As of
2022, the James K. Polk House in Columbia, Tennessee, and the George W. Bush Childhood
1
Quoted in John H. Sprinkle, Crafting Preservation Criteria : The National Register of Historic Places and
American Historic Preservation (New York: Routledge, 2014), 120.
6
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
Home in Midland, Texas, are being considered for inclusion in the National Park System.
2
Presidential sites associated with Presidents Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump are also
on the minds of both private and federal preservationists.
3
This chapter looks at the history of presidential historic sites, especially the history
of the development of childhood homes and replica homes that are open to the public.
Many sites “remember” presidents, but childhood homes have a specific place in the
United States. Many of these sites have been developed by women, and many contribute to
a belief that the events of a child’s life, and perhaps a mother’s efforts, significantly contrib-
ute to who that child becomes as an adult. In the United States, presidential childhoods
have played roles in political campaigns. Some presidential campaigns used presidents’
childhood homes and “commoner” upbringings to help define the character of their
candidate. As early as the 1840 campaign for William Henry Harrison, political parties (in
this case, the Whigs) “appealed to the common man by portraying their candidate…as a
national hero who had lived in a log cabin.”
4
Americans remain more interested in presi-
dential biographies than the history of their policies, according to scholars. “With remark-
able steadfastness, they remain preoccupied with the origins, moral character, and
motives” of their presidents—so much that many modern presidents are expected to have
narrated clear autobiographies that connect their childhood to their concerns for the
nation, leadership skills, and qualifications for the presidency.
5
The public’s interest in
presidential childhoods has also extended to a seemingly inexhaustible interest in their
childhood homes. One director of a presidential childhood home noted that “people
emotionally respond to birthplaces” and that, to visitors, childhood homes can be “pieces
of the true cross, even in the cynical era in which we live.”
6
The ways that these sites developed as museums are extraordinarily varied and have
been shaped by changing ideas about childhood. This chapter looks broadly at the role that
preservationists—often individual women and women’s organizations—and the National
Park Service, especially through the National Landmarks Program and through the admin-
istration of historic sites, have played in the landscape of presidential childhood available
2
Michael Collins, “James K. Polk’s Tennessee House Could Become Park of the National Park Service,”
The Tennessean, April 17, 2018. Pete Kasperowicz, “George W. Bush’s Childhood Home Could Soon Be Part of
the National Park System,” Washington Examiner, December 10, 2018.
3
Conversations are wide ranging about both presidents. See for instance Bruce Handy, “Wrecking Ball.”
The New Yorker, February 8, 2021, NP; and “Obama’s Childhood Home Might Become a Landmark.” NPR
Morning Edition, April 7, 2009.
4
National Park Service, “The Presidents: From the Inauguration of George Washington to the Inauguration of
Gerald R. Ford: Historic Places Commemorating the Chief Executives of the United States” (Washington, DC:
National Park Serice, 1976), 8.
5
Glenn and Eric Rauchway Altschuler, “Presidential Biography and the Great Commoner Complex,”
American Literary History 16, no. 2 (2004): 364.
6
Richard Norton Smith quoted in Patricia Leigh Brown, “Reliving Myth of the Presidential Log Cabin,”
New York Times, May 25, 1997.
7
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
to the public today. It focuses on the stories of sites that have impacted the way that the
NPS operates in relationship to childhood homes. In particular, the childhood homes of
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as comparisons to
the birthplaces and childhood homes of other assassinated presidents, provide a valuable
context for the development of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site and its
place in the NPS and the American historical landscape more broadly.
American Interest in Childhood
and Childhood Homes
The commemoration of birthplaces and childhood homes is not a uniquely American
phenomenon; nor has this commemorative practice been solely focused on governmental
leaders. The first birthplaces to be celebrated were often those of religious figures at places
like Mecca, Bethlehem, and Lumbini; philosophers like Petrarch; and literary luminaries
like Shakespeare and Milton.
7
In the United States and North America, more generally, the
first birthplaces that were marked and celebrated by White European settlers were not
those of the elite or great leaders and statesmen, but the first White children born in many
settlements.
8
Historians of commemoration, like Seth Bruggeman, have argued that
Americans have “a preoccupation with birthplaces,” which has “figured in the American
commemorative landscape…for nearly two hundred years.” In the United States, “birth-
place monuments have enshrined nativity alongside patriotism and valor as key pillars of
America’s historical imagination.”
9
7
Enormously popular, grave tourism predates and perhaps serves as the “flip side” of the formal celebration and
commemoration of childhood homes in the United States and elsewhere for all but religious figures. One of the
earliest sites of American historic tourism was to the graves of two fictional characters: Charlotte Temple from
Susanna Rowson’s 1794 novel of the same name, and that of Elizabeth Whitman/Eliza Wharton the main character
in Hannah Webster Foster’s 1797 novel The Coquette. Hilary Iris Lowe and Jennifer Harris, “Introduction,” in
From Page to Place: American Literary Tourism and the Afterlives of Authors (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2017), 9. Even Shakespeare’s grave was initially more popular than the site of his birth.
Aaron Santesso, “The Birth of the Birthplace: Bread Street and Literary Tourism before Stratford,” ELH 71, no. 2
(2004).
8
Virginia Dare, the first English child born at Roanoke, and her birth and birthplace, have been celebrated over
the years through various means and for a number of different political purposes. For instance, the county in
which the Virginia Roanoke settlement once resided is now called Dare County (now in present-day North
Carolina). In the 1920s, Dare’s name was commemorated in an effort to exclude African American women from
voting alongside White women, and in 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized a postage stamp that
commemorated the 350th anniversary of Dare’s birth. However, little is known about Dare other than the fact of
her birth. Dare, Peregrine White (born on the Mayflower), and Snorri Thorfinnsson (first Old Norse/Icelandic
child born in the Americas) are often celebrated and commemorated in statuary, and they have been used as
symbols by White supremacists. See, for example, Gillian Brockell, “Virginia Dare’s Unwanted Legacy: A White
Nationalist-Friendly Website Called Vdare,” Washington Post, August 22, 2018.
9
Seth C. Bruggeman, “Locating the Birthplace in American Memory,” in Born in the U.S.A.: Birth,
Commemoration, and American Public Memory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), 1.
8
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
The movement to celebrate and remember the births and childhoods of prominent
Americans began in earnest in the 19th century and rose in popularity at the turn of the
20th century. At this same moment, there was a corresponding emphasis on the special role
of children in culture, homes, and families in the United States. Some who study the history
of childhood note that until the late 19th century, most parents, despite deep parental
attachment, tended to find children essential to the economic role of the family. Children
regularly contributed to the family income through work outside the home, in agriculture,
industry, the trades, or contributed to the domestic labor of the household. Not until the
1890s, with the help of the progressive movement, did middle-class families begin to
practice promoting a “sheltered childhood” that privileged education and a special pro-
tected legal status for young people.
10
In many ways, these simultaneous changes in society
reflect broad and connected changing attitudes about the active roles of children, women,
and the past in American life. The histories of the preservation and commemoration of the
childhood homes of historical leaders reveal how these roles presented new ideas about the
family, women’s roles in society, and competing political ideals. By the turn of the 20th
century, the celebration of childhood homes of the founders, presidents, and other men
might be understood as a nostalgic response to an increasingly child-focused culture and
consumer life. On the other hand, because so many of these historic sites were developed
by women, they may have focused on the special characteristics of childhoods as signifi-
cant to historical characters. These women preservationists may have also sought to con-
nect the increasingly child-focused world they were a part of with a model of historic
leadership that included women as the primary role models and caregivers of great men.
The National Park Service first delved into the stewardship of presidential child-
hood homes as historic sites in the 1930s. These efforts included George Washington’s
“replica” memorial house and the “traditional cabin” that had been advertised as Abraham
Lincoln’s birthplace, but where he was almost certainly not born. These sites reveal the
tensions at many presidential childhood homes, whether run by the National Park Service
or others, between the competing strictures of commemoration and “authenticity,” each
meant to inspire Americans.
10
David I. Macleod, The Age of the Child: Children in America, 1890-1920, Twayne’s History of American
Childhood Series (New York: Twayne, 1998), 31.
9
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
Washington as a Model
The first president’s childhood has long been the subject of considerable speculation and
interest. Americans were and are interested in origin stories, despite the fact that it is often
difficult to know much about the childhoods of political leaders. Of George Washington, so
little was known that there has been a verifiable industry surrounding his biography—with
more than 20 books just devoted to his childhood alone. The origin of this obsession with
Washington’s youth may well hinge on the myths developed by storyteller Parson Mason
Locke Weems in his book Life of Washington (1806). Educational historians have argued
that Weems’s story of Washington, his hatchet, and the cherry tree’s “persistent inclusion
in school curricula highlights an American focus on a cultural identity and patriotism.”
11
This patriotic emphasis comes through to readers and students if the story has been pre-
sented as truth, and even if the story has been carefully couched in the critical language of
myth and folklore. Despite their perpetual debunking, many cling to these myths.
The Washington family house at Pope’s Creek, Virginia, in which George
Washington is believed to have been born, likely burned to the ground in 1779. However,
George Washington’s adopted grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, marked the site
he believed was once the president’s birthplace with an engraved stone in 1815. Eventually,
the Commonwealth of Virginia began to organize to preserve the site as of 1858, but that
project was set aside in the chaos of the Civil War.
12
By the end of the 19th century, there
were complicated and competing claims as to how to best remember Washington at the site
of his early childhood.
13
Later President Chester Arthur moved Congress to build a wharf
and erect a physical monument and obelisk (quite similar to the Washington Monument in
Washington, DC, in miniature) at the site. Finally, in 1930, President Herbert Hoover
signed an executive order and Congress made appropriations for the birthplace monument
11
Ann David, “Burying the Hatchet,” American Educational History Journal 43, no. 1/2 (2016): 149–65.
David analyzes more than 32 textbooks for children, mostly from the 19th century, to uncover how the story of
Washington and the cherry tree changed over more than 100 years.
12
It is worth noting that in the run up to the Civil War, Ann Pamela Cunningham and the organization that she
and her mother founded, the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, were also working to preserve the adult home of
George Washington, Mount Vernon. In many ways, the women involved in the preservation saw both their initial
work at the site and the work that followed the Civil War as an effort to heal the rifts that tore through the country
by unifying around the revered figure of George Washington. While the women (and men) involved in the effort
might not have agreed on Reconstruction, they could all agree on the rehabilitation of Mount Vernon. See Patricia
West’s excellent history of the political origins of Mount Vernon in “Inventing a House Undivided: Antebellum
Cultural Politics and the Enshrinement of Mount Vernon,” in her book. Patricia West, Domesticating History:
The Political Origins of America’s House Museums (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999), 1–37.
13
Seth C. Bruggeman, Here, George Washington Was Born: Memory, Material Culture, and the Public History
of a National Monument (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008).
10
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
to be supervised under the administration of the National Park Service.
14
However,
between 1926 and 1930, the Wakefield National Memorial Association, with the consent of
the Congress and the president, received permission to build a “replica” on the site. The
structure was meant to be similar to the home in which the nation’s first president would
have been born and be an appropriate place to reflect upon the sacred origins of the
founding president.
15
Almost in the model of Weems’s invention of Washington’s youth, a group of
Washington enthusiasts, a group of nearly all women led by Josephine Wheelwright Rust,
founded the Wakefield National Memorial Association to preserve the site of Washington’s
birth and early childhood home at Pope’s Creek. They “reconstructed” the house where he
was born, despite the fact that nothing was known about what the house would have
looked like. They developed their replica despite the then ongoing archaeological research
sponsored by the NPS that was uncovering evidence of foundations of the very house that
they sought to replicate. Thus, in the 1930s, a Washington birthplace home was created
whole cloth from the minds of his fans, while they ignored evidence that might have made
the home a more accurate representation of 1730s colonial Virginia. Today the Wakefield
Association’s symbolic gardens, historic plantings, and the “memorial” (replica) house are
centerpieces of a complex symbolic landscape that celebrates George Washington’s birth
but represents very little of what the domestic landscape might have looked like during his
first three years of his childhood at Wakefield
.
Importantly for the National Park Service, the site that became George
Washington’s Birthplace National Monument was one of the Service’s first forays into
historic site development and historical archaeology. Well into the 1990s, the NPS struggled
with what to do with the house on the site that was meant to be a replica, but that staff
increasingly had to admit was not a replica at all. By the time the NPS commissioned an
administrative history of the memorial, site administrators had dealt with interpreting
competing buildings and foundations for more than 70 years. The archaeological evidence
of the foundations from the house where Washington was born is now largely interpreted
through a crushed oyster-shell-outlined floor plan of the foundations.
16
However, the
memorial house attracts more attention than the outlined foundations. As a result, the site
14
Senate Bill 1784, 71st Congress, approved January 23, 1930. See the timeline of administrative legislation
relating to George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Bruggeman, “George Washington Birthplace
National Monument Administrative History,” ed. National Park Service (Washington, DC, 2006), appendix 3,
254–55.
15
HR 10131 and S 3513, 69th Congress, 1926, signed by President Coolidge on June 17, 1926.
16
In the fall 2022, the foundations of “Building X” (as the archaeological remains of the foundations of what is
believed to have been Washington’s birthplace is referred to) were being re-excavated for the first time since the
1930s. See George Washington Birthplace National Memorial, “In a recent post, we talked about brick recipes,
and what they may reveal about the history of Building X.” Facebook, May 19, 2022, and “The excavation at
George Washington Birthplace is well underway. So, what are we looking at?” Facebook, April 14, 2022,
https://www.facebook.com/GeorgeWashingtonBirthplaceNPS.
11
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
tells us as much about the commemorative practices of the 1930s as about 1732, when
Washington was born. This symbolic commemorative effort of the Wakefield Association
has now been in place long enough to be considered an important historical structure
itself. In 2006, the site’s administrative history revealed that the replica birthplace was likely
based on the designs from a Wakefield Association leader’s childhood home.
17
These
controversies at Washington’s birthplace offered many lessons for the Park Service about
the perils of commemoration, authenticity, and research at the childhood homes of
American presidents just as the Service headed into the business of historical site adminis-
tration more broadly.
Women’s Roles in Preserving and Recreating
the Birthplaces of Presidents
By the 1910s and the 1930s, women’s preservation organizations, like the Wakefield
Association, were not at all unusual. In the 1890s, at the same time there was an explosion
of house museums in the United States, the “woman’s sphere” had expanded greatly, and a
new generation of women embraced the “scientific and historical vision of the Gilded Age”
by participating in a new kind of “public motherhood.”
18
Through all kinds of civic organi-
zations and clubs, women (even those who were not technically mothers) participated in
public reform, historic preservation, and museum building. Their work was generally
supported by local governments as “long as they stopped short of [supporting] suffrage.”
19
Even before this period, women, like those who preserved Mount Vernon and formed the
Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, had embraced their roles in creating a “shared ances-
tral home and sacred heritage” through the development of historic house museums for a
“‘rootless’ populace.”
20
Women’s organizations like the Daughters of the American
Revolution (DAR), founded in 1890, and the more exclusive National Society of the
Colonial Dames of America (Dames), founded in 1891, were just two such heritage organi-
zations that made use of elite, White women’s civic-minded political power to develop a
series of historic sites dedicated primarily to celebrating the lives and childhoods of the
male founders of the nation. Some of these organizations focused their civic engagement
overtly on issues that were either inspired by White supremacy or by a vision of a romantic
17
Bruggeman, “George Washington Birthplace National Monument Administrative History,” 42.
18
Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920,”
American Historical Review 84, no. 2 (1984): 632, 31.
19
Cynthia Stavrianos, The Political Uses of Motherhood in America, Routledge Series on Identity Politics
(New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2015), 14.
20
West, Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America’s House Museums, 3.
12
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
lost White past.
21
By the turn of the century, White middle-class women and middle-class
women of color were also involved in the commemoration of great men like Frederick
Douglass. The Frederick Douglass Memorial and National Association of Colored
Women’s Clubs banded together to preserve Douglass’s adult home and final residence.
22
After the Civil War and before World War I, the United States saw a “proliferation of
birthplace monuments,” alongside a rise in the development of historical shrines, muse-
ums, monuments, and sites of all kinds.
23
By 1941, the DAR had acquired “more than 250”
historic properties.
24
Many of these organizations still run historic sites all across the
country, and they, and their chapter organizations, are the most prolific managers of
historic sites outside of the National Park Service.
Even before the Wakefield Association, women were preserving the birthplaces of
American Presidents. Lula Mackey, an attorney and resident of Niles, Ohio, personally
funded the relocation and elaborate restoration of William McKinley’s birthplace just a
few years after his death in 1901. Likewise, not long after President Theodore Roosevelt’s
death in 1919, the Women’s Roosevelt Memorial Association (WRMA) took up building a
replica of Theodore Roosevelt’s birthplace. Their replica house was designed by Theodate
Pope Riddle, a self-taught colonial revivalist, who worked with the WRMA from 1920 until
1923 when the new birthplace opened to the public. Riddle seems to have also taken on
much of the historic furnishing decisions at the site.
25
This site, like Washington’s birth-
place, eventually joined the National Park Service in 1963, despite its status as a replica.
Sites devoted to the childhood of pivotal figures in American history from presidents to
literary figures have most often been developed at least in part by women preservationists.
However, early on, the National Park Service’s work with presidential birthplaces was
troubled, as its first forays at Washington’s birthplace and Lincoln’s birthplace were
embroiled in questions of authenticity.
21
See Karen Cox, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of
Confederate Culture (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2019).
22
National Park Service, “Frederick Douglass National Historic Site Cultural Landscapes Inventory,”
(Washington, DC: National Park Service, 2013), 4.
23
Bruggeman, “Locating the Birthplace in American Memory,” 7–8.
24
West, Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America’s House Museums, 45.
25
National Park Service, “Historic Structures Report: Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site,”
ed. National Park Service (Washington, DC, 2008), 8–12.
13
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
The Rise of Childhood Homes and Birthplaces
as Sites of National Memory
Even before the National Park Service took over Washington’s birthplace, Americans were
fascinated by the childhoods of great men—and occasionally great women. Ohio
Congressman Albert Clifton introduced a bill to purchase the birthplace of President
Ulysses S. Grant in 1888, though it did not make it through Congress.
26
The house that was
ultimately preserved as Grant’s birthplace by a private group rather than the federal gov-
ernment had a checkered history. The house had toured the United States and even spent
time on the property of the Ohio State Fairgrounds. The structure is now considered, at
best, a replica—if not a hoax.
27
In 1900, longtime Maine Senator Eugene Hale presented a
petition for a monument in Hampden, Maine, to mark the birthplace of Dorothea Lynde
Dix, a reformer who advocated for better care for the mentally ill.
28
Poet John Greenleaf
Whittier’s birthplace was opened to the public in 1893, and Mark Twain’s (Samuel L.
Clemens’s) in 1915.
29
Stratford Hall, Robert E. Lee’s birthplace was preserved and opened
to the public by a chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1929.
30
In addi-
tion, Congress has sought over the years to recognize all kinds of birthplaces, inside and
outside the NPS: from the birthplaces of luminaries like Susan B. Anthony and Martin
Luther King Jr., to the birthplaces of ideas and organizations like the “birthplace of jazz”
(New Orleans) and the birthplace of “college basketball” (Geneva College in Beaver Falls,
Pennsylvania).
31
More recently, despite the controversies over the replica “memorial
house” at the site of Washington’s birth, a second Washington childhood home replica has
been produced at Ferry Farm near Fredericksburg, Virginia.
32
26
Resolution on the Birthplace of General Grant, January 4, 1888, 50th Congress, Mis. Doc. No. 78.
27
Bill Sloat, “Long Seen as Grant’s Birthplace, Home May Be a Historical Hoax,” Austin American Statesman,
February 12, 2000.
28
“Letter from the Superintendent of the Government Hospital for the Insane, Transmitting a memorial of the
National Dorothea Dix Memorial Association,” December 17, 1900, 56th Congress, Senate Document No. 49.
29
Hilary Iris Lowe, “Authenticity and Interpretation at Mark Twain’s Birthplace Cabins,” in Born in the U.S.A.:
Birth, Commemoration, and American Public Memory, ed. Seth C. Bruggeman (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2012), 99.
30
The site saw significant restoration and preservation in the 1930s, and the site seems to have been influenced
by the 1930s controversies at George Washington’s birthplace over the replica house and the conflicting evidence
provided by archaeology. See Paul Reber and Laura Lawfer Orr, “Stratford Hall: A Memorial to Robert E. Lee?,”
in Born in the U.S.A.: Birth, Commemoration, and American Public Memory, ed. Seth C. Bruggeman (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), 113–29.
31
Just a few of other such birthplaces after 1970 include the birthplace of “the wilderness concept,” “flight,”
“the US Navy,” “the industrial revolution in the United States,” “southern gospel music,” and “the National
Guard.” A detailed search of the Congressional Record would likely uncover many others.
32
This replica house does seem to be based on archaeological evidence. Cathy Jett, “New Washington House
Replica at Ferry Farm Opens Its Doors to Visitors,” The Free Lance Star, October 7, 2017.
14
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
Presidential sites have been a primary concern for Congress, the NPS and other
organizations, and George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt are just two of many
presidents who have birthplaces and childhood homes operated by federal, state, and local
governments, or nonprofit organizations. There are 19 US presidents who have birthplace
or childhood homes open to the public which are thought to be authentic, including those
of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant,
Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John
F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W.
Bush. Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan each have two such
childhood homes, and Woodrow Wilson’s childhood is particularly well remembered with
three separate childhood home museums dedicated to his memory, in addition to his adult
home in Washington, DC.
At least two birthplaces, that of Thomas Jefferson at Tuckahoe Plantation and
William Henry Harrison’s birthplace at Berkeley Plantation, are for-profit, privately owned
sites that are open to the public as museums. Belle Grove Plantation, James Madison’s
birthplace, is a for-profit bed and breakfast, where you can rent a room for the night and
take historic tours of the house and grounds. Several more birthplaces and childhood
homes are noted with simple markers because the house is still held as a private residence,
as is the case for houses that where James Madison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, Rutherford
B. Hayes, and George H. W. Bush lived as children.
Occasionally, birthplace and childhood homes are marked in other ways, especially
when the house has been lost, but the memory of the president is important to a commu-
nity. Millard Fillmore’s boyhood home no longer exists, but in its place, there is the Millard
Fillmore Boyhood Home Site, which features not just a historic marker but also picnic
tables, a pavilion, and a small garden. James Buchanan’s niece Harriet Lane Johnson, who
served as First Lady while he was in office, sought to purchase the place where he was born.
She died before she was able to do so, and in 1907, an organization purchased the plot of
land where he was born and built a pyramid-shaped memorial to Buchanan there from
native stone. The monument and land came as a gift to the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania, which turned them into a state park in 1911.
33
The house where Gerald R.
Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska, burned to the ground in 1971, but its site was given to
the state and developed into a memorial garden and nature conservation center. Other
communities and individuals created replica childhood homes and birthplaces when a
president’s childhood home had been destroyed. Replicas were constructed not just for
George Washington, but also for James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore, Abraham Lincoln,
Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, James A. Garfield, Chester Arthur, William McKinley,
Theodore Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson.
33
Jim Cheney, “Presidential History in Pa. Touring James Buchanan’s Home and Birthplace,” PennLive,
November 2016.
15
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
Despite the National Park Service’s “longstanding aversion to birth and burial
places except in cases of historical figures of transcendent importance,” 15 of the 31
presidential historic sites it administers are, or include, actual or replica childhood homes.
34
The National Park Service administers the “memorial house” at George Washington
Birthplace National Monument (1930),
35
the John Adams and John Quincy Adams birth-
places at Adams National Historical Park (added to the Park in 1979),
36
Lincoln’s “tradi-
tional [birthplace] cabin” at Abraham Lincoln Birthplace (1916),
37
Lincoln’s “re-created
1820s homestead” at Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial (1962),
38
Andrew Johnson’s
boyhood home at Andrew Johnson National Historic Site (1906/1942),
39
Theodore
Roosevelt’s “recreated birthplace” at Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace (1962),
40
the birth-
place and boyhood home of William Howard Taft at William Howard Taft National
Historic Site (1969),
41
Herbert Hoover’s birthplace at Herbert Hoover National Historic
Site (1965),
42
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s birthplace and family home at Home of Franklin D.
Roosevelt National Historic Site (1945),
43
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s childhood summer
retreat at Roosevelt Campobello International Park (1964),
44
John F. Kennedy’s birthplace
34
This number (31 sites) excludes sites that recognize many presidents, like Mount Rushmore. Barry
Mackintosh, “The Historic Sites Survey and National Historic Landmarks Program: A History,” ed. National
Park Service (Washington, DC: History Division, 1985), 69. Also in federal hands is the Eisenhower childhood
home in Abilene, Kansas, which is administered along with Eisenhower’s presidential library by the National
Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and the Richard M. Nixon birthplace is also part of Nixon’s
presidential library in Yorba Linda, California, administered by NARA.
35
George Washington Birthplace National Monument (GEWA) was established January 23, 1930, with Public
Law No. 34, 71st Congress (S. 1784).
36
Adams Mansion National Historic Site was established in 1946; the John Adams and John Quincy Adams
birthplaces were added to the Site in 1979. The historic site became Adams National Historical Park (ADAM)
on November 2, 1998, with Public Law No. 105-342, 105th Congress.
37
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace (ABLI) was established July 17, 1916, with Public Law 64-160, Stat. 385.
38
Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial (LIBO) was established February 19, 1962, with Public Law 87-407,
76 Stat. 9.
39
Andrew Johnson National Historic Site (ANJO) is authorized as a National Cemetery by the Secretary of War
in 1906, and eventually is transferred to the NPS as a National Monument by Executive Order 2554 on April 27,
1942.
40
Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace (THRB) was established on July 25, 1962, with Public Law 87-547, 76 Stat.
41
William Howard Taft National Historic Site (WIHO) was established on December 2, 1969, with Public Law
91-132.
42
Herbert Hoover National Historic Site (HEHO) was established on August 12, 1965, with Public Law 89-119
(79 Stat. 510).
43
Home of Franklin D Roosevelt National Historic Site (HOFR) was established in 1945, but legislation to
allow the federal government to accept the property was passed in 1939 during Roosevelt’s time in office.
See John F. Sears and John E. Auwaetrer, “FDR and the Land: Roosevelt Estate Historic Landscape Study,”
ed. Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation (Boston: National Park Service, 2011), 10.
44
Roosevelt Campobello International Park (ROCA) was established on July 7, 1964, with Public Law 88-363
(Stat. 78).
16
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
at John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site (1967),
45
Lyndon B. Johnson’s boyhood
home and his “reconstructed” birthplace at Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park
(1969),
46
Jimmy Carter’s childhood home at Jimmy Carter National Historical Park (1987),
47
and Bill Clinton’s “birthplace home” at President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace
Home National Historic Site (2009).
48
Of these many sites, only eight sites devoted to presidential childhood were estab-
lished and part of the National Park Service’s purview prior to the establishment of the
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site. These include George Washington’s
birthplace (1930), Lincoln’s birthplace (1916), Andrew Johnson’s boyhood home
(1906/1942), Franklin D. Roosevelt’s birthplace and family home at Hyde Park (1945),
Theodore Roosevelt’s “recreated birthplace” (1962), the Lincoln boyhood homestead
(1962), Franklin D. Roosevelt’s childhood summer retreat at Campobello Island (1964),
and Herbert Hoover’s birthplace (1965).
49
Developed during nearly the same period as the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National
Historic Site, but established in large part by President Johnson himself, the park devoted
to Johnson is unique in its attempt to interpret the entire life of a past president. Lyndon B.
Johnson worked diligently to have his historic site underway by the end of his presidency.
“The potent imagery of the birthplace was well understood by Lyndon B. Johnson,”
according to a journalist, so much so that “while he was Vice President he had a replica
built as a guest house.”
50
Johnson went so far as to let his Secretary of the Interior, Stewart
Udall, know that he wanted this structure to achieve National Historic Landmark status,
while he was still president. However, NPS staff “feared adverse public reaction to what
might be viewed as unseemly self-commemoration by the president.”
51
The then National Park Service Chief Historian, Robert Utley, who was personally
opposed to historic landmarks dedicated to living people, nonetheless expertly expanded
Johnson’s efforts by suggesting that the Advisory Committee for National Landmarks also
look at sites associated with Eisenhower and Truman and invited these former presidents
45
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site (JOFI) was established on May 26, 1967, with Public Law
09-20 (Stat. 81).
46
Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park (LYJO) was established December 2, 1969, with Public Law
91-134 (Stat. 83).
47
Jimmy Carter National Historical Park (JICA) was established on December 23, 1987, with Public Law
100-206 (101 Stat. 1434).
48
President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site (WICL) was established on
March 30, 2009, with Public Law 111-11.
49
The two 1962 sites had enabling legislation signed by John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
50
Brown, “Reliving Myth of the Presidential Log Cabin.”
51
Mackintosh, “The Historic Sites Survey and National Historic Landmarks Program: A History,” 85.
17
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
to suggest historic sites for nomination as well.
52
The final result of the internal struggle
over whether living people ought to be commemorated came in 1965, when NPS Director
George Hartzog and this Advisory Committee eventually concluded that “upon the elec-
tion of any man as president of the United States, an appropriate site be identified and
considered for classification as a National Landmark.”
53
Hartzog was concerned that the
historical makeup of much of the NPS units were all “birthplaces and battlefields, but
nothing in between about what the creative people who came to this country accom-
plished.” He was emphatic about expanding the inclusive history of the United States
beyond the president.
54
Before Johnson, each presidential childhood home and birthplace
had to be considered on its own merits. For example, Woodrow Wilson’s birthplace was
denied landmark status in 1945 because Advisory Committee members believed “it was too
contemporary with our own times.”
55
As late as 1964, the Committee declined the land-
mark status of both President Chester Arthur’s “reconstructed” birthplace and his boy-
hood home, which had been relocated.
56
Well into the 1960s NPS staff, and perhaps more
importantly many of the American public, had come to believe that “the craze for preserv-
ing birthplaces” was incomprehensible, given that these sites were “usually the least signifi-
cant structure in man’s life.”
57
The consequence of this turn of events was that national landmarks associated with
presidents came to be identified by the president himself or his family members, rather
than by a community or a group of preservation professionals at a later date. As a result,
sites chosen by presidents have often been associated with a nostalgic youth rather than the
president’s policies or other political roles as an adult. Few NPS sites devoted to American
presidents are as thorough as the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park (1969). Not
just President Johnson’s adult home, but his family ranch settlement, his grandparents’
home, his one-room schoolhouse, his boyhood home, and a replica birthplace are included
at the park.
52
Barry Mackintosh, The Historic Sites Survey and National Historic Landmarks Program: A History, History
Division, National Park Service, 1985, 86.
53
Advisory Board notes quoted in Mackintosh, 86.
54
George B. Hartzog Jr., Oral History, conducted by Janet A. McDonnell, September 21, October 4, and
November 3, 2005; Published 2007, 16.
55
Quoted in John H. Sprinkle Jr., Crafting Preservation Criteria: The National Register of Historic Places and
American Historic Preservation (New York: Routledge), 2014, note 38, 127.
56
John H. Sprinkle Jr., Crafting Preservation Criteria: The National Register of Historic Places and American
Historic Preservation (New York: Routledge, 2014), note 22, 191. It should be noted that this denial did not keep
the State of Vermont from making the sites associated with him, including the birthplace that was reconstructed
with state funds in 1953, into the Chester A. Arthur State Historic Site in Fairfield, Vermont. For more information
on the site’s history, see https://historicsites.vermont.gov/directory/arthur/history (accessed May 12, 2019).
57
John H. Sprinkle Jr., Crafting Preservation Criteria: The National Register of Historic Places and American
Historic Preservation (New York: Routledge, 2014), 152.
18
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
Figure 2. LBJ’s boyhood home. NPS, Cynthia Dorminey.
As the park’s website puts it, “Lyndon Johnson’s birthplace has the distinction of
being the only presidential birthplace reconstructed, refurbished, and interpreted by an
incumbent president.”
58
Over the next few years after the change in policy, childhood
homes, like John F. Kennedy’s, were quickly approved as landmarks (1964), and some were
later turned into historic sites administered by the NPS. Herbert Hoover’s birthplace was
promoted by Hoover’s son and became a landmark and then a national historic site in
1965. Meanwhile, the adult homes of presidents also became part of the National Register
of Historic Places. Kennedy’s home at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, was quietly made a
historic landmark almost a decade later, and Hoover’s adult home in Palo Alto, California,
became a landmark in 1984.
59
Some choices of where to develop historic sites, for instance
in choosing between childhood homes and adult homes, may have also hinged around
58
Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park, “Reconstructed Birthplace, Plan Your Visit,” National Park
Service, https://www.nps.gov/lyjo/planyourvisit/reconstructedbirthplace.htm, accessed May 29, 2022.
59
Mackintosh, “The Historic Sites Survey and National Historic Landmarks Program: A History,” 88.
19
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
political ideas. Tellingly, Richard Nixon suggested his birthplace in Yorba Linda for land-
mark status rather than his adult home. Nonetheless, in 1975 every president except
then-president Gerald Ford had a historic site with a Landmark designation.
In the wake of these changes in policy about historic landmark status for sites
associated with presidents and excitement over the Bicentennial, the National Park Service
commissioned a theme study on the subject of presidential history, which was completed in
1977.
60
Its authors had been asked to provide support for “The [Landmark Advisory]
board’s 1965 resolution that every president of the United States should be recognized.”
61
The study insisted that many “presidential residences, especially birthplaces, no longer
survive.”
62
By the time President Carter was asked to consider the historic importance of his
youth and the restoration of his childhood home (Carter was the first president to be born
in a hospital), he noted, “I can see the interest people have in it.” He offered that only he
could answer questions about the site, like, “What was your relationship with your father
like?” and “Where was the privy?”
63
However, the National Park Service was not excited
about welcoming another childhood home into the service. The Carter family complex was
even more extensive than Lyndon B. Johnson’s and more remote as well. It included not just
a childhood home and the Carters’ current residence, but also a school and a historic rail
depot. The cost for the restoration was estimated at $1.5 million. Shrinking from this addi-
tional responsibility, the NPS, according to Southeastern Region’s Regional Director Robert
M. Baker, was considering a “new policy that would bar memorials for former Presidents
until after their deaths.”
64
Despite this possibility, however, we can see that many birthplaces
and childhood homes do thrive. At present, there are more than 40 authentic and replica
birthplaces and childhood homes that are open to the public. Where originals did not
survive, communities have often resurrected them as replicas and reconstructions.
60
Eighteen individual theme studies were planned for the NPS by 1965, but none among them was specifically
devoted to presidential history. It seems odd today, given the high number of NPS sites associated with
presidents. This shift may show to some extent how the Park Service until 1965 was not specifically engaged in
identifying landmarks for presidents. These theme studies were broad and inclusive and often concentrated on
history of Native Americans, exploration, nation building, and artistic and scientific development, though they
did not look specifically at African American history, the history of slavery, the history of women, or the
presidents. The lack of attention to the presidency may have certainly been, in part, because much of the
preservation of sites like Mount Vernon and Monticello were well under way through private organizations.
For a full list of the planned studies, see “The Historic Sites Survey and National Historic Landmarks Program:
A History,” 89–90.
61
“The Historic Sites Survey and National Historic Landmarks Program: A History,” 92.
62
“The Historic Sites Survey and National Historic Landmarks Program: A History,” 92.
63
Brown, “Reliving Myth of the Presidential Log Cabin.”
64
Scott Shepard, “Presidential Memorial Restriction Considered,” Washington Post, June 23, 1985.
“Park Service Objects to Carter Historic Site,” New York Times, June 23, 1985.
20
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
The Birthplaces of Assassinated Presidents
The preservation of John F. Kennedy’s birthplace came about in the wake of his assassina-
tion. Like other childhood homes of assassinated presidents, the national grief and mourn-
ing brought commemoration and memorialization to the very places where they were born.
However, the circumstances surrounding the development of the birthplaces of Presidents
Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley were all substantially different. These three presidents
were all born in the middle of the country in very modest homes that were eventually lost
to fire and demolition. Unlike Kennedy’s birthplace, which was extant, each also included a
monument and the construction of a replica birthplace or childhood home. It is possible
that both the Kennedy family and the National Park Service took lessons from these efforts
to commemorate the boyhood homes and birthplaces of murdered presidents.
Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace
As early as 1865, those in search of Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace found only stones that
might have made up the foundation of the cabin’s “chimney site.”
65
Nonetheless, a cabin
was identified in 1895 as Lincoln’s birthplace by Alfred W. Dennett, “a New York-based
entrepreneur…[who] purchased Thomas Lincoln’s farm with plans to develop it into a
tourist attraction complete with a large hotel.”
66
Dennett and his local partners developed a
replica cabin made from other local cabins. Eventually, those involved claimed that some of
the logs that had been in the real Lincoln birthplace might have been repurposed into the
source cabins they had used to build their replica. However, Dennett marketed their cabin
as authentic. In addition, his group purchased a second cabin that they claimed was the
birthplace of Jefferson Davis. Both Davis and Lincoln had been born in Kentucky within
about 100 miles of each other. The circulation and coexhibit of the birthplaces of these two
men who stood on opposite sides of the Civil War was too compelling a tourist trap for
Dennett to pass up. These cabins went on display at the Tennessee Centennial in 1897 and
at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. Ultimately both cabins, dismantled
with their logs, intermixed and came to rest in Long Island by 1906.
65
Roy Hays, “Is the Lincoln Birthplace Authentic?” Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 5, no. 3 (1948): 127–63.
66
Dwight Pitcaithley, “Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace Cabin: The Making of an American Icon,” Myth, Memory,
and the Making of the American Landscape, ed. Paul A. Shackel (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001),
240–54, 242.
21
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
Figure 3. The “birth cabin” of Abraham Lincoln. NPS.
That same year, the geographic site of Lincoln’s birth was purchased by publisher
Robert Collier, who was sincerely interested in commemorating Lincoln at the physical
location of his birth. Collier founded the Lincoln Farm Association (LFA) with the goal of
turning the site and the cabin into a national park. The LFA collected evidence and local
testimonies about the authenticity of Dennett’s cabin and, despite much conflicting evi-
dence, chose to believe three affidavits that supported the authenticity of the Lincoln cabin
that Dennett circulated. These testimonies were likely produced by the same local partners
Dennett used in fabricating the cabin. With an elaborate fundraising effort that included
celebrities like Ida Tarbell, Mark Twain, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the LFA raised funds
to save the site and purchase the logs that made up both cabins (the connection to the Davis
cabin now having been forgotten). These logs were moved to the Kentucky birthplace site.
In time for the 1911 opening of a colossal memorial building, a new cabin made
from these various pieces was eventually reconstructed at the site inside the memorial
building.
67
In 1933, the National Park Service acquired the site through President Franklin
D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order No. 6166, which transferred nearly all the historic sites
67
NPS historian Dwight Pitcaithley diligently and exhaustively traced the history of the various Lincoln
birthplace cabins, the Davis cabin, and the cabin constructed at the memorial. His thorough account much more
fully illuminates the characters involved in the schemes to develop the site and the national effort to
commemorate the place of Lincoln’s birth. See Dwight Pitcaithley, “Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace Cabin: The
Making of an American Icon,” in Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape, ed. Paul A.
Shackel (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 240–54.
22
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
managed by the War Department and other areas of the federal government to a revitalized
National Park Service and became the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical
Park. This newly organized service was dedicated not just to the large-scale nature parks in
the west but increasingly to historic sites. National Park Service staff, having learned from
the events at George Washington Birthplace National Monument, quietly questioned the
Lincoln birthplace’s authenticity for years before scholars openly began questioning it in
1948.
68
By 1950, the NPS’s official opinion on the cabin’s veracity noted that “there simply
isn’t any trustworthy recorded evidence for the authenticity of the cabin,” and any actual
logs or elements from the original birthplace cabin of Lincoln would likely have had to be
totally “accidental.”
69
As of 2020, despite the site’s lack of authenticity, approximately
240,000 people visit the park each year.
70
James A. Garfield’s Birthplace
Lincoln’s birthplace replica might have been the first presidential childhood home replica,
but it was far from the last. Perhaps because James A. Garfield was assassinated so early in
his time as president, serving only four months before suffering the injuries that killed him,
he was mourned greatly by the nation.
71
Memorials associated with Garfield are now
common, but few historic sites associated with him exist. The James A. Garfield Monument
in Cleveland, Ohio, was completed in 1890 with funds raised by the Garfield National
Monument Association, led by Jeptha A. Wade. The monument serves as the tomb of the
president and First Lady Lucretia Rudolph Garfield.
72
Meanwhile, the primary historic site
associated with Garfield is his adult home, Lawnfield, which he purchased in 1876 and
renovated, and where he lived with his family (his wife, mother, and children) until his 1881
presidency.
73
In 1980, Lawnfield became the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in
68
Roy Hays, “Is the Lincoln Birthplace Authentic?,” Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 5, no. 3 (1948): 127–63. On
the NPS concern for authenticity, see Pitcaithley, “Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace Cabin: The Making of an
American Icon,” 239.
69
NPS historian Charles Porter, quoted in “Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace Cabin: The Making of an American
Icon,” 250.
70
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, Press Release: “Tourism to the Abraham Lincoln
National Historical Park Creates Over $19 Million in Economic Benefit,” National Park Service, Abraham
Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, June 15, 2020.
71
John M. Taylor, “Post-Assassination Gloom in the Gilded Age,” Manuscripts 53, no. 3 (2001): 219–24.
72
“Garfield Monument,” in Encyclopedia of Cleveland History (Cleveland: Case Western University, 2019).
73
James Garfield served as the president of Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio, and in 2013 Hiram College
purchased the house that Garfield lived in while he worked at the college. In 2017, the college sponsored
archaeological work at the house to uncover outbuildings. Carol Biliczky, “Hiram Purchases Historical House
Once Owned by President Garfield,” Akron Beacon Journal, November 12, 2018. Karen Farkas, “President
James A. Garfield’s Former Home to Be Studied by Archeologists,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 11, 2017.
23
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
Mentor, Ohio, administered by the National Park Service. After her husband’s assassina-
tion, Lucretia Rudolph Garfield developed an addition to Lawnfield which served as one of
the first presidential libraries.
74
Not long after his assassination, numerous Garfield biographies were published;
not the least among them was Horatio Alger’s From Canal Boy to President, or the Boyhood
and Manhood of James A. Garfield (1881).
75
Alger’s story was for young readers, of course,
and focused on how a boy of modest means came to be president. Alger believed that “our
annals afford no such incentive to youth as does his life, and it will become one of the
Republic’s household stories.”
76
Alger’s tale, much like Parson Weems’s, from its very first
chapter mythologizes Garfield’s birthplace as a “small and rudely-built log cabin,” noting
that Garfield’s father had built the abode not long before his tragic death.
77
In this tale, the
cabin became a “thing of the past,” when Garfield and his older brother built his mother a
new farmhouse when Garfield was 14.
78
Because Garfield’s log-cabin origin was so crucial
to his popular biography, descriptions of it are included in many of his early biographies.
Another biographer Charles Carleton Coffin, for instance, describes it as “eighteen by
twenty feet, containing one room. It had two doors and three windows,” with a bark roof
and crudely made fireplace. According to Coffin, Garfield’s parents were “too far from
civilization, and too poor in pocket, to obtain a sash or purchase glass.”
79
As a result,
Garfield is often described as the “last” of the log-cabin presidents.
74
This site is perhaps worthy of comparison to the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site because it
includes a room where Garfield’s mother lived after his assassination and her room, lined with photographs of
her son, shows one way a grieving mother, who had been involved with her president son’s political life, dealt
with his loss.
75
Horatio Alger (1832–99) was the author of Ragged Dick (1868) and many other novels for young people that
featured the rise in status of a poor and earnest boy out of poverty to the middle class (“rags-to-riches”), often
through a good deed performed for successful, older businessmen. Horatio Alger’s stories were immensely
popular during the 1870s and 1880s, and then saw a resurgence in popularity after his death (1900–20), when
they appeared in inexpensive pulp editions. Complicating his popular narratives of poor, young, White men
dependent upon the good graces of men in power is Alger’s own history which includes his sexual abuse of
young men while serving as a clergyman. On the America myth of the self-made-man and Alger’s role in it, see
John William Tebbel, From Rags to Riches; Horatio Alger, Jr. and the American Dream (New York,: Macmillan,
1963). For more on Alger’s biography and writing, including his biographies of Presidents Garfield and Lincoln
(and a debunking of the “rags-to-riches” myth), see Gary Scharnhorst and Jack Bales, The Lost Life of Horatio
Alger, Jr (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).
76
Alger quotes Chauncey M. Depew on this sentiment in Horatio Alger, John R. Anderson & Co., and Juvenile
Collection (Library of Congress), From Canal Boy to President, or, the Boyhood and Manhood of James A.
Garfield (New York: John R. Anderson & Company, no. 17 Murray Street, 1881), 5.
77
From Canal Boy to President, or, the Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield, 9.
78
From Canal Boy to President, or, the Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield, 19.
79
Charles Carleton Coffin, The Life of James A. Garfield (Boston: J. H. Earle, 1880), 26.
24
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
Despite the proliferation of Garfield biographies in the late 19th century, some
presidential scholars have noted that he is rarely remembered today. Little is known about
the fate of the cabin where he was born.
80
Yet the Bicentennial prompted renewed local
interest in the Garfield site. A kiosk was erected in 1976 to display information about
Garfield’s childhood and family, and in 1980 the Moreland Hills Historical Society was
formed to “tell the story of Garfield’s youth.” By the 1980s, the Society set about recreating
Garfield’s birthplace cabin and completing archaeological studies of the site where it was
located. Today, a “reconstructed” birthplace cabin sits inside the James A. Garfield Birth
Site Park, and the park includes waysides that recount the stories of “Garfield’s canal days,
his preaching and teaching.”
81
William McKinley’s Birthplace
Of all the national efforts to commemorate presidents, the National McKinley Birthplace
Memorial (completed and opened to the public in 1917) has perhaps the most complicated
tale of any of the extant birthplaces of assassinated presidents. McKinley’s birthplace was
the subject of local interest even while he was governor of Ohio. However, by 1911 when
the National McKinley Birthplace Association was founded, ten years after his assassina-
tion, the house was no longer in downtown Niles, Ohio. The house had been relocated not
once but three times, and was then about two miles from its original location. Over the
years since he resided there, the home had been expanded. In 1894, after relic hunters had
“besieged” the site and when the house’s original downtown location was desirable for a
new bank, the house was divided into two halves.
82
One half, where McKinley was said to
have been born, was moved to a nearby amusement park (Riverside Park) sometime while
McKinley was governor. It became so associated with McKinley that by the 1900 presiden-
tial election his opponent, William Jennings Bryan, made a special effort to hold a cam-
paign rally at the park.
83
80
Alan Peskin, “From Log Cabin to Oblivion,” American History Illustrated 11, no. 19 (1967): 25–34.
81
See the website for the Moreland Hills Historical Society, “About Us,” https://mhhsohio.org/about-us for a
brief account of the site’s history, accessed May 23, 2022.
82
“McKinley Birthplace Torn Down,” Washington Post, May 22, 1894. “McKinley’s Birthplace: Old Homestead
at Niles, Ohio, Now Site of Savings Bank,” Rosebud County News June 8, 1905.“
83
“Mr. Bryan Speaks at Canton: Says One Term Is Enough for a President—Also Speaks at Mr. McKinley’s
Birthplace,” New York Times, October 16, 1900. William McKinley launched his first gubernatorial campaign
from Niles, Ohio, giving a speech from the ivy-covered balcony of his birthplace house. “The Work Begun: The
Republican Campaign in Ohio Finally Opened,” Evening Bulletin, August 24, 1891. During his first presidential
election, McKinley enthusiasts made campaign mementos from relics from McKinley’s home. “Political Notes,”
Daily Inter Ocean, Septmber 11, 1896.
25
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
McKinley’s assassination in 1901 at the same Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo,
New York, where the Lincoln birthplace cabin was on exhibit, brought images of his own
birthplace to the front pages of newspapers across the country and focused attention on
the town where he was born.
84
However, when the amusement park closed that same year,
the house fell into disrepair. By 1909 a local attorney and McKinley enthusiast, Lulu E.
Mackey, moved the house again to her estate Tibbetts Corners (just a few miles outside of
downtown Niles).
85
There, she eventually rejoined the two halves of the house and restored
it. She opened the house as a museum devoted to the 25th president’s life and displayed her
collection of McKinley memorabilia. It became a popular destination for tourists. Despite
her efforts and the fact that the museum was the actual physical structure where the presi-
dent was born, a McKinley childhood friend, Joseph C. Butler, organized a separate memo-
rial organization for downtown Niles. After the construction of the large-scale “birthplace
memorial” in 1917, supported in part by federal funds, attendance at Mackey’s birthplace
home museum lagged. Nonetheless, Mackey kept the birthplace house open until her death
in 1934. The house was destroyed by fire three years later.
86
The colossal neoclassical William McKinley Birthplace Memorial in downtown
Niles did not include the actual birthplace structure, but it was an effort to both remember
the president’s time in Niles and to provide a substantial public library for the community,
which could also display relics and mementos associated with McKinley’s life and career.
87
However, in a strange twist of fate, in 2003, after the donation of the original lot where the
house once stood, the McKinley Memorial Library constructed a $700,000 replica of his
birthplace, “furnished with antique pieces true to the era, but not original items.”
88
The
replica is called the McKinley Birthplace Home and Research Center and is part of a large
campus of memorial sites in Niles, Ohio, that include the McKinley Memorial Library and
the McKinley Memorial Museum.
89
84
See, for instance, images of the president, Mrs. McKinley, his birthplace, and their home in Canton, Ohio, in
The Chicago Tribune, September 7, 1901, in the Bismarck Daily Tribune [North Dakota], September 16, 1901,
and the Bellefontaine Republican (Bellefontaine, Ohio), September 17, 1901.
85
“Buys McKinley Birthplace; Ohio Woman Lawyer Will Make House Long Used by Tramps, a Museum,”
Washington Post, November 29, 1909.
86
The Niles Historical Society in Niles, Ohio, has pieced together a number of the details of the house’s division
and two moves and its eventual destruction on its website. Niles Historical Society, “The Story of Lot #20,
President William McKinley’s Birthplace,” Niles Historical Society, http://www.nileshistoricalsociety.org/lot20.htm.
87
For a full description of what was planned, see “To Perpetuate Memory of a President,” Sea Coast Echo,
November 23, 1912. Among the fundraising efforts for the site was the Congressionally sanctioned development
of 1,000 McKinley Birthplaces Souvenir dollar coins, which were distributed by the McKinley Birthplace
Association. “No Reason for Lack of 1-Cent Pieces,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, November 4, 1917.
88
“Replica of McKinley Childhood Home Dedicated,” Associated Press State & Local Wire, May 5, 2003.
89
For more information on the replica and the memorial, see the website of the McKinley Memorial Library
(http://www.mcklib.org).
26
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
The birthplace of John F. Kennedy made its way to the National Park Service after more
than a century and a half of presidential birthplace commemoration in the United States.
NPS employees had learned much from its management of presidential sites, especially
birthplaces, that did not meet their growing professional standards for authenticity. The
Kennedy birthplace’s preservation and restoration came in the wake of the tragedy of
Kennedy’s assassination, but also after other Americans and the agency had worked for
years to commemorate three previously assassinated presidents. By 1963, the National Park
Service had a controversial history with presidential birthplaces, and some staff had a
general sense that birthplaces were less critical to preserve than other sites that might tell
the public more about where and how great men and women did their work.
90
It was under
these institutional and contextual conditions that in 1963 individuals in Brookline,
Massachusetts, responded to the tragedy of President Kennedy’s death, and the National
Park Service began to tentatively and cautiously follow community and family activity at
Kennedy’s birthplace in Brookline.
90
Barry Mackintosh, “Interpretation in the National Park Service,” ed. National Park Service History Division
(Washington, DC, 1986), 23.
27
Remembering the Childhood Homes of US Presidents
CHAPTER THREE
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
D
uring John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, images of his birthplace in
Brookline were featured in photographic essays about his life and biography. The
Boston Globe ran a multiday series on Kennedy’s “New England Heritage.” The
full-page spread from July 1960 not only ran a snapshot of an adorable eight-year-old Jack
Kennedy but also images of the house at 83 Beals Street. Several showed the interior of the
house, including the living room and the bedroom where he was born. Both, of course,
were quite changed in the 40 years since he had lived there.
1
After he became president, the
attention to Kennedy’s birthplace intensified. By late February 1961, newspapers became
interested in the maintenance and upkeep of the house, and an elderly resident and part-
owner of the house, Martha Pollack, asked the Brookline Selectmen if they could help
repaint her “weather-beaten” home. The selectmen found that the town could not legally
do so directly, but eventually 25 members of a local chapter of the Paint and Decoration
Contractors Association of America painted the house instead (Figure 4).
2
The issue of maintenance put the home on the minds of both Brookline’s selectmen
and area schoolchildren, who began to see the house, its upkeep, and its commemoration
as part of Brookline’s responsibility. They organized to place a bronze plaque outside the
birthplace.
3
Thus began a decade of local, state, familial, and federal interest in preserving
Kennedy’s birthplace, which would lead it to become the national historic site it is today.
Before the official marking of the birthplace site with the plaque, some questioned
whether John F. Kennedy was born in the house on Beals Street. In March of 1962, as
conversations about the plaque were escalating, one selectman, Eugene P. Carver Jr., who
was part of a five-person Brookline committee appointed to develop “a plan for preserving
the [birthplace] home,” claimed that Joseph Kennedy had told him personally, sometime in
the 1940s, that John Kennedy had been born at the Hotel Beaconsfield.
4
After Rose
Kennedy publicly declared John Kennedy to have been born in the house, the committee
1
“New England Heritage: A Picture Story of the Democratic Presidential Nominee from Birth through School
Years,” Boston Globe, July 15, 1960.
2
“Brookline Can’t Paint Birthplace of Kennedy,” Boston Globe, February 28, 1961.
3
“Brookline Pupils Urge Kennedy Birthplace Plaque,” Boston Globe, November 18, 1962, “Painters Swarm in
Brookline: Free Facial for Kennedy House,” Boston Globe, September 12, 1961.
4
“Uncertain on Kennedy Birthplace,” Boston Globe, March 11, 1962.
28
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
placed the commemorative plaque in front of the house later that year.
5
Martha Pollack
granted an easement of land to Brookline for the plaque’s placement, and in return, the
town agreed to maintain the front area of the yard.
6
Figure 4. Painting House, circa 1961. JOFI 1504, Box 14, Folder 2.
Even with the plaque in place and the house freshly painted, there was still a linger-
ing local interest in developing the house into a historic shrine. A newspaper article noted a
year before, in late 1961, that there was a proposal to acquire “President Kennedy’s birth-
place, and eight surrounding homes, as a shrine” dedicated to Kennedy. The local group,
Brookline Barracks of the Veterans of World War I suggested that Brookline slowly acquire
the homes surrounding the Kennedy Birthplace and raze these houses to make a park. This
idea was soundly rejected by the neighbors whose homes would have been demolished in
the plan. For instance, Natalie Broudy, who lived at 77 Beals Street, quickly identified
neighborhood redevelopment in Brookline as part of her resistance to the idea of a shrine.
“They tried to get urban redevelopment in the area and the government turned them
down. Have they no feelings for the residents?” Another neighbor, Ruth Joffe at 103 Beals
Street, brought up the specter of the Cold War: “Do they think we’re in Russia where they
can take our homes and give us assessment value alone?”
7
Federal urban renewal projects
5
Gary Kayakachoian, “Mrs. Kennedy Ends Confusion over President’s Birthplace,” Boston Globe, March 25
1962. “Tablet Finally Marks Kennedy Birthplace,” Boston Globe, September 12, 1962.
6
“Kennedy Birthplace: A National Shrine?,” Boston Globe, November 5, 1963. “Brookline to Get Big Pay
Hike,” Boston Globe, March 13, 1963.
7
“Neighbors Kick Up Fuss: They Don’t Want a Shrine Made of Kennedy Home,” Boston Globe,
December 15, 1961.
29
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
had been doing just that throughout the 1950s and 1960s in nearby Boston and in
Brookline.
8
Another neighbor, Florence Palladino, put it even more bluntly and perhaps in
response to NPS sites being developed in the greater Boston area: “They need a park in this
area like they need a hole in the head.”
9
On another front, the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts was interested in commemorating the president. In January of 1963, a
petition was made to investigate where to place a state plaque at John F. Kennedy’s legal
residence and campaign headquarters at his apartment at 122 Bowdoin Street in Boston.
However, this proposal was eventually rejected in March of that same year.
10
Despite losing the state-level battle to mark Kennedy’s apartment and the vehement
disinterest in a “shrine” by the neighbors, discussion of the development of a shrine at the
birthplace stayed in newspapers like The Boston Globe until just weeks before the
President’s assassination on November 22, 1963.
11
8
See Warren Boeschenstein, “Design of Socially Mixed Housing,” Journal of the American Planning
Association 3, no. 5 (1971): 311–18. There had been efforts of urban planners to redevelop the “Brookline Farm
Area,” a neighborhood that had traditionally been where the non-live-in domestic staff who served Brookline’s
elite had lived along with other low-income residents in Brookline. The Farm Urban Renewal Project removed
more than 200 low-income families from the neighborhood. It was one of the few renewal efforts nationally
where there was an attempt in the 1960s to develop and integrate “mixed-income” housing. After the “slum” area
was cleared, one hundred public housing units, 116 middle-income houses, and 762 upper-income houses were
created. However, only 45 percent of those displaced moved back to their neighborhood. Brookline instead took
homes from the poor and developed, with public money, housing for elite residents which included swimming
pools, three tennis courts, and a badminton-volleyball court. These amenities were only open to residents in the
upper-income housing initially. Eventually, the Redevelopment Authority did succeed in badgering the upper-
income residents into opening a pool to lower-income residents. At the time of the initial discussion of a Kennedy
shrine at the house, the redevelopment was well underway, but wouldn’t be completed until the same year the
birthplace opened to the public as an NPS site: 1969. For a general discussion of the substantial impact of urban
renewal in the Boston area, see Thomas H. O’Connor, Building a New Boston: Politics and Urban Renewal,
1950–1970 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993); and Jim Vrabel, A People’s History of the New Boston
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014). For a study of how the NPS worked with and through urban
renewal in the Boston area, see Seth Bruggeman, Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and
Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2022).
9
“Neighbors Kick Up Fuss: They Don’t Want a Shrine Made of Kennedy Home.”
10
See Massachusetts House of Representatives, Journal of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1963), 266, 956.
11
“Kennedy Birthplace: A National Shrine?” Although the article mentions that the selectmen were to take up
the discussion of a shrine again at their November 13, 1963, meeting, minutes from that meeting reveal nothing
of what was discussed, and ten days later the discussion immediately took on a different tone after the President’s
assassination.
30
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
Figure 5. National Day of Mourning at the birthplace, Getty Images, from Temple Kehillath Israel Archives.
After Kennedy’s assassination, individuals and communities across the United
States and the globe evaluated their connections with the former president as they grieved.
Newspapers ran headlines that outlined what Kennedy meant to their communities, and
many found their own ways to memorialize the fallen president. Across the United States,
schools, civic centers, airports, roads, ships, and bridges were quickly named or renamed
for President Kennedy, and swiftly a silver dollar was slated for minting in his memory.
Across the globe, there were nearly immediate calls for postage stamps in Kennedy’s honor
(and 60 countries produced such stamps, 26 more countries than had memorialized
31
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
Franklin Delano Roosevelt).
12
In Boston, many headlines claimed sentiments like “In
Boston—People Wept: Shock Is Greatest in Kennedy Home City” and “Brookline Was His
Birthplace: Whole Boston Area His Home.”
13
Early reporting suggested that the president
would be buried alongside his infant son in Brookline.
14
Federal commemorative efforts
were concentrated on Kennedy’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery and on renaming
and developing a new national performing arts center in his honor.
15
In Brookline, memorial efforts centered around the birthplace. Initial discussions of
a birthplace shrine in Brookline were met with resistance along Beals Street and, according
to some reporting, “discord” among the interest parties. While Martha Pollack had fought
off attempts to turn her house and the immediate neighborhood into a shrine in 1961, after
the president’s death, it appeared as though she felt “differently.”
16
However, reporting
indicated that some neighbors were still willing to “fight to keep our houses.” Mrs. Saul
Vanderwoude, for instance, argued that “this Kennedy project is going too far…It would be
more of a memorial to have nice people living there.” Nonetheless, local Brookline
Massachusetts representative Beryl Cohen began working with the state legislature to
encourage the state’s “taking of the dwelling and surrounding homes for a memorial park.”
17
Nationally, conversations about the preservation and importance of the Kennedy
birthplace site also changed after the president’s assassination. Almost immediately, the
house became a focus of mourning for diverse groups of Americans. Many came from all
over the country to pay tribute to Kennedy’s life at the Brookline house. Civil rights activ-
ists from Williamston, North Carolina, came to the birthplace to sing protest songs like
“We Shall Overcome,” “Black and White,” and “The Lord Will Make Us Free,” to remem-
ber “our greatest champion.” Newspaper accounts noted that Beals Street “neighbors came
out on the sidewalks and swayed with the singers.” Despite the brief moment of shared
12
“From Schools to Silver Dollars…in Memory,” Boston Globe, November 29, 1963; Ernest A. Kerr, “Many
Nations Rushing JFK Commemorative,” Boston Globe, December 8, 1963; Victor O. Jones, “Memorials,”
Boston Globe, December 25, 1963. Michael J. Hogan, The Afterlife of John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Biography
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 129.
13
“In Boston—People Wept: Shock Is Greatest in Kennedy Home City,” Boston Globe, November 23, 1963;
“Brookline Was His Birthplace: Whole Boston Area His Home,” Boston Globe, November 23, 1963.
14
“Hundreds Watch in Dark,” Boston Globe, November 23, 1963.
15
Historian Michael Hogan uncovers the complicated funding and role of the Kennedy family (especially
Jacqueline Kennedy) played in the development of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and
gives an account of the construction of the most “successful” and “popular” Kennedy site of memory—the
Kennedy tomb at Arlington National Cemetery, in his book. See Hogan, The Afterlife of John Fitzgerald
Kennedy: A Biography, 140–52. Congress appropriated $15.5 million for the John F. Kennedy Center for
Performing Arts in January of 1964 and broke ground on it, after raising the bulk of the cost for it from private
foundations and more than 10,000 individual gifts, that same year. Public Law 88-260, January 23, 1964.
16
“At JFK Birthplace—Discord; 3-Way Struggle in Brookline on Seizure for Kennedy Shrine,” Boston Globe,
December 14, 1963.
17
“At JFK Birthplace—Discord; 3-Way Struggle in Brookline on Seizure for Kennedy Shrine.” See also, “Bill
Asks State Take Birthplace,” Brookline Chronicle-Citizen, December 5, 1963; “Selectmen Approve Article on
JFK Birthplace,” Brookline Chronicle-Citizen, December 12, 1963.
32
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
grief, the visitors knew that Boston and Brookline both had “segregated neighborhoods
and segregated schools,” and the mourning singers had to stay with Black families in
Roxbury.
18
Closer to home, two days after the assassination, much of the congregation of
the nearby Temple Kehillath Israel, led by Rabbi Manuel Saltzman, solemnly walked down
Beals Street to place a wreath at the birthplace.
19
That day, Brookline schoolchildren and
many others did the same, when the entire nation observed a national day of mourning
(Figure 5).
20
By December 25th, officials in Brookline were formally investigating the making of
a shrine for the slain president and proposing that the birthplace might be purchased from
Martha Pollack or taken through “eminent domain.” Picked to lead the Brookline
Birthplace Memorial Committee were Thomas J. Noonan, a former selectman, as chair;
George V. Brown Jr.; George D. McNeilly; Hamilton Coolidge; Eugene P. Carver; Sumner
Chertok; Theresa Morse; Daniel Tyler Jr.; James A. Lowell; and Manuel Saltzman.
21
Among
these were two Brookline selectmen, a representative of the Brookline Planning Board, at
18
Gloria Negri, “Kennedy Tribute by N.C. Negroes: Sing at Brookline Birthplace,” Boston Globe, December 25
1963. “We don’t make believe to ourselves that discrimination and segregation don’t exist here in the North. You
have stayed with families in Roxbury,” Dr. [William] Ryan told them. “You have seen with your own eyes that
we have segregated neighborhoods and segregated schools.” Ryan was the Chairman of the Brookline Civil
Rights Committee. Brookline neighborhoods, like many towns in the North and South, had in place racially
discriminatory housing covenants throughout most of the 20th century. For a recent documentary about
Brookline’s slow path toward racial inclusion, see R. Harvey Bravman’s 2019 film Brookline: Facing Civil
Rights. See also “Town Reconciles with Black History,” Brookline.com,
March 19, 2018. Even in recent years,
Brookline continues to struggle with economic racial segregation; see the Town of Brookline’s Select Board
meeting notes, which includes a significant bibliography about segregation in the town today. Brookline Select
Board, “Warrant Article Explanations Filed by Petitioners for the November 19, 2019, Town Meeting”
(Brookline, Massachusetts, 2019).
19
Leo Shapiro, “Synagogues, Hebrew Schools Pay Tearful Tribute,” Boston Globe, November 25, 1963. See
also the images in Jean Kramer, Brookline, Massachusetts: A Pictorial History (Boston: Historical Publishing
Company, 1989), 144–45.
20
“Boston: Thousands at Services, All Business Is Stilled,” Boston Globe, November 25, 1963.
21
George V. Brown Jr. was the Chairman of the Brookline Selectmen and the son of Boston Marathon Founder,
George V. Brown Sr. Sumner Chertok was intimately involved in the redevelopment of Brookline in the 1960s as
the director of the Brookline Redevelopment Authority. Chertok was adamant that Brookline must eliminate
“blight” “since we just don’t have any vacant land to develop further.” Chertok was in charge of the lengthy
project to develop the Brookline Farm Area and was intimately acquainted with the power of eminent domain.
See Anthony Yudis, “Old Buildings Must Be Replaced by Modern Construction, Brookline Problem: No Room
to Expand,” Boston Globe, October 3, 1965. Theresa Morse was the Chairman of the Brookline Housing
Authority, a long-time social worker in Brookline, and president of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters;
her husband Alan Morse was also a Selectman for Brookline. See Edgar J. Driscoll, “Theresa Morse, Community
Leader on Housing, Social Services,” Boston Globe, November 28, 1983. Daniel Tyler Jr. was a Brookline
selectman for 15 years, an official with the MTA, and the Massachusetts Republican State Committee Chairman.
See “Daniel Tyler Jr., 68, Ex-State Gop Head,” Boston Globe, May 22, 1967. James A. Lowell was a prominent
educator in Brookline, serving as an English teacher and as the headmaster at the Park School; he was also
president of the Brookline Historical Society. See “James Lowell, 84; Was Headmaster at Brookline School,
Taught English,” Boston Globe, June 5, 1984. Manuel Saltzman was the Rabbi at the Congregation Kehillath
Israel, which is located in the synagogue (built 1924) on Harvard Street that met the south end of Beals Street.
33
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
least one veteran of World War I, representatives of the Housing Authority, the Brookline
Historical Society, the chairman of Brookline Redevelopment Authority, and a rabbi who
was also involved in the nearby North Brookline Improvement Committee.
22
On the state level, throughout 1964, the Massachusetts House was bogged down
with petitions and commissions to name holidays after President Kennedy, to name an
airport, expressway, turnpike, stadium, ice skating rink, swimming pool, dam, and many
schools after him. There were a great number of requests to convene special commissions
to establish a “suitable memorial to the memory of the late President,” other than the one
designated for Brookline and suggested by Representative Cohen. There were requests for
official state portraits, awards, and the erection of a Kennedy statue in Copley Park. One
Thomas A. Sheehan, a Democratic representative from Dorchester, proposed creating a
special commission that would look into the “advisability of changing the Seal of the
Commonwealth in such a manner as to memorialize the former president.” Someone else
proposed adding “Land of Kennedy” to the official language on car license plates.
23
The
petition from Brookline for state appropriations for a “suitable memorial to commemorate
the birthplace of John Fitzgerald Kennedy” was put forward formally by Fredya Koplow,
Matthew Brown, “and other (selectmen)” on January 1, 1964.
24
Despite some movement on
behalf of the state legislature, the birthplace was still in limbo at the end of 1964.
The National Park Service Assesses the Site
In March of 1964, the then superintendent of Minute Man National Historical Park
(Minute Man), Edwin Small, visited Brookline to assess the site and the community’s
interest in it. Small started his career at the Park Service in 1935 when he was hired on as a
historian for the New Deal effort to survey the state of historic architecture and preserva-
tion of the United States, during the Great Depression. The 1930s were the National Park
Service’s first real forays into the preservation and administration of historic sites. Inspired
both by an NPS director, Arno B. Cammerer, who was interested in historic sites, the
reorganization of all branches of the federal government under Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
and the National Historic Sites Act (1935), the Park Service began to catalog, document,
and develop select historic sites for the first time. Small was there for the beginning. After
22
“Brookline Picks Group to Study Kennedy Shrine,” Boston Globe, December 25, 1963.
23
See the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Journal of the House of Representatives of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1964), 49, 54, 150, 62, 223, 28, 32–38,
91, 94, 302, 303, 306, 307, 319, 322–26, 602, 718, 963, 97, 1760.
24
The original Brookline petition was put forward by Beryl Cohen (Dem) and taken up by Fredya Koplow
(GOP); both were battling in March of 1964 for Brookline’s seat in the Massachusetts Senate. See “Primary
Clinched by Cohen, Koplow,” Boston Globe, March 25, 1964. After the special election, Cohen won with Ted
Kennedy’s endorsement, despite the Republican stronghold in Brookline. “Cohen Triumphs, GOP Claims Foul,”
Boston Globe, April 15, 1964.
34
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
serving in Navy intelligence in World War II, he returned to NPS to serve as the superinten-
dent of the Salem Maritime National Historic Site. He then took on the role of leading the
Boston National Historic Sites Commission, which was tasked with identifying and devel-
oping Boston-area sites for the National Park Service. Small next served as both the first
superintendent at Minute Man National Historical Park and the first general superinten-
dent of the Boston Service Group, which functioned as an administrative unit for the
development and support of Boston area historic sites. By the time Small reached
Brookline, he had personally developed or had a hand in developing nearly every historic
site in the northeastern United States.
25
Small sent a trip report to the Regional Director to recount both his research into
the time that John F. Kennedy had spent in the house and his recent visit to Brookline to
uncover the local efforts to commemorate Kennedy. Citing the 1960 James MacGregor
Burns biography of Kennedy, he quoted in the report: “Here Jack spent his early child-
hood—years that he hardly remembers today.”
26
By 1964, there was already an immense
widespread interest in Kennedy, and the number of books published about him reveal a
virtual industry in the immense popularity that would come to be called the “Kennedy
phenomenon.”
27
It is telling that Small used the one serious biographical profile written
before the 1960 election as his most useful source on Kennedy’s childhood. Its author
James MacGregor Burns was a former Democratic candidate for Congress in
Massachusetts, political scientist, university professor, and presidential historian, and he
had personal access to Kennedy on the campaign trail. Commissioned by Harcourt Brace
in 1958 to provide the profile, Burns was able to interview Kennedy many times and also
interviewed his wife, parents, other members of his family, and his teachers, among
others. The study was decidedly not a neutral one. Burns, then a Democratic Party mover
and shaker, ultimately endorsed Kennedy as an earnest candidate, with “high presidential
quality and promise.” Rather than including an “equal number of conclusions against”
Kennedy to appear balanced in his portrayal, he decided “against that kind of neutrality”
in his biography.
28
25
Edwin Small, interview by Herbert S. Evison, October 19, 1971, NPS Oral History Collection (HFCA 1817),
NPS History Collection, Harpers Ferry Center for Media Development (Harpers Ferry, WV).
26
Edwin Small, Memo: Superintendent Minute Man to Director Northeast Region, Memo: National Survey of
Historic Sites and Buildings—Information on the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Birthplace, Brookline, Massachusetts,
March 24, 1964, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI
1504), Box 1, Folder 4. James MacGregor Burns, John Kennedy: A Political Profile, 1st ed. (New York,:
Harcourt, 1960).
27
Though hard to calculate the exact origin of the term the “Kennedy phenomenon,” it is in use during the 1960
campaign.
28
Burns, John Kennedy: A Political Profile, vi, vii.
35
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
Importantly, Burns was one of the first scholars to provide a historical context for
the Kennedy family for a serious reading audience. Burns begins his study with the
Kennedys’ family roots in Ireland, spending more than a few pages explaining the myth
that what Kennedy’s great-grandfather faced as an Irishman in Boston was worse than that
which any previous groups had suffered in the United States. He argues that the Irish were
“the lowest of the low, lower…even than the Negroes.”
29
While no historian would make
this argument today, Burns was among the first to describe the ethnic tensions in Boston
that led John F. Kennedy’s paternal grandfather into a political circle where he would meet
Kennedy’s maternal grandfather, John F. Fitzgerald (“Honey Fitz”), another Irish-
American but Boston-born politician.
30
So despite revealing and emphasizing the incredi-
ble hardships that faced early Irish immigrants to the United States, Burns also explained
the political privilege that ran through three generations of Kennedy’s family by the time of
his presidential campaign and the family’s inexorable tie to the city of Boston. Small uncov-
ered in Burns much of what the NPS and others would come to understand as John
Fitzgerald Kennedy’s essential family history. Burns and Small were both interested in the
president’s father Joseph Kennedy’s business history and life milestones, especially his
move to Brookline after marrying his wife, Rose.
Edwin Small ultimately ruled that “at best” Kennedy’s association with Brookline
“did not exceed much more than the first decade of his life.” Small made the argument that
the birthplace did “not hold much potential as a historic site to receive much visitation by
the public without a good deal of expense.” That expense, in Small’s quick assessment,
would come with the needed “removal of adjacent homes, to say nothing about needed
space for parking, if any serious attempt were to be made to encourage public visitation.”
31
A local group interested in making a memorial at the house, the Brookline Barracks of the
Veterans of World War I, again suggested that at least eight homes near the birthplace be
taken by eminent domain. Small noted that the neighborhood had changed since the
29
John Kennedy: A Political Profile, 6. Irish immigrants were undoubtedly treated poorly and faced
discrimination in employment, housing, politics, social settings, and education in the United States. However,
their history has also been distorted over the years and used by some White Americans to argue that there were
“Irish Slaves” in the United States who were treated as poorly as African and African American victims of chattel
slavery and Jim Crow segregation. One the first people who propagated this myth was Holocaust denier and
conspiracy theorist Micheal A. Hoffman II in his self-published book They Were White and They Were Slaves
(1993). This myth has been deployed by racist organizations since the 1990s and more recently used in response
to the Black Lives Matter movement and even mainstream calls for reparations for slavery. While the Kennedy
family was in no way responsible for these books and memes, their authors often play to popular interest in
Kennedy and his family. For a detailed assessment of the myth and its circulation, see Alex Amend’s “How the
Myth of the ‘Irish Slaves’ Became a Favorite Meme of Racists Online,” Hate Watch, Southern Poverty Law
Center, April 19, 2016. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/04/19/how-myth-irish-slaves-became-favorite-
meme-racists-online.
30
John Kennedy: A Political Profile, 10.
31
Edwin Small, Memo: Superintendent Minute Man to Director Northeast Region, Memo: National Survey of
Historic Sites and Buildings—Information on the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Birthplace, Brookline, Massachusetts,
March 24, 1964, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI
1504), Box 1, Folder 4.
36
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
Kennedy family lived there, it was now a Jewish neighborhood with a temple at the top of
Beals Street, and that these neighbors, according to the local paper, “opposed strongly”
such a plan.
32
The amount of money that would be needed to buy out the neighbors, Small
estimated at between $200,000 to $250,000. Small also included a brief assessment of the
Kennedy family’s Abbottsford house, which had been broken up into apartments but
seemed to him to be mostly intact. “In giving any consideration to recognition, or treat-
ment otherwise for with 83 Beals Street or 51 Abbottsford Road, we believe it is also essen-
tial to consider the plausible result of having the Memorial Library in such close proximity.
Will the Memorial Library prove to be an incentive to visitors to come to the house or will
they be satisfied with the splendor and scope of what they are expected to be able to see in
the new library and institute? We do not have the answer to this question.”
33
The John F.
Kennedy Presidential Library was already in development and was then planned to be
developed nearby on Harvard’s campus. Though the museum and library would eventually
move to Columbia Point in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, the institution was
delayed in opening to the public until 1979. Led by the former first lady, Jaqueline Kennedy,
the board of trustees began the process of organizing collections, finding an architect, and
eventually a new location.
34
Edwin Small was then superintendent of a relatively new historical park that he had
helped create through years of controversial land acquisition. He was keenly aware of the
possibility for conflict that exercising eminent domain would cause and the difficulty of
acquiring land for a park piece-by-piece through careful negotiation. The NPS’s aggressive
land policies in Concord and Lexington, Massachusetts, as it developed Minute Man
National Historical Park, had initially led to great troubles with community relations, and
became the “number one” problem for the park in the years after its founding.
35
Small,
ultimately, saw the Kennedy birthplace as less historically significant and its development
more difficult and expensive than the Park Service would want. He did not make an
32
Small, Memo: Superintendent Minute Man to Director Northeast Region, Memo: National Survey of Historic
Sites and Buildings—Information on the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Birthplace, Brookline, Massachusetts, March
24, 1964, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box
1, Folder 4.
33
Small, Memo: Superintendent Minute Man to Director Northeast Region, Memo: National Survey of Historic
Sites and Buildings—Information on the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Birthplace, Brookline, Massachusetts, March
24, 1964, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box
1, Folder 4.
34
The library has a complicated history of its own, though it has no administrative history as of the time of this
report. The library had an innovative oral history program that was inspired by Robert Kennedy’s wishes and an
important museum attached to the archives. The site wasn’t opened to the public until 1979. See Chapter 4 for
more information about the Kennedy Library and Museum.
35
Benjamin Zerbey, interview by Joan Zenzen, April 13, 2005.
37
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
impassioned pitch to include the site on the roster of national historic sites. However, his
research ultimately helped the site’s nomination to become a national historic landmark in
1964, and his presence in the area promised to monitor local efforts at the site.
36
“It Would be Nice…for Mother”
Though the NPS did not pursue the house as a potential historic site, the city of Brookline
sought the help of the Kennedy family in making the house a memorial. The Brookline
selectmen wrote to Rose Kennedy directly about the house in 1964.
37
However, it seems
unlikely that Rose Kennedy wrote back to the selectmen when they asked for her assistance
in securing the house for future generations. This perhaps indicated she was disinterested
in the site as a memorial.
38
Nonetheless, in November of that year, Rose Kennedy wrote to
her son, Edward (Ted) Kennedy, making sure that he “not give away” the “bedroom set that
I had when Jack was born,” that might have been in Jack Kennedy’s apartment on Bowdoin
Street.
39
Rose Kennedy did not initially seem drawn to the idea of preserving the birth-
place. Perhaps she was considering her own or posterity’s potential attachments to the bed
in which the president was born. Though the selectmen of Brookline and the press were
interested in a memorial at Kennedy’s birthplace, most of the Beals Street neighbors, the
Kennedy family, and even the National Park Service (if we take into account Small’s careful
assessment of the site’s significance, site limitations, and cost) were not.
However, in 1966, the Kennedy family’s interest in the site seems to have shifted. In
a note from Ted Kennedy to Jacqueline Kennedy in May, Ted Kennedy laid out three ways
to protect the birthplace and indicated his preference that the house go to the National
Park Service as a gift from the family. Mentioning that he had already spoken with
Democratic Congressman Thomas (Tip) O’Neill and Republican Senator Leverett
Saltonstall, to ensure bipartisan support for the legislation, Kennedy endorsed a plan that
the family or the family foundation buy the house from Martha Pollack for more than
$25,000 (the then-current price for homes in the Beals Street neighborhood). He noted that
Pollack had given the town of Brookline an indication that she would willing to sell the
36
“96 Historic Sites Approved by U.S.: Kennedy Birthplace among Places,” New York Times, July 19, 1964. For
more information on the process that designated the Kennedy site outside of the traditional “50-Year-Rule,” see
John H. Sprinkle, “‘Of Exceptional Importance’: The Origins of the ‘Fifty-Year Rule’ in Historic Preservation,”
The Public Historian 29, no. 2 (2007): 92.
37
“How to Save Birthplace? JFK Shrine a Worry,” Boston Globe, July 8, 1964. The site was designated a
national historic landmark just a few days later on July 19, 1964.
38
Christine Arato, “This House Holds Many Memories: Constructions of a Presidential Birthplace at the John
Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,” in Born in the U.S.A.: Birth, Commemoration, and American Public
Memory, ed. Seth C. Bruggeman (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), 27–48.
39
Rose Kennedy to Edward Kennedy, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Papers, JFK Library, November 25, 1964;
Kennedy.
38
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
house as long as she could live there for the rest of her life. Kennedy suggested that they
acquire it as soon as possible, paying extra as an incentive to purchase it now. He had even
imagined, that it “would be nice, for example, for Mother to be able to go in and furnish the
home the way it was when the President was born there.”
40
Though Ted Kennedy sought Jackie Kennedy’s approval, it is clear that the family
did not move quickly enough to secure the title to the house on their terms. Later in 1966,
Attorney Merrill Hassenfeld started the process of buying the house from the Pollack
family. In a letter, this time from Hassenfeld to Robert Kennedy, Hassenfeld offered to sell
the house to the Kennedy family. While the press at the time reported that Merrill
Hassenfeld, a history enthusiast, represented a “group” of interested investors who pur-
chased the home from Martha Pollack, Hassenfeld says he bought the house on behalf of a
single client who wanted to turn the house into a popular tourist destination. Hassenfeld,
or perhaps Joseph F. Gargan, Rose Kennedy’s nephew and an attorney associated with
family affairs and Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, somehow convinced his
client that the Kennedy family should have control of the house’s fate rather than the
tourist market.
41
While Hassenfeld said and the press reported that Hassenfeld sold the
house “for $55,000 without profit” to Joseph F. Gargan, deeds indicate that there was
actually a direct transfer of the house from Martha Pollack and her partner directly to
Gargan.
42
Nonetheless, by the end of 1966, the Kennedy family was indeed in control of the
house’s fate and had let the selectmen in Brookline know that they should step back from
attempts to develop a memorial at the birthplace because the family intended “to preserve
it as a historic shrine.”
43
They requested that the town “postpone any action at the local
level until it was determined what disposition might be made of the property.”
44
40
Edward M. Kennedy to Jacquline Bouvier Kennedy, Note: “EMK to JBK, May 1966,” Written by Hand Atop
the Typed Page, Robert Luddington (1925–) Papers, 1915–2006, JOFI, May, 1966.
41
Phone Conversation with Merrill Hassenfeld, February 2, 2017. Hassenfeld himself was such a history
enthusiast that he played the role of William Dawes in the 1979 reenactment of Paul Revere’s ride and the role of
Revere in 1982. Thomas Sabulis, “Revere Rides Again,” Boston Globe, April 12 1979. “Other Patriots Weekend
Re-Enactments and Parades,” Boston Globe, April 16, 1981. See also Merrill Hassenfeld to Robert F. Kennedy,
September 4, 1966, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Papers, SCPF 1964–68, John F. Kennedy Library. See also the
Norfolk County deed of transfer from Martha Pollack and Alvin Clark (Pollack’s son) to Joseph F. Gargan, from
Novemeber 1, 1966.
42
Gary Kayakachoian, “JFK Home to Be Open for the Public,” Boston Globe, May 18, 1969; “JFK Birthplace
Returns to Kin,” Boston Globe, November 1, 1966.
43
Town of Brookline, 1966 Town Report, 28, quoted in Timothy Layton, Adrine Arakelian, and Maggie Coffin
Brown, “Cultural Landscape Report for John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,” ed. National Park
Service (Boston: Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, 2012).
44
Town of Brookline, 1966 Town Report, 28, quoted in “Cultural Landscape Report for John Fitzgerald
Kennedy National Historic Site.”
39
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
Legislation to Establish the Historic Site
Just two months after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed off on the National Historic
Preservation Act of 1966, the most critical preservation legislation of the 20th century,
discussions between the Kennedy family and the federal government about the future of
the birthplace took off. After the preservation act, the NPS was able to maintain a selective
register of locally important historic sites as well as national landmarks. The NPS was
poised to help ensure that historic sites were both protected from demolition and candi-
dates for federal support.
45
Because the Kennedy birthplace was already a national historic
landmark (since 1964), it was well poised to become a unit of the NPS. By December of
1966, Robert Turner Luddington, as Rose Kennedy’s and Joseph Gargan’s emissary was
meeting with leaders within the Park Service, including Director George B. Hartzog about
restoration, interpretation, and the transition of the house into NPS hands. Robert
Luddington was Rose Kennedy’s interior designer and the longtime Director of Interior
Decorating at the Jordan Marsh Company in Boston (Figure 6).
45
Barry Mackintosh, The National Parks: Shaping the System (Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1991),
65. Barry Mackintosh was the historian who authored the national historic landmark nomination of the Kennedy
Compound in Hyannis Port.
40
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
Figure 6. Robert Luddington in front of the Kennedy Birthplace, circa 1966.
JOFI 1510, Robert Luddington (1925-) Papers, 1915-2006. NPS.
He had already decorated Senator Ted Kennedy’s apartment, with Rose Kennedy’s
oversight, and had worked on other projects for her as well. He was quickly put in charge of
the restoration project at a meeting of the Kennedy family, upon Rose Kennedy’s strong
recommendation.
46
Jordan Marsh had long been Boston’s premier department store,
stocking goods from around the globe for Boston’s most fashionable consumers, and
Luddington’s position at the department store meant he played a relatively public role in
the decorating of stylish modern homes in the Boston area. At times he worked with more
than twenty decorators under his direction.
47
In his meeting with Park Service officials,
they reportedly stressed to Luddington the “importance of as much authenticity as possi-
ble.” Hartzog and others urged Luddington to experience Eleanor Roosevelt’s audio tour
46
Robert Luddington, interview by Elena Rippel et al., June 26, 2016. See also Dee Hardy, “Decorator’s Magic
Worked for Rose Kennedy and Dee” (clippings file, circa 1969), John F. Kennedy National Historic Site
Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504).
47
Luddington, “Oral History.”
41
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
at Hyde Park as an interpretive model for Rose Kennedy, and shortly after the December
meeting, he set up a meeting with the Roosevelt Home’s curator to learn about the process
of creating an audio tour.
48
Four months after the purchase, Rose Kennedy wrote to Secretary of the Interior, a
John F. Kennedy appointee, Stewart Udall, saying that she had “refurnished” the birthplace
“the way it was when my son was born” and that she would like to “make a gift of the home
to the American people,” so that they could “visit it and see how people lived in 1917 and
thus get a better appreciation of the history of this wonderful country.” She hoped that the
site could be preserved “just as have been the homes of so many other Presidents.”
49
Though
it was not entirely true that the house was already refurnished, nor was it fully restored, it is
clear that Rose Kennedy wanted to make sure that Congress was ready to receive the gift
before she completed her work and perhaps before any change in presidential administra-
tion. Despite their interest in restoring the house, it seems unlikely that the Kennedy family
had any interest in running a historic house museum on their own, even if it was dedicated
to the late president. That same month, Secretary Udall wrote to Senator Henry M. Jackson
(Washington), reporting on the bill to designate the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National
Historic Site, assuring him and other senators that the Kennedy family has offered to
refurnish the house “in the style of the period of their occupancy and to donate the proper-
ty.”
50
In addition, the Department of the Interior estimated that the cost of running the site
would come to just $32,500 a year, and indicated that there was no need to make a full study
of the site before the designation. Udall concluded that such a study could come after the
fact from his own department’s authority, rather than through Congress’s. Initial staffing at
the site, it was estimated, would require one historian-curator, one permanent guide, and
two seasonal guides.
51
Jackson and Senator John Sherman Cooper (Kentucky) sponsored
the bill in the Senate.
52
Massachusetts Congressman Tip O’Neill sponsored the legislation
in the House. For Secretary Udall, in his testimony before the Subcommittee on National
Parks and Recreation, Interior and Insular Affairs in the House and the Senate, the histori-
cal significance of John Kennedy’s birthplace was so obvious that he need barely remark
48
Luddington to Gargan, December 30, 1966, Robert Luddington (1925–) Papers, 1915–2006, JOFI 1510.
49
Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy to Stewart Udall, March 15, 1967, in “Background Book” on 90th Congress, JOFI.
50
Stewart Udall to Henry M. Jackson, March 17, 1967, copy in JOFI Background Book.
51
John F. Kennedy Birthplace National Historic Site (Proposed) Personal Services and Supporting Costs, March,
1967, copy in JOFI Background Book.
52
Cooper was also a close colleague of John F. Kennedy’s in the Senate, despite being a Republican. He was
also appointed by President Johnson to the Warren Commission to investigate Kennedy’s assassination.
42
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
upon it. In fact, Udall waived any required justification for the site away by saying, “There
is no need to comment further before this committee on the role which history has des-
tined the late President to play in the annals of the United States.”
53
In the Senate subcommittee meeting on March 20, 1967, Senators Cooper and
Jackson were prepared with memos on current presidential homes and birthplaces man-
aged by the Department of the Interior and budget estimates for the site. There was virtu-
ally no debate. Udall read his written testimony and added that “the country is most
fortunate—and this is probably a singular thing in our history—that the President’s
mother, who of course has a complete remembrance of the house, its interior, its decora-
tions, its furniture, is presently restoring it to the original condition. And this is, of course, a
very fine thing that this can be done, that there is someone who has a complete recall as to
the details of the interior of the house.”
54
His emphasis on the role of Rose Kennedy in the
project is remarkable. Udall also used the opportunity to articulate a larger set of standards
that the Senate should consider when thinking about designating presidential sites. “I think
when one looks at our Presidents and their place in history there are, one might say, four
places that possibly could be of significance to history and to the future: a birthplace; a
place that is normally the residence in later years, or is the main place where a person in his
resided in his mature life; a burial place; and then more recently we have been establishing,
of course, the libraries of the Presidents as important historic places. In President
Kennedy’s case, because of his tragic and untimely death, there will never be a place of his
later years.” Udall pointed out that Kennedy was buried at Arlington Cemetery and that his
birthplace was “the only other place.”
55
Committee members did want Udall to clarify if
there was a policy on accepting presidential historic sites from the families or other organi-
zations, and they wanted to know if a fee would be charged at the site to help offset the cost
of administration. Udall explained that there was no concrete policy associated with the
acceptance of presidential historic sites, but that places that were logical and “opportune”
like the Kennedy birthplace were ones that Congress brought into the National Parks. Such
gifts were often selected and mediated by a former president’s family. Udall called in NPS
Director Hartzog to elaborate on the positive potential for a fee at the site to cover the
53
Udall’s statements were nearly identical for both committees. See Stewart Udall, “Statement of Witness for
the Department of the Interior before the Subcommittee on National Parks and Recreation, House Committee on
Interior and Insular Affairs, on H.R. 6424, a Bill to Establish the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” March 15, 1967. A copy of this statement is included in the JOFI
background book.
54
“Hearing before the Subcommittee on Parks and Recreation of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs,
US Senate, 19th Congress, First Sessions on S. 1161, a Bill to Establish the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National
Historic Site in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, March 20, 1967” (US Government Printing Office,
1967), 4.
55
“Hearing before the Subcommittee on Parks and Recreation of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs,
US Senate, 19th Congress, First Sessions on S. 1161, a Bill to Establish the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National
Historic Site in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, March 20, 1967,” 5.
43
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
operating costs of the park.
56
Senator Lee Warren Metcalf (Montana) commended Cooper
on presenting the bill and commented on the “unique opportunity to get a birthplace of a
President, restored by the memory of people who are still alive…we should move quick-
ly.”
57
There is no congressional argument against moving forward with the historic site
documented in the record. The core leadership of both the Senate and House committees
believed that Rose Kennedy’s hand in the project was an important factor in why they
should accept the house.
In the material presented to Congress, there was no hesitation on the part of the
Park Service nor any even minimally critical comments on the limitations of the site.
Despite the NPS’s general hesitancy to consider birthplaces, the Kennedy birthplace was to
be an exception. Despite Edwin Small’s and local assessments that more space for visitors
was necessary, Udall assured Senator Jackson and his committee that “no additional
property is proposed to be acquired for the Site.”
58
Moreover, the summary sheet for the
bill and testimony highlighted that there were three municipal parking lots nearby that
could handle parking.
59
All of Small’s initial concerns about the site, its historical signifi-
cance in Kennedy’s life, its placement on an inaccessible quiet residential street, and the
additional land acquisition needed for proper parking and visitor services were brushed
aside with the Kennedy family’s gift, and the legislation was quickly approved.
60
The Boston Group Administration
Nearly all of the site’s development was initially administered through the National Park
Service’s Boston Service Group, often called the Boston Group. The Boston Group was
established when it became clear that the NPS would acquire both the Kennedy site (1967)
and Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site (1968).
61
George Hartzog, NPS Director
from 1964 through 1972, developed “a number of administrative groups” like the Boston
Group during his tenure, where “common activities could be handled in through a
56
“Hearing before the Subcommittee on Parks and Recreation of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs,
US Senate, 19th Congress, First Sessions on S. 1161, a Bill to Establish the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National
Historic Site in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, March 20, 1967,” 6.
57
“Hearing before the Subcommittee on Parks and Recreation of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs,
US Senate, 19th Congress, First Sessions on S. 1161, a Bill to Establish the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National
Historic Site in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, March 20, 1967,” 7.
58
Stewart Udall to Henry M. Jackson.
59
“Summary Sheet, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 90th Congress, 1967,”
Copy in JOFI Background Book.
60
Public Law 90-20, May 26, 1967.
61
Benjamin Zerbey was Superintendent at MIMA from 1965 to July 1968, then Superintendent of the Boston
Service Group from July 1968 until May 1971. Zerbey, “Oral History.”
44
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
coordinated effort.”
62
The Boston Group operated as a powerful administrative unit in the
Boston region until the Northeast Regional Office was split into the North Atlantic and
Mid-Atlantic offices in 1974, and staff from the group was absorbed into other park and
regional office units.
63
This administrative unit, and others like it, were meant to relieve the
regional office from day-to-day management duties and the work of developing new NPS
sites like Kennedy.
At times the Boston Group, which was overseen by a single “general superinten-
dent,” managed Adams National Historical Park, Minute Man National Historical Park
(this included the North Bridge Unit, Battle Road Unit, the Wayside, Information Center,
and Park Headquarters), Salem Maritime National Historic Site, Saugus Iron Works
National Historic Site, in addition to the Kennedy site.
64
Edwin Small, Project Keyman for
the Kennedy site, was both the superintendent of the Boston Group and Minute Man
National Historical Park (Minute Man) until Benjamin Zerbey replaced Small first as
superintendent at Minute Man in 1965 and then took his place as general superintendent of
the Boston Group in 1968. When Zerbey took over as general superintendent of the Boston
Group, he moved its headquarters from downtown Boston to Minute Man, and then in
1970, he separated out the work of the group from Minute Man further by relocating it to
the Buttrick Mansion, away from Minute Man’s daily activities.
65
Within the Boston Group,
each site had its own “park manager,” and eventually, under Zerbey, the group even had its
own active social network and newsletter, The Group Scoop. However, because Minute
Man National Historical Park was still in a long development process, much of the admin-
istrative energies of the Boston Group were spent in Lexington and Concord.
66
Zerbey’s
62
George Hartzog, “Notes from Telephone Interview with Charlene K. Roise and Bruce C. Fernald, January
21,” Minute Man National Historical Park Archives 1981.
63
The Boston Service Group was a surprisingly strong cohort of individuals working to develop historical
research, archaeological and architectural studies, programming, and public services at Adams National
Historical Park, Salem Maritime National Historic Site, Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site, Minute Man,
and Kennedy. The group eventually even had its own newsletter, The Group Scoop, and social functions, which
likely helped cement a staff that was often geographically dispersed. Herbert Olsen, “Notes from Telephone
Interview with Charlene K. Roise and Bruce C. Fernald, January 15,” Minute Man National Historical Park
Archives, 1981. See also copies of The Group Scoop in Orville Carroll’s Research Records at the Minute Man
National Historical Park Archives.
64
See “Boston National Park Service Group,” N.D., Orville Carroll Research Records, MIMA 63772, Minute
Man National Historical Park Archives, Box 2, Folder 12.
65
Charlene Roise, Edward W. Gordon, and Bruce C. Fernald, “Minute Man National Historical Park: An
Administrative History (Report Draft),” Minute Man National Historical Park Archives, 1989, 70–107. This
report was formally approved but is on file at the Minute Man National Historical Park Archives. The official
administrative history was completed more than 20 years later by Joan Zenzen.
66
Joan Zenzen, Bridging the Past: Minute Man National Historical Park Administrative History (National Park
Service, Northeast Region History Program, 2010).
45
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
role in the day-to-day management of the Kennedy site was key in the early years of devel-
opment, but his broader role in the Boston Group and location at Minute Man meant he
was rarely at the Kennedy site.
67
“An Undeniable Sense of Nostalgia”
Despite his poor initial assessment of the birthplace as a potential historic site, Edwin
Small, then superintendent of the Boston Group, in 1967 was made “Project Keyman” for
the development of the site.
68
Although the enabling legislation was in place, for the work to
develop critical elements of the site, like interpretation, the Park Service had to wait until
the Kennedy family was ready to turn over the restored and furnished house. The NPS
hoped to have the transfer happen as soon as possible, but no official dates were put in
stone. For Rose Kennedy, the two years that passed between the establishing legislation and
the opening of the site were complicated by her son Robert Kennedy’s campaign for the
presidency and his shocking assassination. The Park Service was understandably patient
about the delays, and given the long timelines for the development of other Boston Group
sites, its delays were likely seen as brief compared to Minute Man or Boston National
Historical Park.
Over the period while the site was under development, first Small then Benjamin
Zerbey watched over, as best they could, Rose Kennedy and Robert Luddington’s work at
the site. This was a challenge. Small, responding to a 1967 proposal for the site produced by
the Office of Resource Planning, Philadelphia Planning Services Center, indicated that the
proposal was likely “no longer current, if not exactly obsolete,” based on what Rose
Kennedy and Robert Luddington had already done at the site. Small, for example, found
that Luddington had stripped every bit of wallpaper from the house when he re-wallpa-
pered. While this was a best practice for an interior decorator, it was not best practice for
historic preservationists. It made it nearly impossible to study what wallpaper might have
been there during the Kennedy period. But the difficulties in getting the site “right” also fell
to the Park Service. In assessing the interpretation that the site proposal put forward, that
John Fitzgerald Kennedy grew up in a modest home, Small provided a useful correction.
He pointed out that “to refer to ‘the modest beginning of the late President; is going a little
too far and is not quite accurate.” For him, “a child born in a house that had a grand piano
and a mahogany dining room set did not have a ‘modest beginning’ as we conventionally
view the term.” However, he did concede that the Beals Street house was “modest”
67
Benjamin Zerbey, “Notes from Telephone Interview with Charlene K. Roise, January 8,” Minute Man
National Historical Park Archives, 1981.
68
Small was also serving as Project Keyman in the development of Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site
during this same period. Small, “Oral History,” 8. This title seems to be an official one, as he used it in official
correspondence in investigations and in the development of new sites within the Boston Service Group’s area.
46
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
compared to how the Kennedys lived in 1967.
69
Small, as Project Keyman, recorded much
of the activity at the house in monthly reports to the Northeast Regional Office. During the
summer of 1967, work on the house continued, and Park Service personnel made periodic
visits while Luddington completed his work.
As decoration continued at the house, a 1967 memo noted the delicate balance in
place between the NPS and Rose Kennedy. The memo indicated Rose Kennedy’s concern
that some items, for example, the silver porringers engraved for Joe and Jack Kennedy, were
too valuable to be left out in a house open to the public. She recommended that the NPS
come up with a secure place for the silver to be stored after hours.
70
In July, after Congress
had already approved the acquisition, members of the House Subcommittee of National
Parks and Recreation and their spouses toured the house with NPS officials, including
Regional Director Lemuel Garrison and Small, as they were making a larger tour of historic
sites in the Boston area. Luddington had just installed the twin beds in the Kennedys’
bedroom, and all were excited to see the bed where Kennedy was born at the house.
71
In
late summer there was still hope for the transfer of the site to the National Park Service and
a formal opening to the public that year. That did not happen. However, in September that
year, CBS taped a program with Rose Kennedy that made use of the birthplace, which
brought the house back into the public eye. Staff worried that the program raised “a great
number of administrative problems for the Park Service,” as “many people who will see the
program will want to visit the Home without delay.”
72
It seems work went on at the house despite any disruption caused by curious
tourists inspired by the television coverage. In November, then Technical Publications
Editor, Division of Archeology, Nan Rickey, worked with Small, Wilbur Dutton, Carl
Deegan, and Andrew M. Loveless to begin to tape interviews with Rose Kennedy about her
69
Memo: John Fitzgerald Kennedy Birthplace National Historic Site Proposal—Comments on the Report
Prepared in March 1967, Project Keyman Edwin Small to Regional Director, April 12, 1967. A PDF of scans of
memos from 1967 were sent to the author in 2016 by research intern Elena Rippel on a thumb drive from JOFI’s
K-Drive. Rippel recreated that drive’s then file-names and folder structure. Folder: “JOFI Admin history
docs-some dups,” File name: Memos 1967. This and the following memos (indicated below by “Memos 1967”)
come from this same scanned 22-page source.
70
Memo: Visit to J. F. Kennedy Birthplace, George Palmer, Associate Regional Director to Regional Director,
June 5, 1967. Memos 1967.
71
Benjamin Zerbey, Superintendent, and Maurice Kowal, Maintenance Supervisor, from Minute Man National
Park were also a park of this group. Memo: Project Keyman Monthly Report, July 1967, for John Fitzgerald
Kennedy National Historic Site, Edwin Small, Project Keyman, to Regional Director, August 3, 1967. Memos
1967.
72
Memo: John F. Kennedy Birthplace, Assistant Chief, Office of Information, Edwin N. Winge to Deputy
Director Harthon Bill, September 19, 1967, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management
Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 3, Folder 3. See also “Mrs. Joseph Kennedy in Tape Interview at
Brookline Home,” Boston Globe, October 29 1967; “J.F.K.—The Childhood Years, a Memoir for Television by
His Mother,” in Who, What, When, Where, Why, interview with Rose Kennedy. Harry Reasoner (CBS News
Special, aired October 31, 1967). The program aired on Halloween 1967, despite the fact that the site was not yet
open to the public, and the piece would have served as an excellent public relations piece if the broadcast had
been delayed.
47
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
time at the house. Rickey reported that working with Kennedy was difficult, “for a variety
of reasons,” and noted that “it may not be possible to overcome these problems.” She saw
that overcoming communication issues would “depend on a greater sense of ease and
familiarity in Mrs. Kennedy—something which we can achieve only if she is willing to work
with us on a continuing basis.”
73
Rickey also excitedly reported back on the furnishings that
Luddington and Kennedy had provided for the historic site. “The refurnishings for the
house have been done with elegance and attention to detail. They produce an undeniable
sense of nostalgia, particularly for individuals of the Kennedy generation.” However, she
also noted that the furnishings had “a number of obvious errors as well as contextual
inconsistency.”
74
But Rickey cautioned that “no effort to remedy this situation would be either
possible or appropriate at this time,” and worried that the mistakes could “strongly influ-
ence interpretive planning now, and should also be of substantial current research con-
cern.”
75
Unfortunately, NPS access to Rose Kennedy was extremely limited. In response to
these concerns, Rickey recommended that the NPS develop a Master Plan for the site “as
soon as possible.” Rickey astutely saw most of the interpretive challenges at the site as
related to “the legislative limitation on the site’s area, together with the realities of the
environment.” To delay a Master Plan would “almost certainly result in the creation of a
real public relations problem, a failure to serve the public of the most basic kind, and the
subjection of the house and its contents to unwarranted risk.”
76
Her report echoed many of the same concerns that Small had in 1964. Beyond her
assessment that she laid out in her trip report, Rickey noted that most of the work at the
site was complete, “and of course it was also made clear to me...that any negative comments
would not be welcome.” She tried to engage what work could be done but was “totally
taken aback by what had happened to the house, the way it had been refurnished.” She
seems to have been especially upset with pink carpeting that had been installed in all the
rooms. “It very quickly seemed to me that the only thing I could possibly achieve would be
to identify the real things, as opposed to the decorative things, but that wasn’t really
73
Memo: Trip Report: John Fitzgerald National Historic Site, November 19–21, Nan Rickey to Chief, Division
of Interpretation and Visitor Services, November 28, 1967, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource
Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 1, Folder 4.
74
Memo: Trip Report: John Fitzgerald National Historic Site, November 19–21, Nan Rickey to Chief, Division
of Interpretation and Visitor Services, November 28, 1967, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource
Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 1, Folder 4.
75
Memo: Trip Report: John Fitzgerald National Historic Site, November 19–21, Nan Rickey to Chief, Division
of Interpretation and Visitor Services, November 28, 1967, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource
Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 1, Folder 4.
76
Memo: Trip Report: John Fitzgerald National Historic Site, November 19–21, Nan Rickey to Chief, Division
of Interpretation and Visitor Services, November 28, 1967, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource
Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 1, Folder 4.
48
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
effective either.”
77
In an attempt to identify “real things,” she began the long discussion with
Robert Luddington and the National Park Service over the documentation of the furnish-
ings at the house.
78
Later that year, he sent her a preliminary six-page list of items that had
an original or authentic association with the house or Rose Kennedy.
79
Despite being the matriarch of a family that was very much in the public eye, Rose
Kennedy was private about the work she did on the house.
80
After a long conversation about
what she remembered having been in place in most areas of the house, she and Luddington
worked together from her memory in fits and starts. She seems to have had little memory
about some of the rooms, like the kitchen and maids’ quarters upstairs. However, when her
memory struck on an object that should be in the house, Kennedy dictated a note to
Luddington through her secretary, and he set off to research and acquire the item for the
house. Sometimes Luddington placed advertisements for period pieces that Rose Kennedy
remembered; other times, he contacted manufacturers directly to acquire historic stock they
might have for Rose Kennedy’s use. When Kennedy’s memory failed her about an item, she
helped Luddington make all decisions on items with an eye toward “historical good taste.”
Their goal was not to create a “lived-in feeling” that some historic house museums sought in
the 1960s, but rather to present “a more formal feeling” at the house.
81
Despite these early efforts of the NPS to work with Rose Kennedy and others to
open the site, the progress was decidedly slow. During the rest of 1967 and all of the spring
of 1968, Project Keyman, Edwin Small’s monthly reports to NPS Director Hartzog, and
the Chief of the Division of Interpretation, often indicated that “there was nothing which
took place during the month to indicate when the Kennedy family intends either to turn
over the actual custody of the birthplace property or decide on a date for a formal dedica-
tion or opening.”
82
77
Nan Rickey Interview with Sara Patton and Christine Arato, March 6, 2015. John F. Kennedy National
Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Oral Histories.
78
The attempt to recover information about items at the site would last decades and would only come to an end
in 2016 when Robert Luddington sat down for an oral history with site managers about the collections that he
and Rose Kennedy had acquired 50 years earlier. See Luddington Oral History. For more information of the
materials that Luddington eventually donated, see the Robert T. Luddington Papers (JOFI 1510), which include
some documentation of his work furnishing the site and other early records of his work.
79
Luddington to Rickey, November 15, 1967. John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management
Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 5, Folder 37.
80
Luddington Oral History. William Davis, “Kennedyland: Hyannis Port Compound Still Same Old Tourist
Mecca; Police Army on Job,” Boston Globe, June 24, 1969, 2.
81
Luddington conceded that sometimes “people might upgrade their idea of what they had,” after so many years
had passed, and that in some instances, when some compromises about the historical interior were discussed, he
kept in mind that he was “dealing with a customer.” Luddington Oral History.
82
Memo: New Area Monthly Report—February 1968 John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Edwin
Small to Director, March 1, 1968. John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records,
1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 1, Folder 4.
49
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
Meanwhile, Nan Rickey was hard at work on the interpretive prospectus for the
site, which was in draft form by May of 1968 and approved sometime in 1969. The report
was written before the audio for Rose Kennedy’s tour had been finalized, but it was likely
approved and printed after the audio tour was completed, but not yet installed. Rickey, in
her study of the house, found “that little of importance” had happened while the family
lived at the house, “save the birth of the future President.” The report noted that it would
be difficult to argue that the house had a strong environmental influence on the president’s
personality because he was only in the house until he was three-and-a-half years old. Thus,
the sole ground for significance was “exquisitely limited to the one fact of birth.” However,
the prospectus she and her staff completed also laid out two unique characteristics of Jack
Kennedy which could be remembered at the site, that he was the youngest person to serve
as president and that he was the country’s first Catholic president. Importantly, they
warned that the site should “carefully avoid” the interpretation of any other elements of
Kennedy’s life “which might seem to further evaluate Kennedy as president.” Such an
evaluation was to be avoided because the NPS was “still too close, in time, to the Kennedy
administration” and perhaps too close to what Rickey called the “Kennedy phenomenon”
to be able to evaluate the presidency clearly. Further, she importantly noted that the
national tragedy associated with Kennedy compounded “the difficulty of accurate and fair
evaluation.”
83
The report shows concern that those involved in acquiring the site were quite
shortsighted because the enabling legislation did not allow for any additional land acquisi-
tion for a visitor’s center which was then, in the wake of Mission 66, common best practice
for new park sites.
The prospectus recommended that all site staff of course work hard to be extremely
knowledgeable about Kennedy’s biography. But recognizing the emotional labor of staff at
the site, the prospectus also recommended that staff be trained to deal effectively with the
“powerful, intricate and subtle emotional forces brought into being by his assassination.”
84
The prospectus focused on the institutional need to present interpretation grounded in
“dignity and taste,” and maintained that visits to the site “should be neither encouraged
nor allowed to become pilgrimages to a martyr’s shrine.”
85
Recognizing that the most of furnishing at the house was “reminiscent rather than
historically accurate,” the prospectus also lauded the audio narration by Rose Kennedy, as
the president’s mother in his birthplace as “interpretive perfection.”
86
The goal of the tour
83
Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 1.
84
Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 1. For a
broader context on the emotional labor of interpretation and frontline work at historic sites, see Amy Tyson,
The Wages of History: Emotional Labor on Public History’s Front Lines, Public History in Historical Perspective
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013).
85
Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 3.
86
Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 3.
50
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
was to make visitors feel that they were “being given a personal tour of her home by the
President’s mother.”
87
The report envisioned the audio tour as “gentle, restrained emotion,
rather than passion. It will be personal and intimate, rather than overtly memorial or
heroic. It will have grace and dignity.”
88
The document made many recommendations for interpretation, tours, and publi-
cations that are still in place at the site at the time of this administrative history. A 15-min-
ute tour making use of Rose Kennedy’s narration and an option for a self-guided tour and a
neighborhood walking tour were to be used in times of peak visitation.
89
The recom-
mended neighborhood walking tour would allow for the introduction of information on
the Kennedy family’s religious and financial background, information about which were
missing from the audio tour and furnishings inside the house. In addition to these tours,
Rickey’s report recommended two publications for visitors to take with them: one a folder
with basic information and a second that would be the published reminiscences of the
President’s mother.
90
Rose Kennedy’s reminiscences would be sold for a “minimum price.”
91
They hoped to develop a reading room/library on the upper floors of the house with an
initial collection of 1,000 dollars worth of books, which would not be used by scholars but,
instead, “satisfy the legitimate interests of the average visitor.” However, the report recom-
mended against ranger-led tours because the onslaught of visitors and limited space would
make them impractical. Costumed interpreters were rejected as a “tasteless” demonstra-
tion, and audiovisual programs (beyond the audio tour) were rejected because of space
limitations.
92
The site’s interpretive planners believed that any visitor would have to plan to
come, given the residential location of the birthplace, and that staff should expect no
drop-in visitation, and they worried that those visiting the site by car would be “mad” by
the time they made it to the front door to start their tour because of the difficulty of the
parking on Beals Street. Recommendations noted that such visitors should be met by park
personnel with compassion. The Beals Street neighborhood was a “seven-day-a-week
business community,” in part because the birthplace was located in an active Jewish neigh-
borhood, where some businesses closed on Sundays, but many others were open on
87
Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 6.
88
Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 11.
89
Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 3.
90
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Home National Historic Site not only developed a similar audio tour with
Eleanor Roosevelt as the narrator in 1960 but also published a companion booklet of her reminiscences about her
husband and Hyde Park.
91
Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 4–5.
92
Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 6–7.
51
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
Sundays after being closed on Saturdays. With a busy business community, on-street and
off-street parking was available, but sometimes quite an unclear walk away for the visitor
who wanted to drive directly to the site.
93
In addition to planning interpretation options at the site, the prospectus sought to
imagine who visitors to the site might be. Most personnel believed that the “Kennedy
phenomenon” made this site quite a bit different from other historic sites within the Park
Service. The report guessed that visitors would be “more young, than old; more middle to
lower class, than upper class; embracing all possible variations in educational background
and level” and it imagined that the site would see more visitors of Irish descent and of the
Catholic faith.
94
While the report did not shy away from calling some of the home’s furnishings
inaccurate, it did highlight the unique historical situation of having a single person’s
interpretation of a past place. Most importantly, the prospectus laid out the work ahead for
staff at the site: meet the visitor where they are, present a dignified and welcoming environ-
ment (not a maudlin one), develop interpretive publications and a walking tour, research
the historical environment of the site, research the historic structures at the site, and make
a study of the site’s current collections. To study the collections would surely mean noticing
the plastic bottle of talcum powder in the dressing area, noticing that the children’s books
were in editions later than young Kennedy’s childhood, and noticing those pink and
“modern carpets.”
95
One strong recommendation was to research and develop a historic
furnishings plan, as “the National Park Service, one hundred years from now, may feel that
the house should be presented in more historically accurate terms.”
96
The report smartly
recommended no primary research into the Kennedy family, as Rose Kennedy was slated to
write her autobiography, the Kennedy family was already the purview of other serious
researchers and writers, and years from now the family’s papers and correspondence
would be available as they were not in 1968. In the meantime, the “Kennedy phenomenon”
would mean staff would have to keep up on published research rather than diving into the
archives themselves.
97
Superintendent Zerbey’s response to the prospectus was overwhelmingly positive,
calling it “excellent and comprehensive.” Agreeing with Rickey, he believed that parking
would “indeed present a critical problem.” He also agreed with her on key safety concerns
93
Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 6–7
94
Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 8.
95
“Suggestions and Comments Made by Mr. Dorman,” circa 1970, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site
Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 10, Folder 1.
96
Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 26.
97
Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 25–27.
52
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
as a reason for a security system from ADT, recalling Brookline’s high burglary rates.
98
For
staffing, Zerbey agreed that the site needed a permanent Historian and a permanent Park
Guide (or second historian). In one important area, Zerbey disagreed with Rickey’s recom-
mended staffing. Because, as he put it, “furnishing of the house has largely been com-
pleted…and no particularly sensitive problems exist, we suggest that the proposed curator
position be filled by an interpreter, who will be able to provide normal curatorial services
as a regular duty.”
99
Perhaps knowing that the furnishing and audio would complete the
interpretive approach at the house, that there was no room for other exhibits, and that a
high percentage of the furnishings were high-quality period pieces rather than well-used
family heirlooms, Zerbey argued that the site did not need a curator because he believed
that that the new exhibits, wallpapers, drapes, carpets, and furnishings would not need
attention from a curator or conservator for some time.
100
Despite delays, Nan Rickey and especially Carl Deegan, Chief of the NPS Division
of Audiovisual Arts, worked closely with Rose Kennedy, her secretary, Diane Winter, and
even Jackie Kennedy, to both develop a script and tape-record Rose Kennedy’s audio tour
for the house.
101
Zerbey also played a role in developing the narration. When it was sug-
gested that Rose Kennedy could read through a few Park Service operational details on
tape, he felt strongly that “the impact of Mrs. Kennedy’s personal memories of the house
and its associations should not be diminished by using her as a vehicle for giving directions
and issuing safety instructions.”
102
The Park Service also hoped that the Kennedy family
might pick up the costs of developing Rose Kennedy’s audio tour.
103
98
Memo: Interpretive Prospectus, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Superintendent Minute Man
to Regional Director, NER, 6 May 1968, notes, 2, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management
Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 3, Folder 3.
99
Memo: Interpretive Prospectus, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Superintendent Minute Man
to Regional Director, NER, 6 May 1968, notes, 3, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management
Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 3, Folder 3.
100
It is unclear whether he considered the work that NPS Museum Technicians do today as part of their regular
duties to be part of the workload for the site manager.
101
Nan Rickey Interview with Sara Patton and Christine Arato, March 6, 2015. Rose Kennedy to Carl Deegan,
June 4, 1969, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Papers, John F. Kennedy Library. (Elena Scan). Diane Winter to Carl
Degan [sic], May 16, 1969, Luddington Papers. Christine Arato has provided a detailed history of the efforts to
develop and edit the many drafts of Rose Kennedy’s audio tour. Her sophisticated analysis is well worth looking
at closely to supplement the coverage here. See Christine Arato, “This House Holds Many Memories:
Constructions of a Presidential Birthplace at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,” in Born in the
U.S.A.: Birth, Commemoration, and American Public Memory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
2012), 27–48.
102
Memo: Interpretive Prospectus, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Superintendent Minute Man
to Regional Director, NER, May 6, 1968. John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management
Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 3, Folder 3.
103
Memo: RE JFK Audio, Frank Barnes to Benjamin Zerbey, June 2, 1969. NARA, Waltham, Minute Man
National Historical Park, Subject Files, 195601974, Box 3, Folder K18–17.
53
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
1969 Dedication and Opening
In 1969, when the dedication for the new historic site was still in the planning stages, Edwin
Small reached out to the superintendent of the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Site
for copies of the invitation, program, and the addresses that President Truman and Eleanor
Roosevelt made on April 12, 1946, at the dedication of that historic site.
104
From the begin-
ning, Luddington, Kennedy, and the Park Service saw the Roosevelt Home as a model for
interpretation, and it set an important precedent with NPS staff for working with import-
ant, and highly engaged, members of a president’s family. From the audio tour, to the
carpets in the public spaces, to the opening day, the Roosevelt home was the prototype.
105
On the day of the event, May 29, 1969, Rose Kennedy, her family, and her guests
attended a private mass at St. Aidan’s Church before the ceremonies at the house. For Rose
Kennedy, the event was one to be marked with religious care as well as a national and
secular celebration. The ceremony began with a prayer, and coverage of the event showed
Rose and Ted Kennedy, and Jean Kennedy Smith on the porch with their heads bowed.
Though the coverage looked solemn, few reports dwelled on, or even mentioned, the
president’s assassination or early death. Luddington arranged catering at the site on the
day of the dedication, so that the press, the family, and their special guests would feel both
comfortable and well-received.
106
Nearly all the coverage mentioned Rose Kennedy’s
vibrant purple dress and white hat, her gracious gift to the country, and always how
important her voice was in guiding visitors through the home.
107
More than 700 people
observed as Rose Kennedy handed the deed to the property over to the Park Service
(Figure 7).
108
104
Memo: Dedication Ceremonies, Acting Super, Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Site to Superintendent,
Boston National Park Service Group, May 16, 1969 John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource
Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 1, Folder 13.
105
Luddington Oral History.
106
Luddington Oral History.
107
Robert Reinhold, “Kennedy’s Birthplace Made a National Shrine: Family Gathers in Brookline on Nostalgic
Day,” New York Times, May 30, 1969, 29.
108
Robert Reinhold, “Kennedy’s Birthplace Made a National Shrine: Family Gathers in Brookline on Nostalgic
Day,” New York Times, May 30, 1969, 29.
54
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
Figure 7. Rose Kennedy welcomes people to the site.
Cecil W. Stoughton, JOFI Dedication, JOFI 1504, Box 10, Folder 8, NPS, 1969.
Even after the opening day had passed, in June 1969, the Park Service was unsure of
who was paying for the audio tour to be permanently installed in the house. While the
audio tour was complete, for the opening day there was a last-minute struggle to acquire
the equipment to play the audio tour at the site. The equipment used in the dedication
ceremonies had been borrowed from the NPS Division of Audiovisual Arts, but because
the audio tour “was very well received” site staff suggested that “money be programmed for
a permanent installation” with an estimated cost of $3,500–$4,000.
109
That the key interpre-
tive element of the house was still in limbo after the opening shows some of the strain in
communications between NPS departments and the Boston Group.
109
Memo: RE JFK Audio, Frank Barnes to Benjamin Zerbey, June 2, 1969; MEMO: Audio Installation, John F.
Kennedy National Historic Site, Chief, Branch of Audio and Equipment Services to Regional Director, NER; 9
June 1969; Memo: John F. Kennedy Birthplace, Chief Branch of Audio and Equipment Services (S. Blair
Hubbard) to Regional Director NER, June 4, 1969: all Box 3: MIMA NHP, Subject Flies, 1956–1974: F74–23
Rate Schedules, etc. –L 58 Proposed Areas Folder: K18–17 Interpretive Activities—Interpretive Planning, John
F. Kennedy Birthplace, 1969, NARA Waltham.
55
Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy Marking the Birthplace of Kennedy
Changes Ahead
By 1969, Congress was beginning to balk at the cost of federal Kennedy memorials as the
Kennedy Center for Performing Arts’ construction cost estimates more than doubled from
$30 million to $60 million. Some memorial efforts were approved by members of the
Kennedy and Johnson Administration, rather than Congress, like Kennedy’s tomb at
Arlington, which came with a hefty $677,000 price tag. They became the target of partisan
debates. Many argued that such memorial efforts for every president would cost the nation
too much and crowd Washington, DC, with memorials.
110
Interior Secretary Udall, Rose
Kennedy, Tip O’Neill, and Ted Kennedy had been smart to push through the legislation for
the birthplace in 1967 while the Johnson Administration was still in place; the changes that
would happen within the Park Service under the Nixon Administration would affect the
Boston Group as the site headed into the 1970s.
110
Ernest Cuneo, “As Sad as It Is Painful: Kennedy Memorials Stir a Debate,” Boston Globe, June 22, 1969, 123.
57
CHAPTER FOUR
Early Management of the Birthplace,
1969–1987
A
fter the John F. Kennedy National Historic Site opened to the public, it faced
changes in its administration. In the first two decades after its opening, the site had
five different superintendents and at least 11 different acting superintendents.
1
It
also had three different park administrative structures that managed the site: the Boston
Service Group; the Longfellow National Historic Site, which was donated to the National
Park Service in 1973 and opened to the public in 1974; and the Frederick Law Olmsted
National Historic Site. Beyond these significant administrative changes, the decades also
saw turmoil in the Greater Boston area as a result of the mandated busing of students to
desegregate Boston’s public schools. The violent reaction to desegregation spilled over into
Brookline in 1975 and resulted in a fire at the Kennedy birthplace, which caused the site to
be closed for more than a year. Throughout much of the period, the site had consistent
staffing that was closely connected to the former president. The site was the smallest in the
Boston Group. As the site partnered with Longfellow and eventually, Olmsted, it remained
the smallest of the eventual two partner sites, in terms of staff and budget but not in terms of
visitation, operations at Kennedy held steady as they ramped up operations in the early
1990s at the Longfellow and Olmsted sites.
2
The site, like many small historic house sites
both inside and outside of the National Park Service, did not have a board, community
advisory committee, nor a friends group and, as a result, lacked the kind of advocacy that
helped other sites attract a larger audience.
3
1
Benjamin Zerbey, Herbert Olsen, Russell Berry, James L. Brown, and Stephen Whitesell were appointed as
superintendents at the site, and David Moffit, Kathleen Catalano, Earl Harris, Maurice Kowal, Douglass Sabin,
John Health, Franklin Montford, Shary Berg, Rhinelander Hernandez, Nancy Nelson, and Teri Savage all served
as acting superintendents over the decade. Some of these acting superintendents served more than one appointment.
2
See the administrative histories for the Longfellow House—George Washington’s Headquarters National
Historic Site (2021) and for the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site (2007).
3
While there was no community advisory group set up at Kennedy, such efforts were being made for larger units
of the National Park Service. Edwin Small and Benjamin Zerbey oversaw a community advisory commission at
Minute Man that met twice a year to discuss community issues and concerns. Zerbey, “Oral History.”
58
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
Neighborhood Tensions as the Site Opens
to the Public
While some neighbors continued to be skeptical about the role the Park Service might play
in Brookline, most began to accept the small role the house played in the broader com-
memorative landscape of the Kennedy family in Massachusetts. Not long after the Kennedy
site officially opened to the public, newspaper coverage of the house and its events
changed. The Boston Globe, which had long, and largely positively, covered nearly every
effort to preserve the home, began to be more critical reporting on the events at the site.
Just one year after the opening, the Globe published an article on the role of the NPS site in
the Beals Street neighborhood. Diana Crawford, the author, noted that more than 37,500
people had toured the house, but that “countless others” had driven by “at all hours” and
made themselves at home on the porch posing for photographs. Neighbors complained
about buses idling in the street, fumes coming into their homes, the peering eyes of tour-
ists, and all manner of parking issues. Beals Street residents also still seemed worried that
their homes could be taken by eminent domain to solve the obvious parking problems.
4
Benjamin Zerbey (July 1968–May 1971) and Herbert Olsen (June 1971–February
1974) served as the superintendents of the Kennedy site while they managed a number of
the other NPS sites in the Boston area in their roles as “General Superintendents” of the
Boston Service Group. Because the Boston Group was involved in the creation of new NPS
sites and their management as they came into the service, often Zerbey and Olsen were
preparing reports and requests for these sites and even testifying before Congress in
support of their establishment.
5
Olsen had served as superintendent at Shiloh National
Military Park before coming to the Boston Group and was a trained NPS historian, with a
master’s degree from Columbia University. Still, his work at Minute Man, Salem Maritime
National Historic Site, Adams National Historical Park, Saugus Iron Works National
Historic Site, and eventually Longfellow National Historic Site, largely meant the Kennedy
site rarely showed up in his administrative records of the Boston Group.
6
4
Diana Crawford, “‘The Shrine’ Is Hardly Mecca to Everyone on Beals Street,” Boston Globe, May 4, 1970.
5
Both were involved in the creation of the Longfellow National Historic Site, and Olsen was required to
provide support and testimony before Congress during the hearings that led to the establishment of the site.
Subcommittee on Parks and Recreation of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, US Senate, 90-Second
Congress, Second Session, S. 3129, Longfellow National Historic Site, Hearing before the Subcommittee on
Parks and Recreation of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Unites States Senate, 90-Second
Congress, Second Session, S. 3129, February 15, 1972.
6
Zenzen, Bridging the Past: Minute Man National Historical Park Administrative History, 128–58.
59
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987 Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
Personal Connections
While Zerbey and Olsen served as superintendents and administered the Boston Service
Group headquartered at Minute Man National Historical Park, on a daily basis the historic
site was overseen by a provisional site manager, Maurice Kowal.
7
Maurice L. Kowal met
John F. Kennedy when Kowal was only 19. He was assigned to Kennedy’s Patrol Torpedo
(PT) boat during World War II (Figure 8).
Sent to the Solomon Islands for duty after just six weeks of PT boat training, Kowal
served under Kennedy as crew on both the PT-59 and PT-109 boats. Kowal was injured by
a bomb dropped from a Japanese float plane just three days before Kennedy’s encounter
with the Japanese destroyer that led to the boat’s now-famous destruction on August 1,
1943. As a result, Kowal missed the dramatic episode that defined the narrative of John F.
Kennedy’s war service.
8
He went on to serve in the Korean War. However, Kowal also
served on the executive committee of the political organization Veterans for Kennedy and
handed out posters and Kennedy campaign materials during JFK’s presidential campaign.
9
By 1961, with Kennedy’s assistance through a rare executive order, he started a career at the
National Park Service.
10
He was appointed as a horticulturist at the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt
National Historic Site and then “served in the same capacity at Minute Man National
Historical Park until 1968.” There he went on to become the Maintenance Superintendent
for the Boston Service Group before being assigned as Management Assistant and Site
Manager at Kennedy’s birthplace.
11
Kowal’s time at Minute Man and the Boston Group
seems to have been marred at least somewhat by politics associated with Kennedy. A fellow
employee proclaimed that Kowal was denied promotions because of his personal and
7
National Park Service, “‘Park Superintendents,’ Historic Listing of National Park Service Officials,”
https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/tolson/histlist.htm.
On the day-to-day management, see Charlene
Roise and Bruce Fernald, “Notes from Telephone Interview with Herbert Olsen” (Minute Man National
Historical Park Archives, 1981).
8
“Transcript: A Conversation with World War II PT Boat Veterans,” https://www.jfklibrary.org/sites/default/
files/2018-04/2005_06_27_PT_Boat_Veterans.pdf.
On June 27, 2015, the JFK Library hosted a conversation
where PT Boat veterans Dick Keresey, Paul “Red” Fay, Bill “Bitter” Battle, and Maurice Kowal who shared their
stories of serving on PT Boats in the Solomon Islands during World War II at the same time as John F.
Kennedy. H. D. S. Greenway, former Editorial Page Editor of the Boston Globe, moderated.
9
Memo: Steve Smith to Robert Kennedy, February 22, 1960, PT-109 Folder, Papers of John F. Kennedy.
Pre-Presidential Papers. Presidential Campaign Files, 1960; Digital Identifier: JFKCAMP1960-1049-
013-p0001, JFK Library.
10
“Executive Order 10959, Authorizing the Appointment of Mr. Maurice L. Kowal to a Competitive Position
without Regard to the Civil Service Rules and Regulations,” Federal Register Page and Date: 26 FR 7753
(August 19, 1961).
11
On Kennedy being responsible for his appointment, see Maurice Kowal to Mrs. Lincoln, February 7, 1962,
Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. President’s Office Files, 196: KA-KEN, JFK Library. On
Kowal’s career with the NPS before his appointment as “Management Assistant” at JOFI, see NPS, “Personal
Resume, Maurice L. Kowal, Management Assistant, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site,” news release,
1969. John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504). Box 1,
Folder 9.
60
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
political connections to Kennedy and an “anti-Kennedy bias” within the Northeast
Regional Office. In court, Kowal testified that though Edwin Small had formally requested
a promotion for Kowal, he had learned from a colleague that Small had simultaneously
privately recommended that his superiors not promote Kowal, for political reasons.
12
Figure 8. Kowal (kneeling, left) and Kennedy (standing, far right), with PT-109,
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.
12
See the transcript of the ruling in Iannarelli v. Morton, US District Court, Philadelphia, April 14, 1971 (327 F.
Supp. 873, E.D. Pa. 1971). In a lawsuit that has come to set precedent in First Amendment rights for federal
employees, Thomas Iannarelli was fired from his job in the personnel division of the Northeast Regional Office
by Regional Director Lemuel Garrison, for attempting to persuade NPS employees to file false reports of racial
and religious discrimination both within official channels and through work with the NAACP. Kowal testified in
court that Iannarelli told him that, despite the fact that Edwin Small had formally requested a promotion for
Kowal, Small had simultaneously privately recommended to his superiors that they not promote Kowal.
Iannarelli warned in 1966 that, “because officials of the National Park Service were prejudiced against President
Kennedy, Mr. Kowal should not expect a promotion.” It seems that at least some of Mr. Iannarelli’s accusations
of prejudice against Kennedy was supported by evidence in the case. Kowal’s own comments on Small’s
leadership of the Boston Group and Minute Man National Historical Park seem to indicate he did not appreciate
Small’s leadership style. The fact that Kowal’s original appointment in the NPS came by way of an executive
order may have contributed to the ill feelings between the two. Whether any of this “anti-Kennedy” sentiment
eventually resulted in lack of NPS interest in the Kennedy site and its support has not been supported in the
archival evidence uncovered in the research for this report. Web transcript of case: https://casetext.com/case/
iannarelli-v-morton-2#43002bab-1b84-484b-9785-28db65d5d381-fn18. On Kowal’s opinions about Small, see
Charlene Roise, “Notes from Telephone Interview with Maurice Kowal,” (1981), Box 1, MIMA Archives, 1989
Administrative History Records, MIMA 76679 (Minute Man National Historical Park Archives).
61
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987 Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
Kowal oversaw the site during its infancy. Though his title seems to have shifted
from Unit Manager, Park Manager, Management Assistant, Park Technician, Acting
Superintendent, and “Superintendent,” he had sole site management duties at Kennedy
from 1968 until 1974.
13
At the beginning of his time there, the site was open from 9:00 a.m.
to 5:00 p.m., seven days a week, sometimes seeing as many as 300 visitors a day.
14
Despite
the high visitation, Kowal began the essential work at the site with few of the necessary
park management documents required for operations. He focused on education,
accessibility, and maintenance and care for the historic structure; he was especially
concerned with determining the structural load that the house could physically support.
Kowal also began the project to document the collections at the site and to document the
historic fabric of the site to NPS standards. Staff during this period developed promotional
materials for distribution but seemed to simultaneously not have basic tourist
memorabilia—like postcards—for sale at the site.
15
Because he spoke Polish, Kowal
translated Rose Kennedy’s tour for visitors from Poland, and he worked with the
Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to develop a JFK exhibit at a Turnpike stop to help
promote the site. Kowal also began the site’s first oral history program by interviewing
Miss Fiske who was the headmistress at the Dexter school while Kennedy attended, and he
also worked to tape an interview with Mr. Meyerson, a former owner of the house, as well.
16
Kowal and Early Studies at the Site
Kowal worked with the Boston Group’s exacting and highly skilled historical architect
Orville Carroll to identify that the 1914 paint color for the house, based on a sample taken
from the window that the Kennedys added not long after they were married, was “dark
green with the trim work painted cream.” He reached out to Rose Kennedy to consult her
on the color. She recalled a “dark hue” but “not a specific color.” Through Kowal, Rose
Kennedy agreed to review the paint chips they had uncovered in their investigations and to
give approvals for a change in paint colors.
17
Kowal also oversaw the initial curatorial
program’s work to catalog the site’s collections. Less than a year after the site opened to the
13
See Appendix A, “Partial Listing of Site Administrators and Staff, 1962–1994,” in the Finding Aid for the
John Fitzgerald National Historical Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003.
14
“JFK Birthplace Attracts Host of Visitors,” Worcester Telegram, July 27, 1969.
15
Douglas Sabin to Mrs. J. Kostenly, September 23, 1974, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource
Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 4, Folder 18
16
Group Scoop 1, no. 17 (1971): 4. Orville Carroll Papers, MIMA.
17
Orville Carroll Weekly Field Report, September 11, 1970, Orville Carroll Papers, MIMA; and Orville Carroll
Weekly Field Report, September 23, 1970. Orville Carroll Papers, MIMA. See also “A House of a Different
Color,” John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/
a-house-of-a-different-color.htm, accessed May 29, 2022.
62
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
public, Charles Dorman, then the Museum Curator at Independence National Historical
Park in Philadelphia, spent three weeks going through the collections at the house with the
help of NPS employee Muriel Storrie. Dorman carefully recorded his thoughts on each
item, and occasionally noted when he found items egregiously outside the time period
meant to be represented at the site.
18
Storrie recorded Dorman’s assessments of the objects
and later typed up the resulting catalog records for the site.
19
Kowal also requested new
equipment to create a slide show for educational purposes, and he sent letters to at least
33 area schools hoping to bring school children into the site. With Superintendent Zerbey,
Kowal oversaw the addition of a bathroom in the basement (at a cost of $158,700) for
the use of visitors in 1970.
20
Despite all Kowal’s work and excitement about early higher-
than-expected attendance, by November 1969, less than six full months after opening, the
NPS announced that the site would be closed on Mondays starting December 1st, because
of low attendance.
21
Kowal and Zerbey also worked with newly hired historian Anna Coxe Toogood, the
first woman ever to be employed as a historian in the NPS’s Washington, DC, Office of
History and Historic Architecture, to complete a much-anticipated furnishing plan in
1971.
22
Kowal and Toogood had high hopes of working with Rose Kennedy and Robert
Luddington to identify and acquire documentation about the furnishings they had pur-
chased for the site during their restoration. Toogood wrote to Rose Kennedy asking for her
help in May of 1971. She was aware that Kennedy might find her report “presumptious
[sic], considering the amount of time, energy, and interest” that Rose Kennedy had invested
in the restoration. Despite her earnest request, in the letter, Toogood did not explain why
the NPS required such studies or how they would be used in the future.
23
Unfortunately,
Rose Kennedy did not participate in the study. Toogood was wholly dependent on the
notes that Nan Rickey made during her interviews with Rose Kennedy while working on
the audio tour before the site opened to the public.
24
As a result, the report is as much a
record of the struggle to write a report without any documentary records to draw upon as it
18
Anna Coxe Toogood, “John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, Historic Furnishings
Plan,” Eastern Service Center Office of History and Historic Architecture, National Park Service (Washington,
DC, 1971), ii, 33.
19
On Storrie’s involvement, see “John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, Historic
Furnishings Plan,” 11, note 32.
20
Memo: Rest Room Project—John F. Kennedy National Historic Site: Benjamin Zerbey to Lemuel Garrison,
February 25, 1970. John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI
1504), Box 2, Folder 6.
21
“JFK Home Closed on Mondays,” Brookline Chronicle-Citizen, November 20, 1969.
22
Anna Coxe Toogood, interview by Hilary Iris Lowe, May 3, 2017.
23
Anna Coxe Toogood to Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy, May, 1971, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource
Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 8, Folder 14.
24
Toogood, “John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, Historic Furnishings Plan,” i.
63
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987 Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
is an assessment of the furnishings at the house. Her report, like the early biographies of
John F. Kennedy that the NPS relied on for information about the birthplace, began with a
recounting of the suffering of the Irish in the 1840s, and the argument that by 1850, Boston
had become a “cultural battleground” for Irish immigrants as the background for John
Fitzgerald Kennedy’s birth in 1917.
25
The inclusion of a substantial family history in this
document likely contributed to the interpretation of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose
Fitzgerald Kennedy as coming from humble beginnings, despite simultaneously presenting
information on their private school educations, childhoods among the most privileged
Irish Americans in Boston, who Toogood calls the “high Irish,” and access to political
power in Boston.
26
Writing to Luddington as she completed her report she noted, “As I
waded through my notes on furnishings from 1905–20, I realized the overall accuracy of
the refurbishing of the Kennedy home. Even from our brief interview, I could grasp the
extensive and conscientious planning behind the project.” Most importantly, she pleaded
with Luddington, to donate his materials documenting the processes through which he
purchased and acquired collections. She cautioned, “I cannot emphasize enough the
importance of your cooperation on this matter, for at this moment, without any written
materials, I cannot proceed with the report.”
27
Unfortunately, Robert Luddington was
rarely, if ever, available, leading to decades of work on behalf of the Park Service to acquire
his notes and papers about the birthplace project.
28
However, Toogood did complete the report, making use of a creative set of sources.
Looking at Rose Kennedy’s biographical notes that did not make their way into the audio
tour, she was frank that Kennedy did not want to “‘become an emaciated worn out old hag,
nor did she have to be a fat, shapeless, jolly happy-go-lucky individual whose only subject
for conversations was…children, church and cooking.’”
29
Toogood clearly used Rose
Kennedy’s reminiscences as a critical source to determine the kinds of objects that would
be included in her active social world, which included her founding and leadership in the
Ace of Clubs, her interest in golf, and her work beyond the home. Toogood matched these
25
“John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, Historic Furnishings Plan,” v. The first
chapter of her furnishing study is devoted to recounting the histories of JFK’s grandparents and great-
grandparents, in Ireland and Boston. Though this might seem quite unusual for a furnishing report today, much of
this information was not yet thoroughly researched, and she likely pieced together connections to bits of family
history she expected to find in the furnishings belonging to Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.
26
“John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, Historic Furnishings Plan,” 12.
27
Anna Coxe Toogood to Robert Luddington, May 7, 1971, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource
Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 8, Folder 14. Most of these papers came to the park much
later, in Luddington’s 2016 gift.
28
In 2016, more than 40 years later, Robert Luddington did donate his papers to the National Park Service and
sat down for an interview with site staff about his work at the site. See the Robert T. Luddington Papers
(JOFI 1510).
29
Rose Kennedy, cited in Toogood, “John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, Historic
Furnishings Plan,” 14.
64
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
with Rose Kennedy’s memories of John Kennedy’s early childhood, which Kennedy
remembered as uneventful outside of scarlet fever when he was two-and-a-half years old.
To expand and confirm this perspective, Toogood tracked down some of John F. Kennedy’s
memories of his childhood, which she noted was an “easy, prosperous life, supervised by
maids and nurses.” John Kennedy noted that his mother “was the glue [in their family]…
highly devout,” and very interested in history and books.
30
All the elements that Toogood
outlined helped portray a more complete picture of the mother who lived at the house in
1917 but also of the woman who furnished it in the late 1960s.
Through a careful review of popular and fashionable home furnishings and decora-
tions from the era represented at the house and about a dozen years prior, Toogood indi-
cated that most of the furnishings, while not original, roughly fit the dates chosen for
interpretation. She drew attention to some inconsistencies, like the corduroy slipcover for a
living room chair. She noted details like that while the chair might fit the period, the cordu-
roy covering was not readily available during the period of historical significance.
31
She also
documented that some of the furnishings were copies of those from Robert Luddington’s
family homes, including “the stove accessories (stove brush, coal shovel, coal hood, fire
stoker, grate shaker)” and that “several of these articles came from his own grandmother’s
kitchen.”
32
The same age that President Kennedy would have been, Luddington, with Rose
Kennedy’s approval, sometimes used his childhood and home as a model for some items,
like two end tables in the living room and the child’s dining table. Such items could have
been in many homes of the period.
33
Toogood speculated that some items which were not historically accurate, could or
should eventually be replaced with items from before 1917, like a 1937 book volume, a
midcentury reproduction of an antique side chair, the plastic bottle of Johnson’s baby
powder, or the solid-colored rugs in several rooms. But ultimately, Toogood reasoned that
even if these objects were inconsistent with the period, Rose Kennedy approved them, and
thus it was “difficult to maintain any criticism” of them.
34
30
“John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, Historic Furnishings Plan,” 14–18.
31
“John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, Historic Furnishings Plan,” 24.
32
“John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, Historic Furnishings Plan,” 27.
33
“John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, Historic Furnishings Plan,” 24–5.
34
“John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, Historic Furnishings Plan,” 29.
65
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987 Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
Not long before Toogood began work on this document, the National Park Service
started to develop “separate administrative policies” for unit groups, which were deter-
mined by whether a site was classified as a natural, recreative, or historic site.
35
By 1968, the
NPS had broadened its understanding of periods of significance to acknowledge that
managers at sites might do “better to retain genuine old work of several periods…than to
restore the whole…to a single period.”
36
Toogood’s response to Rose Kennedy’s some-
times uneven work at the site seems to indicate that staff within the service already under-
stood Kennedy’s restoration work, though only a few years old, was likely to be itself of
historical significance someday. While the Kennedy family involvement was likely a signifi-
cant factor, structures within the service also allowed staff to understand the value of
eschewing a single dominant vision of a period of significance. Between the furnishing
plan, the interpretive prospectus, the catalog of items in the house, and the historical paint
study, under Kowal, many of the important reports and studies that would guide the staff at
the site over the next three decades were in place. Kowal didn’t believe that these were all
the site needed. Yet they would become the managing documents that directed interpreta-
tion and cultural resource management for the site over the next three decades.
By 1972, NPS Director George B. Hartzog Jr. (NPS Director from 1964 to 1972) had
not only reorganized many of the NPS sites into tight service-driven administrative units
like the Boston Group, but he had created the Denver Service Center, the Harpers Ferry
Center, and he had sought to completely rethink the organization of all the parks by how
they functioned as a representation of the whole nation—its landscapes, natural features,
and histories. In regard to the historical units of the NPS, in part one of his National Park
System Plan, Hartzog attempted to locate all of the service’s historic parks within a single
thematic system designed to not only serve all Americans but also represent them and their
pasts. By establishing a coherent system of nine primary “themes” with subthemes, he was
able to classify each historic site as contributing to one theme. Thus, the service was able to
determine which themes were underrepresented or not represented at all. While his
historical themes were limited in their own way, his was an attempt to include a much
broader picture of American history by strategically expanding the story beyond just the
“great men,” of the past to the history of significant groups, movements, collectives, and
especially American industry and technology. Hartzog and his staff easily identified the
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site as firmly part of Theme 5: Political and
Military Affairs, subtheme 5e: The American Presidency. By the time of the Plan, Hartzog
believed that the NPS only needed five more historic sites devoted to this theme, explicitly
35
Lary M. Dilsaver, America’s National Park System: The Critical Documents, ed. Lary M. Dilsaver (Lanham,
MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 1994), 270. It is important to note that, two years later, under the Nixon
administration, the NPS administration reemphasized the single “system” of which these three different unit
types were all a part. America’s National Park System: The Critical Documents (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield,
2016), 333.
36
America’s National Park System: The Critical Documents, 344.
66
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
noting that the NPS did not yet have sites dedicated to Millard Fillmore, William McKinley,
or Richard Nixon. The plan stated that “for consistency, all [presidents] should be repre-
sented by at least one area.”
37
Hartzog made it an official NPS policy to remember each
president with at least one site operated by the NPS.
Maurice Kowal, perhaps attentive to Hartzog’s strategic support of historic sites
and the changing tides to come with a new presidential administration, pushed hard for a
historic structures report for the Kennedy site. He believed there was “an imminent need”
to “gain known facts” from both Rose Kennedy and former residents of the house. He
worried that these facts would “not be available in future years.”
38
Superintendent Zerbey
had requested this report in 1968 at the same time he had requested a historic furnishing
plan that was funded, but his request was denied. Kowal convinced Superintendent Olsen
to request a historic structures report again, because it might help to answer “questions
about the historical accuracy of the refurnishing of the interior,” that reports like
Toogood’s had outlined.
39
The paint color and furnishings at the house clearly troubled the
NPS staff, like Rickey, Dorman, Toogood, Carroll, and Kowal, who were devoted to the
service’s scientific process of providing research-based evidence for furnishings and other
decorative elements at historic sites. Rose Kennedy and Robert Luddington’s restoration
did not always meet those exacting standards, and the anomalies plagued Olsen, Carroll,
and Kowal. Despite his background in maintenance, which likely helped him understand
the site’s needs and the layers of change at the site over time, Kowal’s request for research
into the historic structure was denied. It presented “insufficient or inadequate data neces-
sary to prepare an estimate,” according to the Northeast Region’s administrators.
40
Beyond
research into the structure, Carroll also strongly and repeatedly encouraged “the need to
start the development of a more accurate furnishing plan of the birthplace while Mrs. Rose
Kennedy is still living.” He cautioned that this work would “require the services of a
museum curator,” a staff member that the site did not employ.
41
Meanwhile, under Olsen’s
37
National Park Service, The National Park Service Plan, Part I (Washington, DC: Department of the Interior,
1972), 40.
38
Memo: Historic Structure Report, Kowal to Director Northeast Regional Office, through General
Superintendent, January 24, 1973, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records,
1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 2, Folder 5.
39
Memo: Development Package Proposal No. 101, Historic Structure Report, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National
Historic Site, to Director of the Northeast Region, from General Superintendent, Boston Group, Herbert Olsen,
January 29, 1973, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI
1504), Box 2, Folder 5. On Kowal’s assessment of Olsen as a superintendent at the Boston Group, see Roise,
“Notes from Telephone Interview with Maurice Kowal,” Box 1, MIMA Archives, 1989 Administrative History
Records, MIMA 76679.
40
Memo from Chief, Office of Programing and Budget, Northeast Region, Martin B. Christenson, to General
Superintendent, Boston Group, January 15, 1973, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management
Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 2, Folder 5.
41
Orville Carroll Weekly Field Report, April 17, 1970, MIMA Archives Orville Carroll Research Records,
MIMA 63772, Box 2, Folder 22.
67
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987 Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
superintendency, the large all-staff meetings of the site managers for the Boston Group
seem to have been discontinued and the Group Scoop, the newsletter for the group, came to
an end as well. The Kennedy site rarely flared up into the superintendents’ list of issues that
needed immediate attention.
42
While Kowal was not able to get all the reports he knew would be necessary for the
proper maintenance and resource conservation at the house, Kowal was otherwise quite
successful. Kowal oversaw the visitation of a significant number of people to the site, set up
the first neighborhood walking tours, and in 1973 on the tenth anniversary of his friend
and former commander President Kennedy’s assassination, he hosted documentary crews
from across the globe, including British and Irish National Television.
43
It is still possible
that despite the personal connection to Kennedy and all the innovations he made at the
new site, Kowal was frustrated. According to his coworkers, by the end he “didn’t like”
working at the site.
44
By 1974, Kowal was no longer at the Kennedy site and had moved
back to his position of head of maintenance at Minute Man National Historical Park.
The year 1974 brought other important changes to the historic site. In 1972, the
Longfellow National Historic Site (Longfellow) was established in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
45
The 1970s were a decade of vast development for the National Park
Service, and the Longfellow house, though long on the radar of the service, was part of a
strategic expansion of sites across the country.
46
Though only 3 miles and a 20-minute drive
away, Longfellow joined the Boston Group’s administrative unit and would come to be the
administrative lead unit for the Kennedy site in February of 1974.
47
With the Northeast
Region’s reorganization into the North Atlantic Region and the Mid-Atlantic Region, the
Boston Group, with all its power to develop and support new and multiple park units,
would be jettisoned. Instead of being connected to a large administrative structure with
park units in the greater Boston area and a great deal of institutional expertise, like that of
Orville Carroll and others, the Kennedy site now joined a brand new and much smaller
unit with the Longfellow house. The Longfellow house, though relatively well maintained
42
For instance, at Minute Man, constant concerns flared among nearby residents over the seizure of their lands
by purchase and eminent domain. See John Mahoney, “History Closes in on Lincoln Families: Park Residents
Resist Eviction,” Boston Globe, July 10, 1972.
43
Memo: Superintendent’s Annual Report, Superintendent, Russell W. Berry Jr. to Regional Director, February
4, 1974, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504),
Box 5, Folder 6.
44
Orville Carroll Interview with Joan Zenzen, October 22, 2004.
45
Public Law 92-475, October 9, 1972.
46
Dilsaver, America’s National Park System: The Critical Documents. See also conversations among the LONG
papers about NPS interest in the site starting in the 1950s. See Memo: Report on Craigie-Longfellow House to
Director, from Chief Historian, March 19, 1953, “Transition Files,” LONG Unprocessed Boxes and Files,
Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, Box 53, Folder 3.
47
Memo: Superintendent’s Annual Report, Superintendent, Russell W. Berry Jr. To Regional Director, John F.
Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 5, Folder 6.
68
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
by Longfellow family descendants, needed a great deal of immediate attention. A curator,
Kathleen Catalano, was hired to help process the vast collections at Longfellow and would
occasionally be assigned to efforts and issues at the Kennedy birthplace.
48
However, the
Kennedy site, to some degree, was left on its own.
Muriel Storrie, a long-time park ranger, was assigned to the Kennedy site during the
transition between the Boston Group and the Longfellow administration, and she was left
on her own in dealing with the public once Kowal returned to Minute Man. Storrie often
used her personal experience to interpret Kennedy’s legacy at the historic site. One 1980
newspaper article followed Storrie through the site, and she recounted where she was at the
moment she learned of the president’s assassination. Storrie’s approach seemed to impress
the new superintendent, and he believed everything at the Kennedy site ran smoothly.
Russell W. Berry was the first new two-unit superintendent, after serving briefly as
the lead management at the sites before their reorganization. He served as superintendent
for just three years, before leaving to go through the NPS’s Departmental Management
Program. When he came on board as superintendent, he believed that little needed atten-
tion at the Kennedy house and felt that the site was “constrained” as long as Rose Kennedy
was still alive. Though he “nominally” reported to the superintendent at Minute Man,
administrators there showed little interest in the two sites, and he worked on substantial
restoration projects at both sites directly through the regional office.
49
Berry’s three years at
Kennedy were eventful ones. Despite extensive needs at Longfellow that took 95% of his
attention, Berry again began requesting essential reports and plans for Kennedy. He argued
to the regional director that “only basic data for the J. F. Kennedy National Historical [sic]
Site at present is contained in the Master Plan and Interpretive Prospectus. There are
several Historic Studies programmed which will give additional information.”
50
Despite
Nan Rickey’s recommendation early on that a Master Plan be developed for the site, it was
not until 1977 that the staff at the site, rather than a planning unit of the NPS, first devel-
oped a Statement for Management in lieu of a master plan.
48
Catalano was a curator at Boston Group before the reorganization. She served at Longfellow from 1974
through 1986 and was the primary curatorial force for the Kennedy site during this same period. Sara Patton
Zarrelli, The Long Road to Restoration: An Administrative History of Longfellow House-Washington’s
Headquarters National Historic Site (National Park Service: US Department of the Interior, 2021), 50, 70.
49
After three years in the NPS Departmental Management Program, Berry moved on to a position as Assistant
Superintendent at Big Bend, and then served as superintendent of Voyageurs. Russell Berry, interview by Sara
Zarrelli, April 24, 2020.
50
Memo: Resources Basic Inventory (RBI), Superintendent, Russell J. Berry Jr., to Regional Director,
November 30, 1973. John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI
1504), Box 2, Folder 5.
69
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987 Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
Busing and Fire Bombing
At the Kennedy site, another concern would take center stage during Berry’s time as
superintendent. On Monday, September 8, 1975, an unknown person firebombed the
Kennedy birthplace. It was the first day of school for children in Boston area public
schools. The city was engulfed in protests, police strikes, and anxiety about the court-
mandated decree to enforce busing to desegregate Boston’s schools. Some of this concern
spilled over into Brookline.
Senator Ted Kennedy faced a great deal of conflict over the issue. His stand was
“probusing,” despite consistent and often physical opposition from White Bostonians.
Antibusing protestors blocked him from reaching his car at a public speech in Boston,
slashed the tires on his car in broad daylight, “jabbed at him with American flags,” hit him
with their fists, and threw rocks at him. Already under scrutiny after his 1969
Chappaquiddick car accident that led to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, Ted Kennedy
became a particular target of anti-busing advocates. In one altercation, after voices in an
antibusing crowd screamed at Senator Kennedy, “Why don’t you put your one-legged son
on a bus for Roxbury,” “Let your daughter get bused there so she can get raped,” and “Why
don’t you let them shoot you like they shot your two brothers?” members of the crowd
threw tomatoes and eggs at him. He sought shelter in the John F. Kennedy Federal Building
in downtown Boston. After he made it inside, the group “pounded on the plate glass
windows” and broke at least one window in anger.
51
But that Monday, sometime after the birthplace closed for the day and before the
firebomb ignited the historic site, someone scrawled “Bus Teddy” on the sidewalk in front
of the house.
52
Paradoxically, Ted “Teddy” Kennedy had never lived at 83 Beals Street; he
was born after his family had moved away from Brookline. The national historic site was an
unlucky symbol, pointing to the fact that the Kennedys, though Bostonians by reputation,
had always raised their children outside the city and outside of the public school system of
the City of Boston. Brookline itself had model schools in the 1960s, where residents spent
near state-high levels per student to ensure and please a highly educated population. In
addition, the largely White and well-off town of Brookline participated in the ground-
51
Bob Sales, “Sen. Kennedy Jeered from Stage at Rally: Antibusing Crowd Throws Tomatoes, Eggs,” Boston
Globe, September 10, 1974. Jerimiah Murphy, “The Day the Crowd Booed a Kennedy in Boston,” Boston Globe,
September 10, 1974. See also Peter Anderson, “Bus Foes Shout Down Kennedy at Hub Hearing on Airline
Fares,” Boston Globe, February 15, 1975. Curtis Wilkie, “Busing Foes Again Heckle Kennedy in Boston,”
Boston Globe, March 8, 1975. Richard Martin and Robert Rosenthal, “Kennedy Jostled, Rushed by Crowd of
Busing Foes in Quincy,” Boston Globe, April 7, 1975. Ken Boatwright, “Roar Vows to Continue Confronting Se.
Kennedy,” Boston Globe, April 8, 1975. Editorial Statement, “Assaults of Sen. Kennedy,” Boston Globe, April 8,
1975.
52
Though archival photographs at the site, and those published in local newspapers, indicate that the
firebombers painted “Bus Teddy,” Russell Berry recalls the spray-painted message as “Fuck Kennedy.” Berry,
“Oral History.”
70
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
breaking voluntary and sometimes controversial school desegregation program METCO,
put in place in 1966, which brought students from troubled schools in nearby Boston to
attend the stellar schools in Brookline.
53
While some called the busing that Brookline
participated in “from slum to suburb,” busing the program was primarily organized by
Black parents who wanted better educational opportunities for their children in the sub-
urbs of Boston.
54
Despite being perfect tinder for a fire, the wood-frame and wooden clap-
board-sided house was not lost to flames, but it did sustain significant fire and smoke
damage. Luckily a new smoke detector and alarm had been installed just inside the back
door. The alarm was set up to immediately call the police and fire department if tempera-
tures reached 190° Fahrenheit. It was through that very back door’s glass window the
arsonists tossed the bomb. The fire started directly under the smoke detector and spread
through the back entry hall wall and to the back of the house.
55
By the time the fire department arrived at the house, a neighbor who had heard the
commotion was already dousing the back of the house with a hose. Brookline Fire
Department Deputy Chief, John E. McInerny found a strong odor of gasoline inside.
56
According to the FBI investigation into the fire, due to the detector’s location, “it seem[ed]
reasonable to conclude that the presence of fire was known almost immediately to the
Brookline Fire Department. The extent of damage to the house during the short period of
time indicated use of some type of accelerant.”
57
Though the damage was not catastrophic, it was extensive. Superintendent Berry
was watching a football game on television when he received a call about the fire. When he
got to the house, he found most of the extreme damage in the kitchen (Figure 9).
58
53
For more on METCO and programs like it, see Michael Savage’s “Beyond Boundaries: Envisioning
Metropolitan School Desegregation in Boston, Detroit, and Philadelphia, 1963–1974,” Journal of Urban History
46, no. 1 (2020): 129–49.
54
For an early account of the METCO program, see Geoffrey Zwirikunzeno Kapenzi’s “The Metropolitan
Council for Educational Opportunity: An Evaluation,” The Negro Educational Review 25, no. 4 (1974): 203–7.
55
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kennedy Fire (9/8/1975) Investigation Report, John F. Kennedy National
Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 4, Folder 14.
56
Kennedy Fire (9/8/1975) Investigation Report, 11, 17.
57
Kennedy Fire (9/8/1975) Investigation Report, 5.
58
Manli Ho, “JFK Birthplace Gets a Facelift Following Fire,” Boston Globe, October 15, 1975.
71
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987 Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
Figure 9. 1975 fire damage in the kitchen and back hall. JOFI 1504, Box 10, Folder 12, NPS, 1975.
The interior of the kitchen, the back entry hall, stairs, and the hall to the basement
had to be replaced entirely. All the plaster was removed from the walls and ceilings, and all
woodwork was too damaged to be salvaged. Staff, however, were amazed that despite the
fact the Brookline Fire Department had come through the front of the house and had run
fire hoses through the dining room, where the table was set with Kennedy dinnerware, only
one glass was broken during the work to put out the fire.
59
Much of the rest of the house
was severely damaged by smoke. Costs for cleaning photographs, linens, curtains, and
blinds, and costs for the replacement of wallpaper, floors, and carpets—all installed or
reinstalled in the house for less than a decade—were extreme. Newspapers reported that it
would cost between $30,000 to $100,000 to make the repairs.
60
Witnesses confirmed seeing two men wearing “dark green plaid work-type coats
and some type of hat” fleeing the scene with their faces covered. One witness thought they
jumped into a 1969 or later green or brown Chevrolet Impala. The FBI looked at every
Impala of that description in the state, and all the owners and potential drivers had alibis.
59
Kathleen Catalano Milley, interview by Sara Zarrelli, May 28, 2020.
60
Memo: From Regional Architect to Associate Regional Director, Park System Management, Subject: Fire at
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, September 10, 1975, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site
Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 4, Folder 14.
72
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
The FBI seems to have exhausted all leads less than a month later.
61
The case was one of
dozens that were investigated by the US Department of Justice, through their Civil Rights
Division over busing flare-ups in the city.
62
The case remains unsolved.
Public response quickly condemned the fire-bombing as an “affront to the
nation.”
63
And though busing did not suddenly become popular among White Bostonians,
physical attacks against Senator Kennedy seemed to stop. After the fire, he let his constitu-
ents know that, while he had a sentimental attachment to the house and an interest in its
preservation, it was the education, “safety and well-being of the children of Boston,” that
concerned him most.
64
Recovering from the fire was a long process. Officials advertised that they needed to
find beveled glass panes for the 2 exterior doors and 12 double-tube radiators.
65
Throughout the rest of 1975 and most of 1976, the restoration at the birthplace continued
slowly. Occasional updates were posted in the Globe, with details about the cost and
replacement of the kitchen cabinets or wallpaper. Details about the horsehair that had to
be imported from New Hampshire to restore the kitchen walls and the search for a retired
plasterer who could do the work also made the news. It was “painstaking work.”
66
Years later, journalists, citing an unnamed source, would link gangster James
“Whitey” Bulger to a series of antibusing attacks in Boston, including the firebombing of
the Kennedy birthplace as a response to Ted Kennedy’s political support for busing.
67
Whoever caused the arson at the Kennedy birthplace, the lengthy repairs brought about a
renewed connection between the site and Robert Luddington, who helped order replace-
ment wallpapers, and answered a new series of questions about the work that he and Rose
Kennedy had done at the site. The kitchen itself was an area of the house that Kennedy had
little memory of, and many of the details for its furnishing came from Luddington. When
Superintendent Berry and other NPS staff had to make restoration decisions about the site,
they now had to actively choose between using NPS historical, architectural, and furnish-
ings research or returning the house to Rose Kennedy’s restoration. Though few docu-
61
Memo to NPS from Richard Bates, Special Agent in Charge, FBI, October 3, 1975, John F. Kennedy National
Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504 Folder 14, Box 4.
62
Arthur Jones, “Grand Jury to Call Witnesses on Phase 2 Disruptions Probe,” Boston Globe, October 1, 1975.
63
“JFK Site Firebombing Shocks Neighbors,” Boston Herald American, September 9, 1975; “‘An Outrage’
Viewpoint (Editorial),” Boston Herald American, September 9,1975.
64
“Response to Fire Becomes Busing Message: Pupil Safety Comes First, Kennedy Says,” Boston Globe,
December 10, 1975.
65
“JFK House,” Boston Globe, December 10, 1975.
66
Robert Kenney, “Update: Restoration of JFK Birthplace Going Well,” Boston Globe, January 18, 1976.
William Cash, “JFK Birthplace to Reopen in October,” Boston Globe, August 20, 1976.
67
Shelley Murphy, “Bulger Linked to ’70s Antibusing Attacks,” Boston Globe, April 23, 2001, 1. Before his
death, and after his imprisonment, and long after the statute of limitations had expired for the arson, I wrote to
James Bulger in prison to see if he would confirm or deny his role in the fire. He did not respond.
73
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987 Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
ments detail these decisions, photographs of the fire damage document some of the details
uncovered by the fire. Among them, the possibility of a different cabinet arrangement in
the kitchen and clear evidence in ghosting on the wall of a built-in hutch, which was absent
in Rose Kennedy’s and Luddington’s restoration.
68
However, the site brought in Blaine
Cliver, a historical architect, to look closely at the kitchen. From his findings, “it was deter-
mined that the [original 1917] house was found to be contrary to the way the house was
restored.” Staff “arranged with Mr. Robert Luddington, the consultant originally responsi-
ble for the 1969 restoration, and he in turn contacted Mrs. Rose Kennedy and permission
was granted to make changes in the kitchen area.” These changes corrected the home to
match the new architectural evidence that was uncovered by the fire.
69
Though the NPS was
well within its authority to make changes to recreate a built-in structure and doorway to
match the evidence staff had found, individuals at the site still deferred to Rose Kennedy
for approvals to make those changes. Though there is not an official report on changes to
the kitchen in the wake of the fire, a careful study of the correspondence between Cliver
and the park may reveal the exact nature of any revisions to the kitchen’s appearance.
Russell Berry’s annual report on the site reveals much about the tumultuous year, but any
correspondence between Berry and Luddington or Berry and Rose Kennedy about the fire
is not extant.
70
In addition, many of the textiles in the house that came from Rose Kennedy were
terribly damaged by smoke. Among the original items, most revered, was the bassinette.
While the bassinette was able to be cleaned, the blue satin ribbon attached to it had to be
replaced. Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum handled much of the restoration and cleaning work
for original items.
71
Among the items that had to be replaced whole cloth were the icebox
and stove. In each case, because documentation had noted the makes and models of these
items, the NPS sought exact replacements for the Kennedy restoration and ran advertise-
ments to replace them.
72
Disposing many of the damaged items took many years as the NPS
had to justify the disposal of the ruined items because they had no specific historical
association with the site in 1917. Staff tried to do so as privately as possible, perhaps
68
Berry, “Oral History.”
69
The changes to the kitchen revolved around a hutch/cabinet that was removed. Memo: Superintendent’s
Annual Report, Superintendent, Russell W. Berry Jr., to Regional Director; “Annual Report John Fitzgerald
Kennedy National Historic Site,” 1975, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records,
1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 8, Folder 16.
70
Memo: Superintendent’s Annual Report, Superintendent, Russell W. Berry Jr., to Regional Director; “Annual
Report John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,” 1975, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource
Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 8, Folder 16. The researcher looked through the current
holdings of JOFI-related adminstrative files held at LONG and NARA files related to JOFI for evidence of any
correspondence.
71
Requisitions dated September 19, 1975, and January 1, 1976, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site
Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 8, Folder 9.
72
“JFK Birthplace to Get Replacement Ice Chest,” Bosting Evening Globe, November 13, 1975.
74
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
because staff were worried that visitors might be interested in items that might have
belonged to the Kennedys. One requisition noted, three months after the site had already
reopened, that the “ice box was burned beyond repair & could not be re-used in the
Kennedy House firebombing. Even though the box will have to be ‘disposed of,’ it is better
for the Park Service to do this, in order to avoid any unauthorized appropriation.”
73
Even
when disposing of damaged collections, staff at the house were concerned that the
Kennedy association might cause interest from the public and other issues.
After the firebombing and well until October of 1976, the National Park Service
assigned extra security from Boston to the Brookline site, as hired protection was needed
both “because of the fire damage and potential for other acts of civil disobedience or
violence as a spinoff of the busing.”
74
Despite being closed for the entire year, “visitor
contacts” listed in the site’s Annual Report for 1976 counted at 18,776, about half of what
visitation had been in 1969. This may have been the first year that staff at the site began to
count all manner of interactions with the public as “visitor contacts.”
75
Arson was not uncommon either in the Boston area generally during the mid-1970s,
and it seems that a number of other historic sites in Massachusetts were targeted in the
Bicentennial year. In June 1976, someone set fire to Boston’s Congress Street pier gift shop
and ticket office. This happened not long after Plymouth Rock was bombed. In addition,
vehicles at the National Guard Armory in Dorchester, a small Eastern Airlines jet at Logan
Airport, and the Essex County Superior Courthouse were all bombed in a single week.
76
There were political firebombings throughout the 1970s, but the Boston area was particu-
larly hard hit by arsonists. “Antibusing forces or radical groups” were suspected. As a result,
many of Massachusetts’ historic sites saw an increase in security and security costs.
77
But the costs at the birthplace were more than financial. Though initial reports
estimated that the house would be closed for repairs for about a month, it was closed for
more than a year for restoration. As a result, it was closed all but a few days of the
Bicentennial year of 1976. During the Bicentennial, Bostonians largely put aside divisive
issues like busing and organized a number of events to celebrate the 200th anniversary of
73
Requisition dated March 18, 1977, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records,
1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 8, Folder 9.
74
Memo: Subject: Law Enforcement Funding Report, from Associate Regional Director (Denis P. Gavin) to
Associate Director, Administration, WASO, October 10, 1975, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource
Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 8, Folder 8.
75
“1976 Annual Report John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,” 1977, John F. Kennedy National
Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 8, Folder 16.
76
Richard Hudson, “Boston Area Bombing, Threats Will Continue, FBI Says,” Boston Sunday Globe, July 4,
1976.
77
Robert Ward, “State Sites Get Tighter Security,” Boston Globe, June 4, 1976.
75
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987 Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
the American Revolution.
78
Visitation boomed at historic sites across the country. But no
one came to the Kennedy house. It only reopened to the public in the last weeks of the year,
on December 18, 1976.
79
Superintendent Berry only led the park unit for these few years before he was ready
to lead a larger park and headed off to the Service’s Departmental Management Program.
80
Just two months before the site reopened, Berry left the unit. James L. Brown came from
Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, where he had served as a Unit Manager and
Superintendent, to join the Longfellow and Kennedy sites as Superintendent in 1976.
81
The Carter and Reagan Years
Joining the Kennedy and Longfellow sites in 1979 was the Frederick Law Olmsted National
Historic Site in Brookline. First seriously proposed as an addition to the Park Service over
the summer of 1976, while the Kennedy site was recovering from the firebombing, in
October of 1979, Congress passed legislation to create the site. With that legislation came a
complex set of management priorities for a new three-site unit which included not just the
management of a new historic site and buildings, but acquisition, “management and
permanent protection of the archival collections” related to the Olmsted landscape archi-
tectural firm.
82
Both the Longfellow site and the Olmsted site presented complex collec-
tions management concerns for the unit, whereas the Kennedy site increasingly seemed to
run on its own, with little management.
However, interest in Kennedy and his family did not wane in the late 1970s. The
local press was riveted in 1980 when Fitzgerald descendants toured the North End of
Boston to learn more about the origins of the family. On the tour, the family spent time at
Rose Kennedy’s birthplace but did not visit the former president’s.
83
Public interest in the
birthplace was waning, and the press noticed. Visitation by 1980 was down nearly 50
78
For a discussion of the history of the Bicentennial and its effect on public history and the public’s
consumption of history, see M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska’s and Tammy Stone-Gordon’s work. Tammy Stone-
Gordon, The Spirit of 1976: Commerce, Community, and the Politics of Commemoration, Public History in
Historical Perspective (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013); The Spirit of 1976: Commerce,
Community, and the Politics of Commemoration; M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska, History Comes Alive: Public History
and Popular Culture in the 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).
79
Mary Meier, “Kennedy Birthplace Open Today,” Boston Globe, December 18, 1976.
80
Berry, “Oral History.”
81
Historic Listing of National Park Service Officials, Superintendents of National Park System Areas.
https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/tolson/histlist7s.htm.
82
Public Law 96-87, October 12, 1979.
83
Chris Black, “North End Tour Is Path to Past for Fitzgeralds and Kennedys,” Boston Globe, June 30, 1980.
76
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
percent from its highpoint. Many speculated that the new John F. Kennedy Presidential
Library and Museum (JFK Library) was “siphoning potential visitors away from the subur-
ban birthplace.”
84
Despite the excitement over reopening the house to the public after the restoration,
visitation decreased from its high point after opening in 1969, with 33,200 visitors to only
23,800 by 1977. That same year, five months after ground was broken for the JFK Library,
Rose Kennedy wrote to Jack Stark, NPS Regional Director, asking that items she had
donated to the site, including John F. Kennedy’s christening gown be made available to the
library. She made sure to note that she was looking forward to seeing him at the library’s
opening in 1979.
85
Between 1977 and 1980, The Boston Globe rarely ran articles that fea-
tured the birthplace, and instead, covered, in detail, progress on the new presidential
library. The library’s planners had struggled for more than a decade to secure an appropri-
ate site for the library, which held President Kennedy’s papers and those of his cabinet and
staff and offered a museum that interpreted both his biography and influence.
More than 30 million people donated to help build the JFK Library, and organizers
raised $20 million to build it. Almost all the reviews of the library singingly praised I. M.
Pei’s architectural design but also the scope of the museum’s exhibits. Even the New York
Time’s sometimes harsh architectural critic, Ada Louise Huxtable, spelled it out clearly in
her review: “The Museum Upstages the Library.” Choosing to use her review of the library
as a commentary on the state of presidential libraries, Huxtable argued that each presiden-
tial library served as “an excuse” for the main attraction: a presidential museum. This type
of museum had “turned into an enormously popular tourist attraction,” perhaps, she went
on, such museums were now “the biggest draw since Disneyland.” According to her, the
JFK Library was the best of the presidential library museums to date, and it served as a
“remarkable synthesis” of the phenomena of the presidential library and the phenomena of
“the Kennedy family.”
86
The presidential library was not the only institution with the Kennedy name draw-
ing attention from the public. The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which opened
to the public in 1971, was a tourist attraction all its own. Nearly every issue of the National
Park Service’s newsletter The Courier, marked among its pages NPS employee transfers of
talented Park Service personnel to the Kennedy Center; VIPs who hobnobbed at events at
this Washington, DC, arts hotspot; or special funds allocated to the center. However,
throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National
Historic Site was rarely mentioned. One exception was in the site’s development of special
programs. In 1979, despite the lower visitation at the site, staff were busy developing new
84
Dick Braude, “Tourism Down at JFK Birthplace,” Boston Globe (Associated Press), November 23, 1980.
85
November 14, 1977, Box 6, Folder 19.
86
Ada Louise Huxtable, “The Museum Upstages the Library,” New York Times, October 28, 1979.
77
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987 Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
programs for the “Year of the Visitor.” Among the programs developed at the Kennedy site
was one aimed at “elderly visitors” that could reach them both at the site through special-
ized tours and in remote locations like nursing facilities and retirement homes.
87
Similarly, in 1981, the NPS was part of the federal movement to make changes to
accommodations to be more inclusive of Americans with disabilities. Anticipating the
Americans with Disabilities Act, which wouldn’t go into effect until 1990, the birthplace
experimented with services for visitors who were visually impaired. Ray Bloomer, a visually
impaired ranger who visited a number of Boston area sites, ran a special evaluative pro-
gram and went through the site with school children from Brookline’s Devotion School to
consider what changes could be made to make the site more accessible for visitors who had
limited mobility, vision, and hearing. There is no evidence in the park’s records of whether
or when such changes were implemented.
88
By the 1980s, despite the fire restoration, wear and tear from the site’s years open
to the public were beginning to show at the site. Staff worried the ground beneath the
cellar floor had begun to erode, leaving them concerned about the “hollow sound” they
heard when they walked across it. By 1984, the Kennedy site would have yet another new
and relatively short-lived superintendent, Stephen Whitesell. Whitesell came to the site
with a background in planning and landscape architecture, which was a perfect match for
heading up work at the new Olmsted site. He joined Kennedy and Longfellow for just two
years before leaving to be a superintendent at a number of bigger parks, eventually becom-
ing the Associate Director of all Park Planning, Facilities, and Lands and Regional
Director for the National Capital Region.
89
During his short time at the unit, visitation
trended up just a bit, he replaced the original security system at the house, and the site got
its first Collections Preservation Guide thanks to Kathleen Catalano’s efforts.
90
Perhaps
most importantly for the structural integrity of the site and for interpretation at the unit,
he and the Associate Regional Director argued that the basement floor would need to be
removed, new footings poured, new fill added and compacted, and a new concrete slab
floor poured. He also recommended that a large dry well be dug in the yard to handle the
87
Candace Garry, “Year of the Visitor: A Lot of Little Extras,” Courier: The National Park Service Newsletter 2,
no. 12 (1979).
88
Wendy Fox, “For Handicapped, Advice and Self-Help: 5-Year-Olds Assess JFK’s Birthplace,” Boston Globe,
June 25, 1982.
89
“Class of 2014,” Arrowhead: The Newsletter of the Employees & Alumni Association of the National Park
Service 21, no. 4 (2014).
90
Kathleen Catalano, “John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site Collections Preservation Guide” (1985).
78
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
house’s significant runoff to help mediate future erosion under the house.
91
From 1984
through 1986, the site went through significant rehabilitation to the lowest level of the
house. The site got a new basement floor, a new heating boiler, and new steel railings. This
work seemed to stabilize the house. The site also had other issues to contend with, such as
staff concerns and uncertain finances.
Daily Work at the Kennedy Birthplace in the 1980s
Throughout the 1980s, staff became concerned with the physical structure and conditions
at the site, not just the basement floor. Kevin Carroll, the Chief of Interpretation and site
manager at the site in the early 1980s, argued that temperature and humidity fluctuated in
extremes and were “serious concerns,” because there were “no climate controlled areas for
exhibits or collections storage.” With 95-degree days at 95 percent humidity in the house in
the summer, staff must have been uncomfortable. Temperatures in the hotter, third-floor
staff offices no doubt were beyond uncomfortable.
92
The new basement floor allowed staff to remodel the space using Operation of the
National Park Service (ONPS) base monies for a visitor reception area, which they outfit-
ted with a window air unit in the summer and a humidifier in the dry winter.
93
This visitor
reception radically changed the arrangement of the house tour. Now visitors, instead of
coming through the front door—simulating how they might have been received by a resi-
dent of the home—came into the house for tours from the basement stairs into the kitchen
area. The new space allowed greater visitor services, an updated bathroom, a space for
limited retail, and staff. Not everyone found the change welcoming, but the new space was
important to the staff in 1987 who increasingly had little comfortable space with visitors.
94
By the 1980s, staff mentioned Rose Kennedy in almost mystical terms. In an inter-
view about declining visitation, one site employee recalled cryptically, “Mrs. Kennedy came
back once…one night she just rang the bell and someone let her in. She wanted to take the
91
Kevin Carroll, “1984 Annual Report: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,” John F. Kennedy
National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504); Memo: From Associate
Regional Director P&Rp, North Atlantic Regional Office to Chief, Historic Preservation, Trip Report: John
Fitzgerald Kennedy Birthplace, April 2, 1984, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management
Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 8, Folder 19. On the lawn, see Chief Interpreter Kevin Carroll, “Annual
Statement for Interpretation and Visitor Services, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site. 1980,” 1981,
John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 6, Folder
5. Catalano, “John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site Collections Preservation Guide.”
92
Kevin Carroll, “Resource Management Plan, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,” 1981 John F.
Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 6, Folder 11.
93
Stephen Whitesell, “Resource Management Plan Update, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,”
1987, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 6,
Folder 11.
94
Rolf Diamant, interview by Hilary Iris Lowe, November 11, 2019.
79
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987 Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
linen bedspreads to be mended in Ireland. We never heard from her again.” Despite the
fact that the birthplace wasn’t open at night, and that it was unlikely for Rose Kennedy to
be allowed to just take an item out of the house without approval and supervision from
NPS staff, Rose Kennedy’s influence haunted the house. Perhaps because she was still very
much alive.
95
Despite continuing broad interest in the Kennedy family and President Kennedy,
increasingly visitors and even staff were not able to call upon their own personal connec-
tion or memory of Kennedy. For instance, Christine Horn, a member of seasonal staff at
the site in 1986 who was born the month after Kennedy was murdered, lamented that “I
don’t remember President Kennedy…I’ve read a lot about that time and been to the
library and museum.” However, she noted that her knowledge was “really from T.V.”
96
Her
experience was increasingly the norm. In the early 1980s visitation at the site hovered
between 17,000 and 18,000 annually with significant numbers of young people (between
24–40 percent of all visitors were under 18), and by 1982, 20 percent of visitors to the site
did not speak English. Staff identified Spanish and Japanese as the primary languages for
these non-English speakers. By 1985, the site responded to this trend and had acquired
translations of Rose Kennedy’s audio tour in Japanese.
97
By the end of the decade, staff were still advocating for a Historic Resource Study
and were often left to handle problems on their own. Remarkably, in 1987, less than 20
years after the site opened its doors, superintendent Stephen Whitesell was requesting an
administrative history, “without an Administrative History, much valuable data will be
overlooked or forgotten. As time passes, opportunities are lost for oral history taping of key
personnel.”
98
Arguing generally for understanding the site better, Whitesell requested a
bevy of plans as “presently, reports, administrative records and management actions are
difficult to track. As a result, time is needlessly wasted sorting through records to find what
action occurred when, etc.” Most pressingly, though, Whitesell requested again for a
much-needed historic resource study. “Despite the fact that John F. Kennedy National
95
Braude, “Tourism Down at JFK Birthplace.” Though the specific details of this story are likely inaccurate, it
picks up on the fact that Rose Kennedy was long interested in Irish bedspreads that she donated to the site. She
sought for many years to find artisans in Ireland who could recreate them as she remembered them. One internal
NPS newsletter noted that “Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy visited the Birthplace Wednesday evening (June 10) before
leaving for Ireland to have embroidered bedspreads reproduced for the master bedroom.” See Group Scoop, June
10, 1970, issue 21. MIMA Archives Orville Carroll Research Records, MIMA 63772, Box 2, Folder 14. Though
Rose Kennedy hoped to reproduce the bedspreads, the modern ones that came with her restoration have been in
place since the site opened. See catalogue collections records for JOFI 539 and JOFI 540.
96
“At Work,” The Boston Herald, Sunday Magazine, August 31, 1986.
97
Acting Site Supervisor Brian Doherty, “Semi-Annual Report, January-September 1985,” 1985, John F.
Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 6, Folder 16.
98
Whitesell was in many ways right. This study could certainly have benefitted from interviews with Edwin
Small, Maurice Kowal, Muriel Storrie, and many others about this would have added greatly to the early history
of the site’s administration.
80
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
Historic Site has been in operation for over fifteen years, it still lacks this important study.”
99
Staff had, over the years, tried to piece together timelines for the site’s important dates
creating a document they titled “history of the site,” both for the sake of information about
the historical period but also to know what work had taken place on the house when it was
in the hands of Rose Kennedy and the National Park Service. The document kept track of
details like the 1969 frozen pipes, which required the acquisition of new (historically
accurate) radiators in many of the rooms and new wallpaper where the wallpaper had been
destroyed. Their history indicates repairs that were not necessarily documented else-
where.
100
The document calls attention to the fact that the only planning documents for
staff to work with were the Historic Furnishing Plan (1971), a Historic Resource
Maintenance Plan (1976), and the Statement for Management (1977).
101
The tone of this history, likely produced by Kevin Carroll, is dire. Clearly, in the
1980s, staff were keenly interested in planning for the future of the site and needed the NPS
documents to help them do so. In the meantime, they made do with their own adaptations
of goals taken from the three existing planning documents and tried to do their best to plan
for events they knew would come to pass. For instance, Carroll strategized for how the site
would memorialize Rose Kennedy at the birthplace on the event of her death. In 1984, he
sketched out a plan that included draping “a black banner across the portal and [hanging]
flower crepe…from the front door,” as well as placing a memorial register for visitors to
sign next to a prominent photograph of Rose Kennedy.
102
In 1987, ranger Leslie Obleschuk
likewise worked with interpretive staff to research biographical information about the
Kennedy family, the Brookline neighborhood in 1917, the experience of Irish Americans in
Boston, and the family’s connection to Boston politics, creating their own, make-shift
historical resource study, in the hopes that staff might be able to provide interpretative
materials in the new visitor area of the basement.
103
In the 1980s, staff documented their shifts and work in a daily log, where they
annotated important information at the site. Noting what day Joseph Kennedy might visit
the site, for instance, let everyone know that the whole site should be cleaned and made
99
Whitesell, “Resource Management Plan Update, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site.”
100
“History of the Site,” John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003
(JOFI 1504), circa 1982, Box 6, Folder 13.
101
“History of the Site.” Importantly this timeline also indicates that the Kennedy site is considered “a satellite of
the Longfellow National Historic Site,” noting that the superintendent, chief of maintenance, curator,
administrative technician are all located at Longfellow, while the site had a supervisory park ranger (GS-7), Park
Ranger (GS-5), and two park aides (GS-3) and Museum Aid (GS-3).
102
Memo: Memorialization, from Site Supervisor (Kevin Carroll) to Superintendent May 10, 1984, John F.
Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 6, Folder 14.
103
Leslie Obleschuk, “Annual Statement for Interpretation and Visitor Services, FY 1987,” in JFKNHS, Resource
Management Records, 1963–2003, Box 6, Folder 17 (1986).
81
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987 Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
ready.
104
The log also recorded how staff also saw their hours cut by increments, for exam-
ple in 1981, the site changed its hours for visitors, opening at 10:00 rather than 9:00,
“because no one comes at 9:00,” and more importantly, it was necessary in order “to
absorb FY81 salary increase and other increased operating costs.” The site’s budget was
seeing considerable strain given that the basic staff salary and operating costs (like the
electric and water bills) continued to go up, while the budget for the site did not. By the
early 1980s, 98 percent of the site’s annual budget went only to salaries. As salaries rose
incrementally, the only way to “cut costs” was to limit hours at the site.
105
In 1981, the site
even canceled its regular order of fresh flowers from a local florist which staff had placed
on the dining table, and perhaps in other areas of the house, because there were no longer
the funds to pay for flowers. “Life-like silk flowers” were purchased in “sufficient supply to
change regularly,” as a cost-cutting measure.
106
While daily events at the house were rarely
documented, the log allows us to understand many ways that the site’s administration was
faltering in large and small ways that staff noted.
Staff morale sometimes wavered according to the Daily Log, which also noted
political and national events, like Reagan winning the election in 1984 (its notation
included a hand-drawn sad face) and when the site raised its flag at half-staff for the
“Beirut Massacre,” when a truck bomb exploded at a Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon,
killing 241 service personnel.
107
The log also noted the broadcast of a 1983 miniseries on
the Kennedy family as well as the staff’s belief that the Cold War, nuclear disaster TV drama
The Day After, would likely have more fans.
108
The log noted changes over the year, like new
superintendents, staff transfers to western parks, new cars purchased, and when staff
bought their first homes. Importantly when one employee left work to have her first child
and returned to her position, months later, it was clear that the park unit supported her
pregnancy and her return to work, long before the 1993 Family Medical Leave Act was in
place.
109
In 1984, staff member Lisa Marie noted, “The budget figures are in and things
don’t look very good. Kevin [Carroll] had to give me some bad news today. The money for
104
“Daily Log,” JOFI Unprocessed Files. It’s unclear from the log which Joseph Kennedy was visiting. See
entries for April 22 and April 27, 1983, for example. Begun in 1983, by Kevin Carroll, to document “all
important and trivial events that occur at the house. In years hence the park staff can see how a snowy winter or
how a busy summer it was.” See entry January 1, 1983. JOFI Unprocessed files, Longfellow House-
Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site Archives, entry for November 7, 1984.
105
Memo: Hours of Visitation, from Supervisory Park Ranger John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site to
Acting Superintendent, Longfellow National Historic Site, April 1, 1981, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site
Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 3, Folder 3.
106
“Handwritten Note,” 1981, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–
2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 6, Folder 4.
107
“Daily Log.” Entries for October 24, 1983
108
“Daily Log.” Entry for November 21, 1983.
109
“Daily Log.” Entries for December 31, 1983.
82
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
my position will run out Dec. 8. Kevin—I know you don’t like to handle such negative
news—but you handled the situation very well. Thanks!”
110
Even while facing unemploy-
ment, the close staff tried to support one another. By 1986 the birthplace was only open
during certain months, reopening for the season in March after closing to the public over
the winter.
111
The log also documents the stress of dealing with the public on busy days and
the stress of working at the site as it adjusted to being paired with the Longfellow site,
which staff often referred to as “Shortfellow” in jest.
112
Morale wasn’t just an issue at
Kennedy or at the trisites. Beginning with the appointment of Secretary of the Interior
James Watt, the NPS’s “National Park Service management would be challenged, and
politicization of the directorship and erosion of its power promoted.” Watt “spelled out
administration policies that would curtail the system’s growth and return to the provision
of visitor services and pleasures as a primary management goal.” This coupled with years of
underfunding created a system-wide “erosion of employee morale.”
113
In 1987, a new superintendent, Rolf Diamant, would come to the trisite unit and
make big changes to their organizational structure, staffing, interpretation, and budget lines.
His influence would in some important ways unify the three sites and allow staff at each site
to fully develop their collections and nuanced interpretations of the American past.
110
“Daily Log.” Entry for November 11. 1984.
111
Caption, Boston Globe, March 6, 1986, 91.
112
“Daily Log.” Entries for August 25, 1985, and January 1, 1985.
113
Lary M. Dilsaver, America’s National Park System: The Critical Documents, 2nd ed. (Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2016), 371.
83
Early Management of the Birthplace, 1969–1987
CHAPTER FIVE
Managing Kennedy as a Modern
Historical Site: The 1990s
I
n 1987, Rolf Diamant visited the trisites as one of several acting superintendents who
followed Whitesell’s time at the unit. He found not just that staff morale was perhaps
at an all-time low, but that the sites needed immediate structural care. After a year
away from his job at the National Park Service’s planning office of the North Atlantic
Regional Office in Boston on a fellowship at Harvard, he was able to see the sites with fresh
eyes. Despite the obvious work ahead, the temporary stint as acting superintendent
convinced him to apply for the superintendency. At the time, he noted that the Kennedy
site “wasn’t foremost in my mind. It came with the package.” Diamant saw that Longfellow
and Olmsted were in dire physical condition with structural issues and collections in
imminent danger. The Kennedy site was “functioning,” while the other sites were in
distress. Longfellow had collections piled high, unexplored, in boxes in closets. Olmsted
had a mountain of archival collections, park plans, landscape architectural drawings,
photographs, correspondence collections in physical jeopardy, and landscape architects
who clamored for regular access. In part because of his own training in landscape
architecture, Diamant quickly recognized the historical significance of the collections at
the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, and working at Olmsted appealed to
him right away.
1
Despite the immediate needs of the sites, the 1990s were a politically challenging
time for all historic sites within the National Park Service. Base funding for units alternated
between systemwide cuts and political earmarks that meant operations might thrive.
2
At the beginning of the decade, a governmental shutdown spanned the Columbus Day
holiday weekend and upset activities at the birthplace. Tensions between President
1
Rolf Diamant, interview by Hilary Iris Lowe, November 13, 2019.
2
By the mid-1990s, much of the Department of the Interior’s internal communication records, including those
for the National Park Service and its units, were being conducted through electronic means. As a result,
documentation for much of the Kennedy site’s daily administration was conducted through email that has not
been made available to researchers. While official memos exist for early periods of the site’s history, at this point
in the study, much of the documentation for the administrative history at the site relies on emails that were
printed and filed by staff on site and oral histories of park personnel. It’s also important to note that some of these
printed sources come from unprocessed collections, held in the Supervisory Ranger’s office at the John
Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site and in the Site Manager Lee Farrow Cook’s working files still held at
the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.
84
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
George H. W. Bush and a Republican Congress led by Newt Gingrich over a proposed tax
increase led to a three-day shutdown of all federal offices, which notably affected National
Park Service sites and national museums most acutely. Federal sites across the region lost
out on one of their busiest fall weekends. At the Kennedy birthplace, one ranger noted that
a group of Japanese tourists were incredibly disappointed to find that the site was closed.
3
This shutdown was just a taste of how conflicts and opportunities in Washington, DC,
would affect operations at all three sites. Just a few weeks later, Massachusetts’s national
historic sites saw a whopping 30-million-dollar boon in federal funds to a dozen national
historic sites in the state. However, much of this money was slated to high-profile projects.
$8.7 million was for a new visitors center at Salem Maritime National Historic Site, $9.1
million was also set aside for Lowell National Historical Park, and $5.6 million for parts of
the Freedom Trail at Boston National Historical Park. None was planned for any of the
trisites.
4
The whiplash from such high-stakes discussions must have been stressful for
administrators and staff alike.
Politically, taxes were on the minds of leaders at the national and local levels. At
least once during this contentious time, the birthplace itself showed up in local conversa-
tions about taxation. A Brookline parent/teacher association, sponsored by a local teach-
ers’ union, sent home a flier with students at the nearby Devotion Elementary School. The
flier included an image of Kennedy’s birthplace on the front, and it encouraged families to,
paraphrasing JFK, “Ask not what your town can do for you, but what you can do for your
town,” to support a local tax increase initiative.
5
By utilizing President Kennedy’s iconic
words, the proposed tax increase brought the site into a heated political conversation even
though local taxes never supported the birthplace.
In addition to a complicated political scene, when Diamant reached the unit, many
external stakeholders had pressing interests in developing Olmsted and its archival
holdings for public access. Professional planners in cities with Olmsted-designed parks and
the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) were particularly vocal in
advocating for access. The ASLA lobbied Congress directly, reaching out to every
Congressperson and Senator who had an Olmsted park in their district. The organization
pressed for Congressional hearings and a budget increase for Olmsted.
6
The organization
was successful on both fronts, and between the fiscal years of 1987 and 1995, “Olmsted’s
total budget more than tripled, rising from approximately $700,000 to about $2.3 million.”
7
3
Doreen E. Iudica, “Budget Stalemate Shuts Down Some Mass. Historical Sites,” Boston Globe,
October 8, 1990.
4
Efrain Hernandez, “Mass. Parks in Line for $30m in Federal Funds,” Boston Globe, October 29, 1990.
5
Janelle Lawrence, “Brookline: Flier Irks Taxation Coalition,” Boston Globe, February 18, 1994.
6
For a much more nuanced discussion of this process, see David Grayson Allen, The Olmsted National Historic
Site and the Growth of Historic Landscape Preservation (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2007), 154–57.
7
Allen, The Olmsted National Historic Site and the Growth of Historic Landscape Preservation, 179.
85
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
Olmsted’s new budget also meant a boon for the other two sites. As Superintendent
Diamant put it, Olmsted “was picking up the tab” and “it enabled Kennedy to operate” with
more resources.
8
When Diamant remembered this moment, “my challenge was to sail the
boat and repair it at the same time.”
9
Over the decade that Diamant ran the unit, the site’s
budget expanded, the unit was reorganized in a spirit of creative experimentation, and
interpretation changed radically from Rose Kennedy’s original interpretation to a new
interpretation that incorporated John F. Kennedy’s achievements as a president. The site
also faced many unexpected challenges, from dealing with federal budget cuts to
challenging personnel issues.
Reorganization under Diamant
Olmsted’s increased budget enabled Superintendent Diamant to hire new staff to support
the sites, and he organized a new centralized maintenance staff that serviced all the sites.
The centralized facilities crew were able to take on modest, yet important, projects on their
own. They also took on “ambitious work” at the sites, which meant that the sites did not
have to put in bids for rehab and construction monies with other regional and national
parks for a limited pool of funds, and the trisites did not have to wait for regional mainte-
nance crews to schedule work. Instead, they could handle, schedule, and oversee much of
their own maintenance.
10
This crew was so successful that it could sometimes aid other
park units in rehab or small construction projects.
11
Diamant also centralized all adminis-
trative functions, which allowed some cost savings. Curatorial staff had always been shared
after the Longfellow site was opened to the public, and in 1988 curator Karie Diethorn
filled the position that Catalano left nearly two years earlier and took on limited work at
the Kennedy site.
12
Notably, during his tenure, he also focused the education program on
serving all three sites wholistically. However, when Diamant tried to centralize interpretive
staff across three sites with very different interpretive needs, he was less successful. This
was, he said, “the one piece that didn’t work well.” Moving interpreters across the three
8
Diamant, “Oral History.”
9
Conversation with Rolf Diamant, September 22, 2017.
10
Carla Price, interview by Kate Hanson Plass, Elena Rippel, and Rufai Shardow, April 22, 2016, and Diamant,
“Oral History.” Official documentation on this effort to restructure staff roles was not found in archival records
but was confirmed in interviews. Increasingly during this period and the period to follow in Chapter 6, much of
such documentation that might be found in email correspondence was not part of the record supplied to the
researcher. As a result, this study has had to rely on the occasional printed email and oral histories for most of the
documentation from the 1990s to today.
11
Diamant, “Oral History.” Diamant did not mention what projects the facilities crew supported outside the
trisites.
12
Sara Patton Zarrelli, The Long Road to Restoration: An Administrative History of Longfellow House-
Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site (National Park Service: US Department of the Interior 2021), 83.
86
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
sites caused consternation among interpretive staff. While the superintendent’s reorganiza-
tion at the site benefited most areas of the unit, interpretation “reverted back” quickly to
the single-site expertise and focus for interpreters.
13
Diamant wanted the Kennedy and Longfellow sites to have a better base budget as
well. He worked directly with Congressman Barney Frank’s office to develop an earmark to
increase the Kennedy site’s budget. He also made clear to the regional office that Kennedy
had been operating at a deficit and would continue to if the site’s base operating funds did
not increase.
14
The Kennedy budget eventually doubled because of his efforts.
15
Diamant
then went on to work on the base budget for Longfellow. Despite the increases, the super-
intendent took cost-saving seriously and looked for other ways to maximize the Kennedy
and Longfellow sites’ individual budgets. In 1994, he determined that the Kennedy site had
such low visitation over the winter months that it did not make sense for it to be open to the
public at all.
16
This meant ending the elaborate—and popular—holiday open house held at
the Kennedy birthplace in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which featured food, music
(including a hired pianist at Rose Kennedy’s piano), and occasionally local children carol-
ers from St. Aidan’s Church.
17
Additionally, the Kennedy site was also closed to the public
on Mondays and Tuesdays during the entire 1994 fiscal year, which meant that the site
missed several high-visitation holidays that usually brought in sales. Staff were disap-
pointed over the elimination of the Christmas program and seemed to sense a break with
the local community that the event engaged. They noted this loss more than any other issue
that came with winter closure of the site.
18
13
Diamant, “Oral History.” For a fuller discussion of Diamant’s short-lived administrative reorganization and
centralization, see Allen, The Olmsted National Historic Site and the Growth of Historic Landscape Preservation,
179–80.
14
Memo: FY92 Operating Shortfall for John F. Kennedy NHS, Superintendent Rolf Diamant to Regional
Director, North Atlantic Region, May 13, 1991, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management
Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 2, Folder 11.
15
The appropriations for the Department of the Interior included a base increase of $102,000 for the site in the
1992 fiscal year. House US Congress, Committee on Appropriations, “Department of the Interior and Related
Agencies Appropriations Bill, 1992, 102th Cong., 1991, H. Rep. 102–116,” (1991).
16
The site began closing over the winter months in 1994. Price, “Oral History.”
17
“Statement for Interpretation, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site” (1990), Site Manager Lee
Farrow Cook Documents, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. Price, “Oral History.”
18
The site was closed for Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Columbus Day. John F. Kennedy
National Historic Sites #4–52, “Eastern National Annual Report, November 1993–October 1994, Site Manager
Lee Farrow Cook Documents, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site” (1994).
87
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
Expansion of Educational Programming
One of the benefits of Superintendent Diamant’s administrative restructuring was an
increased focus on education at the Kennedy site. As the 1990s progressed, a growing
education staff, including Liza Stearns and others, built on a program she first developed in
1987 that brought the Kennedy family back into events sponsored by the site. Stearns
worked with Site Supervisory Park Ranger Leslie Obleschuk and partners at John F.
Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum to develop an essay contest for third graders
arranged around the theme: “What John F. Kennedy Means to Me.” Third graders from the
Edward M. Devotion School in Brookline (the Florida Ruffin Ridley School today) visited
the Kennedy birthplace and the JFK Library. Caroline Kennedy served as the presenter at
the awards event. As the program developed, the site ceremonies that celebrated the
winners of the essay contest were held in the backyard of the house. Eventually, the event
grew so much that they shut down Beals Street and moved the award ceremony to the front
of the site.
19
The site began to develop other educational programs, which targeted teachers and
their students. These were offered a few times a year and were focused on specific themes
that would interest educators and correspond with academic units. The programs included
“Family History: The Legacy Endures,” which targeted kindergarteners through third
graders, “A Nation of Immigrants: The Kennedy Story,” and “1917: A Time to Remember,”
both of which targeted fourth through sixth graders, and “JFK: How We Know What We
Know,” which targeted middle school children in seventh and eighth grades. Each program
lasted an hour and was limited to just 25 students. Ahead of the program at the site, teach-
ers received pre- and postvisit materials that supplemented a class visit and prepared both
students and teachers for a house tour. By 1990, park interpreters brought a 45–50-minute
version of “The Nation of Immigrants” program into the Boston Public Schools because
students there seldom had “the opportunity to do field trips.” In 1990, educators at the site
completed ten such programs in Boston, reaching 171 students.
20
Such coordinated educa-
tional outreach was new for the site.
The expanded educational and interpretive programming did not only serve
children in the Boston metro area. Adults were also targeted for a new interpretive pro-
gram, “The Kennedy Walk.” The walking ranger-led tour allowed staff the “opportunity to
be creative,” to be outdoors in the summer months, and to overtly connect the site and the
19
Diamant, “Oral History.” And Site Manager Lee Farrow Cook, interview by Elena Rippel, April 26 and May
12, 2017. For a brief early history of the event at the site from 1987–1990, see “Statement for Interpretation, John
Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site.”
20
“Statement for Interpretation, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site.”
88
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
Kennedy story to other historic places with a Kennedy association in the neighborhood.
21
These walking tours were especially popular when they were marketed ahead of time and
on days that the site was already bound to see many visitors, like Kennedy’s birthday or
holidays like Labor Day.
22
Rose Kennedy’s Interpretive Voice Silenced
During Diamant’s decade at the Kennedy site, the site radically changed its longstanding
interpretative program. Reliant upon Rose Kennedy’s words since the site’s opening, by
1990, the site shifted to ranger-led interpretation alone. It seems that the staff, perhaps
especially Site Supervisor Leslie Obleschuk, decided to stop using the tapes of Rose
Kennedy’s tour in the house in an effort to interpret the history at the house more accu-
rately and to avoid the kinds of hagiography that are often a concern at historic sites that
center on charismatic and famous personalities. Obleschuk was largely responsible for
moving the site into the modern age, and she requested that the site get its first computer
(so as not to share computers with the rest of the staff at Olmsted).
23
All of the interpretive
staff were eager to move away from the recordings. Since the site opened, scholars and
biographers had produced a colossal number of Kennedy family histories. These resources
had undoubtedly led staff to a wealth of information about Kennedy and his parents that
they wanted to relay to the public. Staff believed that, along with the addition of the visitor
center and a small store area in the basement in 1986, the new ranger-led tours “changed
the complexion of the site from one of a very low key and non-controversial nature, to a
vibrant site filled with struggles to best present a difficult, complex and emotional story to
visitors.”
24
The new interpretation gave rangers and other interpretive staff an animated
new role at the site.
21
The ranger-led walking tour was an expansion on the long-running self-guided walking tour that was included
in the brochure that the site published from 2002 and is included in the unigrid today.
22
“Statement for Interpretation, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site.”
23
Leslie Obleschuk, Phone Conversation with Elena Rippel, December 14, 2016. Leslie Obleschuk served at
Kennedy and the tri-sites in many capacities between 1983 and 1996. She served as Educational Specialist, Chief
of Visitor Services for the tri-sites, Site Supervisor at Kennedy, and acting superintendent, sometimes serving in
more than one role.
24
Memo: Comprehensive Interpretive Planning Process at Kennedy NHS, Information Package to
Superintendent, OLMS/LONG/JOFI, from Lead Park Ranger, JOFI (James Phelps), January 20, 1994, Site
Manager Lee Farrow Cook Documents, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.
89
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
Chief among the historical scholarship that influenced the change was Doris
Kearns Goodwin’s 1987 book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, which staff regarded as
“the bible.”
25
The impact of Goodwin’s research on the staff at the site cannot be overem-
phasized. Her work specifically looked at each branch of John F. Kennedy’s family history
from 1863 until 1963. Although Kennedy’s grandparents and some of his great-grandpar-
ents were born in the United States, Goodwin outlines the Irish heritage of both branches
of his family. She does so in a way that connects this heritage to Boston machine politics.
She carefully documents both families’ Boston area political and social rise, focusing
mainly on the male members of the family, from John Francis (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald to
Joseph Patrick Kennedy. Goodwin uncovers the roles that Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy and
Joseph Patrick Kennedy played, not just continuing their fathers’ significant political
legacies, but in developing the political lives of their children.
26
Goodwin’s book made a
considerable impression on staff and continued to influence interpretation at the site for
decades.
27
The volume helped provide considerable historical context for the early years of
Rose and Joseph Kennedy’s life together and included details that countered and expanded
on what Rose Kennedy had provided in her 1974 autobiography and in her audio tour.
Some of these details provided a more robust and slightly less glowingly positive portrayal
of the family. They included information about Joseph Kennedy’s decision to avoid military
service in World War I, Rose Kennedy’s social isolation at their Brookline home, and the
couple’s early separation, which Goodwin describes as a “serious, if temporary, break in
their marriage.
28
The latter two of these details would work their way into interpretation at
the birthplace, and for a brief period, a highly researched historical interpretation of Rose
and Joseph Kennedy’s lives at the house was the norm.
Superintendent Diamant had planned in the early 1990s to formally evaluate “the
success of the experiment that replaced Mrs. Kennedy’s audio-tapes with an interpretive
tour by a Park Ranger on a daily basis.”
29
By the middle of the 1990s, it is unclear if such an
evaluation took place, but the ranger-led tours stayed.
30
Some staff saw no objections from
25
Mark Swartz, interview by Elena Rippel, November 29, 2016. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book marked the
beginning of her career as a serious biographer and presidential historian. Goodwin had served in the Johnson
Administration and in 1975 had married Richard Goodwin, a friend and one of John F. Kennedy’s speechwriters.
Richard Goodwin grew up in Brookline. Despite a significant and substantiated plagiarism charge, the book is
one of the most important histories of the family and is still relied upon by staff today. By this time, Rose
Kennedy’s autobiography, Times to Remember, had been out since 1974 and had seen multiple editions as well.
26
Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).
27
Cook, “Oral History.” Goodwin was even invited to participate in the 2017 JFK Centennial at the site.
Jim Roberts to Richard and Doris Goodwin, December 15, 2016, found in Supervisory Ranger’s Office,
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Brookline, Massachusetts.
28
Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 305.
29
“Statement for Interpretation, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site.”
30
I have not found any evidence of the assessment in the archival documents or staff files at the site.
90
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
visitors following the change in interpretation at the site.
31
However, others encountered
visitors who brought family and friends to the house to introduce them to Rose Kennedy’s
voice only to find, to their great disappointment, that the tapes were no longer part of the
tour.
32
Christine Arato traced the negative response to this change in her own research at
the site, finding that survey responses were “unanimous” in their assessment that “some-
thing vital had been removed from the house” when rangers stopped using the audio-tour.
33
Some rangers eventually began to reinclude select recordings of Rose Kennedy to respond
to this visitor disappointment. They often played the recordings in the bedroom where
Kennedy was born or in the kitchen. The guides who did incorporate Rose’s voice into
their tours provided a hybrid approach. Their new interpretation balanced the new, more
“accurate” history methods with the original interpretation at the site, and it had rangers
deciding when Rose Kennedy’s voice was part of the story that they wanted to relay.
Eventually, in the late 1990s, the staff would occasionally offer special occasion “all-Rose”
tours and used interpreters to present a more complex picture of Rose Kennedy as a
memorial maker through her recordings.
34
The switch to ranger-led tours dramatically
changed the site’s interpretation, thematic focus, and historical message.
Part of the commitment to this change came because rangers at the site noticed and
documented a new concern that required a more deliberate interpretive strategy: in 1993,
most of the site’s visitors (52 percent) now fell between the ages of 18 and 35. This meant
that, “For the first time, the majority of those visiting the site had no personal recollections
of John Kennedy or his life and times.”
35
Staff discerned that “visitor attitudes [were]
increasingly affected by the image of Kennedy in popular culture, films and sensationalized
books and television,” rather than their own memories of the president.
36
They struggled
with the “lack” of visitor knowledge as they sought to provide visitors with experiences that
were “both enjoyable and enlightening.”
37
As a result, by 1994, site staff actively sought
31
Obleschuk, Phone Conversation with Elena Rippel, December 14, 2016.
32
Alan Banks, interview by Elena Rippel, July 7, 2016. See also “Visitor Center—Early Comments about Past
Tours,” “JOFI Resource Management, Interp, Event photos, 12-30-09,” found in Supervisory Ranger’s Office,
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Brookline, Massachusetts.
33
Christine Arato, “This House Holds Many Memories: Constructions of a Presidential Birthplace at the John
Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,” in Born in the U.S.A.: Birth, Commemoration, and American Public
Memory, ed. Seth C. Bruggeman (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), 68.
34
Banks, “Oral History.” See also Price, “Oral History.”
35
“Challenge Goals and Annual Work Plan, FY 94, 1–3 Year Goals and Objectives,” n.d. (circa 1993),
unprocessed files, found in Supervisory Ranger’s Office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,
Brookline, Massachusetts.
36
“Challenge Goals and Annual Work Plan, FY 94, 1–3 Year Goals and Objectives,” n.d. (circa 1993),
unprocessed files, found in Supervisory Ranger’s Office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,
Brookline, Massachusetts.
37
“Challenge Goals and Annual Work Plan, FY 94, 1–3 Year Goals and Objectives,” n.d. (circa 1993),
unprocessed files, found in Supervisory Ranger’s Office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,
Brookline, Massachusetts.
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Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
support from the superintendent and others in the North Atlantic Region for a new com-
prehensive interpretive plan for the Kennedy site that would account for these demo-
graphic and generational changes. In particular, the lead ranger at the site, James Phelps,
saw Nan Rickey’s original 1968 Interpretive Prospectus as “flawed in several important
ways.” He argued that the “time has come to view the Kennedy Birthplace, and for that
matter all of the birthplace sites within the National Park Service, as celebrations of a
person’s entire life, not simply the childhood home of a man.”
38
This interpretation shift
was substantial. This celebratory interpretive perspective encouraged interpreters to
develop their tours based on themes they found in their readings of materials in the site’s
research library—and importantly did not limit them to the period when the family was in
the house.
39
Phelps’s movement away from interpreting the childhood of the future presi-
dent and the lives of his parents, circa 1917–20, might seem like a natural progression after
the site discontinued the regular use of Rose Kennedy’s audio tour. However, this new
interpretation was unlike the shift away from using Rose Kennedy’s narration—which
though it silenced Rose Kennedy’s voice, actually allowed staff to take a more critical
historical look at the residents of the house during its period of significance. In many ways,
Phelps’s emphasis ran counter to the spirit of Rose Kennedy’s intention in her gift to the
nation. In 1967, Rose Kennedy’s hopes for the site were clearly spelled out in the letter she
wrote to the Secretary of the Interior, which made it into the Congressional record. She
hoped that visitors would come to the site to “see how people lived in 1917 and thus get a
better appreciation of the history of this wonderful country.”
40
Not long after this moment
of change, Rose Kennedy died at the age of 104. Though she had been out of the public eye
for the last decade of her life, and she had had very little to do with the site after it was
opened to the public, her “presence” was still an important one at the birthplace. With her
death in January 1995, the site’s staff may have been both freed of any perception of inter-
pretive constraints and freed to take her on as an important historical subject.
41
By embracing John F. Kennedy’s adult life and presidency as a critical focus of
interpretation, the staff had an opportunity to engage with modern historical concerns.
During this same period, and before the closure of the park over the early months, the site
also began promoting Black History Month by playing a recording of President Kennedy’s
1963 “Address to the Nation on Civil Rights” and putting together a temporary exhibit of
newspaper clippings that highlighted the coverage of this speech. The site also started an
occasional slide program called “The Kennedy Women: To Each Their Own” during
38
Memo: Comprehensive Interpretive Planning Process at Kennedy NHS, Information Package to
Superintendent, OLMS/LONG/JOFI, from Lead Park Ranger, JOFI (James Phelps), January 20, 1994, found in
Site Manager Lee Farrow Cook Documents, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.
39
Swartz, “Oral History.”
40
Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy to Stewart Udall, March 15, 1967, in “Background Book” on 90th Congress, JOFI.
41
Obleschuk, “Oral History.”
92
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
Women’s History Month. The slide program portrayed “the accomplishments of many
Kennedy women and show[ed] Rose Kennedy as the family matriarch guiding all of her
children and grandchildren (not just the males) toward public service with a firm hand.”
42
Together with the educational programming expansion, these interpretive changes show a
much broader understanding of the histories that the Kennedy Birthplace could present to
the public.
Structural and Maintenance Concerns
For years, staff had been concerned about the condition of the house. Cracks in the walls
appeared to grow over time, and in 1991, the National Park Service’s Building
Conservation Branch was finally able to analyze the “live load” of the structural framing of
the house. The Branch noted the problem, but instead of a structural fix, they first advised
a “use management” measure for addressing the issues. The Branch’s report indicated that
the walls and framing in the house were bending rather than breaking under the load of
office furniture on the third floor. Uncovering that the structural load placed on the third-
floor joists were not actually supported by the load-bearing walls below, the report did not
“recommend this space as suitable for office occupancy.” It capitulated, however, that the
third floor was the only place for offices in the building. Hence, its authors recommended
that staff mitigate risk to themselves and the building by removing any safes, filing cabinets,
bookcases above three tiers, and large desks. They recommended that no more than four
staff members occupy the third floor at any time and that they use unloaded furniture—
light, empty tables with no more than one drawer. The branch wanted to review the place-
ment of any furniture and put in place an annual furniture review process.
43
In addition to concerns about staff offices, Diamant and others began to make a
case for expanding the base budget at the Kennedy birthplace. The site had not had an
“operating increase for more than a decade.” As a result, Diamant argued in a memo to the
Regional Director, “the site is one of the most underfunded park units in the North Atlantic
Region.” He reported that funds from Olmsted had been used in 1991 to cover an operat-
ing deficit at the Kennedy site. Direly, he warned that this situation was “beginning to
impair the Olmsted Site’s capability to meet the timetable the Park Service presented to
Congress” for the preservation of the Olmsted collections and archives. To drive his argu-
ment home, Diamant noted that the Kennedy site saw “approximately 16,000 visitors each
42
John Engstrom, “Remembering JFK,” Boston Globe, January 20, 1991. For details on the programs, see
“Statement for Interpretation, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site.”
43
Memo: Third Floor Loading Limits, JOFI NHS, Historical Architect, Building Conservation Branch, Cultural
Resources Center (David Bitterman) to Chief of Maintenance, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Historic Site, November
22, 1991, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504),
Box 9, Folder 24.
93
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
year,” with an operating budget of $102,000. At the same time, the “Theodore Roosevelt
Birthplace, of comparable size,” had an “FY92 operating budget of approximately
$182,000.” He also noted that the Roosevelt birthplace had considerable administrative
funding provided by Manhattan sites. He brought to the director’s attention a severe lack
of funding for essential maintenance, including the cleaning and care of textiles that had
not been serviced since the fire in 1975. He also noted that the site’s visitor services costs
were covered by the Longfellow and Olmsted budgets.
44
Ultimately, Diamant would not only secure funding for a base operating funds
increase but also, the very next year, for significant work to stabilize the house. The work
included the placement of a steel beam in the kitchen to help bear the load of the second
and third floors of the house.
45
Though the site would be closed for structural repair
throughout the early months of 1992, it would reopen as significantly more structurally
sound.
46
1990s Politics and Anxiety for Trisites
In June 1995, Roger G. Kennedy (no relation), the National Park Service Director under
President Bill Clinton, held a press conference in nearby Lowell, Massachusetts. Kennedy
warned that many nearby sites were targeted for closure due to the Republican House and
Senate’s federal budget resolutions. These resolutions were in part a response to the
controversial budget cuts and a federal reorganization process that cut the National Park
Service’s funding just as Kennedy had hoped to expand the agency’s historical scope.
47
His
list of sites included several Massachusetts sites: Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site,
the Springfield Armory National Historic Site, Salem Maritime National Historic Site,
Longfellow National Historic Site, Boston African-American National Historic Site, and
John F. Kennedy National Historic Site. In 1995, the closure of the Kennedy and
Longfellow sites would have saved the federal government $225,000 and $389,000, respec-
tively. Though Roger Kennedy likely wanted to activate National Park Service advocates to
action, Republicans countered, assuring their constituents that popular sites like Kennedy,
Salem Maritime National Historic Site, and Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site
44
Memo: FY92 Operating Shortfall for John F. Kennedy NHS, Superintendent Rolf Diamant to Regional
Director, North Atlantic Region, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records,
1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 2, Folder 11.
45
Richard Chilcoat, Completion Report: Structural Stabilization Kennedy House, John F. Kennedy National
Historic Site, April 1992. John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003
(JOFI 1504), Box 2, Folder 24, April, 1992.
46
“JFK Birthplace to Be Restored,” Brookline Tab, January 7, 1992.
47
Julie Cart, “Roger Kennedy Dies at 85; Former National Park Service Director,” Los Angeles Times,
October 2, 2011.
94
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
would likely stay open, while sites like Olmsted, which had the “third highest” cost in the
system with a budget that amounted to $381.83 per visitor in 1994, would see cuts. The base
budget increase that Diamant had procured for Olmsted with the help of the ASLA did not
go unnoticed by political actors.
48
With cuts to regional offices already in effect, Director
Roger Kennedy ultimately hoped that a system-wide increase in entrance fees might offset
the $100 million budget cut.
49
The Kennedy site felt these cost-saving measures and cuts
severely. In 1994, the site closed for the first time for the entirety of the long winter season.
Park administrators sent out letters to regular partners, neighbors, and interested members
of the Kennedy family to warn them of the site’s closure from November 27, 1994, through
May 9, 1995.
50
The National Park Service was in a challenging period of it history, where
there was an increased “politicization of the directorship” and an attempt to “curtail the
system’s growth,” according to NPS historian Lary Dilsaver.
51
Among many other attempts
to limit expenses, the new Republican Congress (which came into power in January of
1995) attempted to create a panel that would review every unit of the system with the
“possibility…that some should be decertified or sold.” Some Republican Representatives
argued, like James Hanse (R-Utah), that “the question is not whether to close some parks,
but how to accomplish this goal.”
52
Nearly all small parks had staff that worried their park
would be put on the chopping block.
Kennedy Family at the Site
Despite federal cutbacks, interest in the Kennedy family was stronger than ever. Ted
Kennedy had long had a powerful place in the US Senate; by the mid-1990s, he was one of
the most prominent voices of the Democratic Party and an important counterpoint to the
powerful conservative Congress. As his senatorial role took center stage, so did his role in
narrating JFK’s history and connection to Boston. In a popular trolley tour that made stops
at both the birthplace and the presidential library, it was Ted Kennedy’s voice that tourists
heard first as they headed out to learn more about the fallen president. In many ways, his
48
It’s very possible that the visitor counts to Olmsted during this period did not recognize the use of the
collections by individuals and communities from across the country and, instead, just counted visitors that came
through the house itself.
49
Scott Allen, “Park Service Chief, in Lowell, Says Cuts Imperil Smaller Sites,” Boston Globe, June 1, 1995.
50
Lee Farrow Cook to Gerald Kaplan, November 21, 1994. John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource
Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 1, Folder 5. While most of the letters that went out were
from Cook, Superintendent Rolf Diamant signed off on identical letters to the Kennedy family.
51
Lary M. Dilsaver, America’s National Park System: The Critical Documents, 2nd ed. (Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2016), 371.
52
Howard Witt, “National Parks Face Survival of the Fittest: Budget Cutters Look to Closings as System
Outgrows Its Funding,” Chicago Tribune, September 4, 1995.
95
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
own audio tours mirrored his mother’s work at the birthplace to narrate the family’s
history. At the JFK Library, trolley riders spent at least 45 minutes at the museum and
walked through some of the more than 20 exhibits. Though passengers on the trolley did
not always go inside the Kennedy birthplace for a tour, they could stand in front of the
house for a photo. Often rangers at the Kennedy site would let some visitors in for an “open
house” while managing others on the trolley with a quick neighborhood tour. Open houses
placed one ranger upstairs and one down, allowing visitors to come in without formal tour
interpretation. The size of the site and inadequate parking proved challenging when man-
aging large trolley tours or bus tours at the site.
53
The small house could only bear 12 to 15
visitors at a time.
54
Staff at the site noted an obligation to the living Kennedy family as well as those who
had passed, more so than staff did at the Olmsted or Longfellow sites, which also had family
members engaged at various times over the years.
55
In 1994, when Jaqueline Kennedy
Onassis died, the site hung a mourning wreath and saw many mourners visit the site.
56
The
site also held special hours for the public to remember Rose Kennedy when she died the
next year.
57
Many staff members noticed a renewed interest in the site by the Kennedy
family in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They seemed to develop or redevelop a connection
to the site after Rose Kennedy’s death in 1995. Not long after his mother’s death, Ted
Kennedy visited the house. Staff recall him sitting down in a living room chair and breaking
down in tears, after hearing his mother’s voice on the audio recordings in the house. In
2002, the family held a reunion of sorts at the site. At the gathering, Kennedy family mem-
bers listened to Rose Kennedy’s voice and shared the site with her grandchildren.
58
At the same time, staff, like Alan Banks, had to walk a fine line when “correcting”
visitors who presented inaccurate or sensationalized information about the Kennedy
family, like Joseph Kennedy’s “bootlegging” or Rosemary Kennedy’s controversial medical
lobotomy. “You had to be gentle,” because if staff were ever too direct in their corrections,
they were seen as potentially a “shill for the Kennedy family” rather than accurate.
59
Ted
Kennedy’s continued powerful political presence in the Senate meant that the house was
also associated with him and his politics, as much as it had been in 1975 when it was fire-
bombed in response to his support for busing. A growing number of books and movies
53
The tour seems to have been developed with the help of curators at the JFK Library and came with a steep $20
ticket cost. “Kennedy Tour Highlights Boston as ‘the Town That Jack Built,’” Boston Irish Reporter, June 1, 1995.
54
Banks, “Oral History.”
55
Conversation with Rolf Diamant, September 22, 2017.
56
“Hundreds Sign Book at Kennedy Library,” Telegram & Gazette, May 24, 1994.
57
Stephanie McLaughlin, “Funeral 2 Block from N. End Birthplace,” Boston Globe, January 24, 1995.
58
Price, “Oral History.”
59
Banks, “Oral History.”
96
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
about the family filtered into visitors’ ideas about their politics and family dynamics.
Democratic politics writ large were increasingly seen as the Kennedy family’s domain as
much as any house.
60
Changes in Administration at the Site
Throughout the 1990s, the administrative focus of leadership at the trisites did not focus
often on the Kennedy birthplace. While Superintendent Diamant experimented on a
trisites-wide effort at streamlining and finding creative efficiencies, he was also interested
in changing how things ran at the birthplace on a day-to-day basis. Kennedy staff members
were also interested in change. They often felt like they “were on our own,” and others
reported that they were “fine with that.”
61
The Kennedy site had been unofficially managed
by C. Sue Rigney, Chief of Interpretation for the trisites for many years. Diamant remem-
bered that when he came to his position, the rangers at all the sites were “dug in” and
resistant to change and creativity. At Kennedy in particular, he noted that staff were
devoted but “stationary.” In Diamant’s mind, the Kennedy site had assets, including the
neighborhood and the Kennedy family relationships, but it also had “baggage.” Because it
came as Rose Kennedy’s gift, interpretation was limited, and the critical tools that the NPS
normally used in creating a new park had not been brought to the table in the creation of
the site.
62
Diamant wanted to change not just interpretation at the site, but also its adminis-
trative influences. Meanwhile, he thought that the Kennedy and Longfellow sites should be
managed by someone with strong cultural resources and curatorial background.
63
The site did not have an official Site Manager and Curator until 1992 when Diamant
hired Jim Shea to manage and run the curatorial side of things for both the Kennedy and
Longfellow sites. Not all staff were sure that the new administrative structure was a positive
move. As the structure also provided a new chain of command that placed longtime staff,
like the supervisory ranger at Kennedy, under the supervision of a new, driven Site
Manager.
64
Diamant recruited Shea from the New York Sites. His addition created a brief
60
See Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Kennedys: An American Drama, 1984, and John H. Davis, The
Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster, 1848–1983 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984), among others. Even in 1965,
books about Kennedy were on the rise. See Jimmy Breslin, “JFK Books—A Major Industry: Market Seems
Insatiable,” Boston Globe, July 8, 1965.
61
Banks, “Oral History.”
62
Conversation with Rolf Diamant, September 22, 2017.
63
Jim Shea, interview by Elena Rippel, November 17, 2016.
64
Jim Shea caused a stir at the sites when he was recruited especially for the Longfellow National Historic Site,
in September of 1992. Brian Doherty, then Supervisory Park Ranger for the Kennedy and Longfellow sites,
reportedly told Diamant when he hired Shea that “he had outlasted other superintendents” and would “outlast”
Diamant. Diamant, “Oral History.”
97
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
swell of activity at the site. The Fiscal Year 1994 Annual Work Plan shows some of his
ambitious hopes for the site. It included a thoughtful three-year plan with a wide range of
projects, goals, and objectives for the site. Among them, staff planned to develop a new
orientation film and, importantly, planned a rehab of the visitor center that would upgrade
the exhibits. The existing exhibits had essentially been long-term temporary exhibits, and
in the new plan exhibits called for “a new emphasis on the life and time[s] of John F.
Kennedy and away from exclusively interpreting his early years.” Additionally, the plan
recommended that “the immigration angle, which has caused the interpretation of the site
to loose [sic] focas [sic] and power should be downplayed or eliminated completely.”
65
These changes were seen as long overdue at the site, but despite this emphasis, much of the
administrative energy of the tri-sites was not focused on the Kennedy site.
In addition to the development of Olmsted and providing increased access to its
collections, massive renovations, and changes in the physical systems at Longfellow, Rolf
Diamant was also developing the new Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation.
Building on the expertise that he brought together in support of the Olmsted site, the
Center would become a new service-based unit of the National Park Service. It provided
support for the management of cultural landscapes across the system, by providing assis-
tance with landscape preservation and planning, research, maintenance, education, and
training.
66
This effort consumed considerable administrative energy often to the detriment
of the Kennedy site.
67
Staff at the Kennedy site were so much on their own and overworked that they
recalled often having difficulty getting a moment for lunch during the summer. Summer
meant constant tours. In addition, the heat and the crowds in the summer wore on staff. The
upper floors, and sometimes the site itself, had to close to the public because of high tem-
peratures and a lack of air-conditioning throughout the building. Staff also began to note a
lack of clear direction at the site and few written policies. On slow days, staff would some-
times watch TV (though it was often Kennedy-related). Isolation from the other sites
became a concern. While some felt this was a good thing, others saw themselves as “poor
stepchildren” because “management didn’t care about us.”
68
The smallness of the site
sometimes also meant that the staff there felt a great comradery. They also occasionally
struggled with interpersonal issues when they could not physically maintain distance from
each other in the workplace. This was a particular problem when there were conflicts
65
“John F. Kennedy National Historic Site, Challenge Goals, Annual Work Plan, FY 94 Goals and Objective,
1–3 Year Goals and Objectives,” 1993, 20. John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management
Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 1, Folder 6.
66
Allen, The Olmsted National Historic Site and the Growth of Historic Landscape Preservation, 199–208.
67
Rolf Diamant, interview by Joan Zenzen, June 2, 2014.
68
Banks, “Oral History.”
98
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
between staff members.
69
At one point, the Supervisory Ranger Brian Doherty was out on
emergency leave for an entire week, and “none of the supervisory staff called to check in” or
visited the site to see if things were okay. Kennedy staff even noted that they were left out of
the loop on things like staff meeting cancellations, showing up for all-staff meetings when
no one had alerted them that the meeting had been canceled. Such things were “a shot
against morale.”
70
There were attempts to help with problems of morale, and interpretive
staff at the Kennedy site were encouraged to engage with collections. For instance, Jim Shea
worked to get staff involved in research projects together, mending what had been a histori-
cal rift between curatorial staff (cultural resource management) and interpretive staff.
71
General morale was not the only concern for staff at the Kennedy site. In 1994, Brian
Doherty was arrested on federal, felony charges of child pornography.
72
FBI agents raided
the Kennedy site and seized Doherty’s work computer and materials from his office.
Doherty had been at the tri-sites for many years, and staff at the site were shocked and
“traumatized” by these events.
73
Superintendent Diamant brought in counselors to help staff
deal with the shock. Nonetheless, the other permanent ranger at the site left as a result, and
other staff, including many of the long-time seasonal rangers, at the site reportedly “wanted
to leave.” There was, as a result, a dramatic turnover at the site in the mid-1990s. It took time
for the remaining and new staff to get up to speed.
74
During the crisis, then Site Manager and
Curator at the Longfellow and Kennedy sites, Jim Shea, also took on Doherty’s role as
supervisor of interpretation and rangers at both sites. The supervising ranger position at
69
Banks, “Oral History.”; Diamant, “Oral History.”
70
Lora DeSalvo, “Progress Report Worksheet for Lora Desalvo, 2/16/94–2/20/94,” (Unprocessed JOFI Files,
Longfellow House-George Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, Archives).
71
Shea, “Oral History.”
72
Associated Press, “Six Charged with Child Pornography: Boston Man Arrested,” Boston Globe,
March 26, 1994.
73
Shea, “Oral History.” An article in the Boston Globe mentioned that Brian Doherty worked “at a museum near
Boston” and was “accused of transporting materials from Massachusetts to New Jersey. The name of the museum
was not immediately available.” However, the name appeared only in the initial coverage of the arrest, and it
seems that the NPS was able to keep out of the press. Coverage included the arrest of six men, not just for
transporting child pornography but for producing it in Maryland with children. According to the article, it was an
“interstate conspiracy” that included the seizure of “one of the largest child pornography collections ever found
in the United States.” The Associated Press, “Six Charged with Child Pornography: Boston Man Arrested.”
Doherty had been at the site since November 13, 1984, as staff marked his first day in their daily log. “Daily
Log” (JOFI Unprocessed Files, Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site Archives).
It is important to note that staff and former staff were hesitant to talk about Doherty’s arrest and its impact on the
site. A number of those interviewed indicated that 1994/95 was a “confusing time” and that it was difficult to
remember exactly who was in charge at the site. Jim Shea and Rolf Diamant were willing to go on the record
about this brief but impactful moment in the site’s history. According to Shea, Doherty was convicted and went to
prison. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Sex Offenders Registry lists Doherty as being convicted of two
counts of the “purchase or possession of child pornography” and lists the last date of conviction and/or
adjudication as October 3, 2016, accessed May 30, 2022. See also Sara Patton Zarrelli’s section, “The Crisis,” in
The Long Road to Restoration: An Administrative History of Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters
National Historic Site, (2021), 104–6.
74
Shea, “Oral History.”
99
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
Kennedy was not filled for more than a year, and then it was filled by a series of staff mem-
bers temporarily assigned from different roles within the trisites. Superintendent Diamant
recalled this particular moment as a traumatic crisis for the sites, but also saw the change in
staff and the installation of Jim Shea as overall curatorial and interpretive manager of both
Longfellow and Kennedy as the “beginning of a renaissance.”
75
Figure 10. Curator and Site Manager for the Kennedy and Longfellow Site Manager Jim Shea,
who also held the Curator position at both the Kennedy and Longfellow sites, shown here with
First Lady Hillary Clinton, Senator Edward (Teddy) Kennedy, and House Speaker Thomas (Tip) O’Neill
at the Longfellow House. NPS, 1998.
Jim Shea instituted a new series of Standard Operating Procedures at the site and
focused on opening and closing procedures and security. His curatorial interests also likely
brought a new interpretive focus on specific items in the house, among them, the reproduc-
tion index card file that Rose Kennedy kept on the health of all her children. He also
noticed that rangers under Doherty had started treating the house’s third floor as a social
space. He remembered, “There were always people up on the third floor. It was a fire
hazard. I found clutter, you know, people eating up there, food. It was historic space, and I
reminded them this is historic space; you can’t really put nails in the walls and it really was
kind of a—not a very professional operation that I saw. The staff had been there so long,
75
Diamant, “Oral History.”
100
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
they’d kind of gotten really comfortable.”
76
Nonetheless, Shea’s primary concerns stayed
with the significant changes happening at the Longfellow site, where he was building a
Friends Group and cataloging an enormous number of curatorial items and vast archival
collections. But by 1997/1998, the Kennedy site was seeing regular curatorial attention,
working on interpreting the life of the president, rather than his childhood, and developing
revamped educational programs.
77
By the end of the 1990s, Superintendent Rolf Diamant moved from developing the
Olmsted Center, which was up and running, to the development of Marsh-Billings-
Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock, Vermont. His background in park
planning, careful politicking on behalf of parks, experience developing earmarks with
lobbyist interest groups and politicians, and finding funds for the trisites during the
Clinton administration all led him to play a critical planning role and eventually a leader-
ship role as superintendent at the Marsh-Billings park. In part to help manage the compli-
cated personnel issues and other reorganization happening at the trisites, he first mentored
and then appointed Olmsted employee Lee Farrow Cook as Deputy Superintendent for the
trisites in 1994. In 1997, after a shift in staff to accommodate staff family needs and staff
commitments to the Marsh-Billing site, Cook became site manager at the Olmsted site.
With Diamant’s departure as superintendent later in 1997, Cook also took over as site
manager for the Kennedy site, leaving Jim Shea to manage all aspects of increasingly com-
plicated efforts at the Longfellow site.
78
Lee Farrow Cook had been a part of the movement to get the Olmsted site up and
running and a key figure at both the Olmsted Center and in the work to catalog the massive
archival collections at the site in the 1990s.
79
Cook had a strong sense of how the sites
worked together as a single administrative unit and understood how those units sometimes
had to compete for a superintendent’s support and attention. She would stay in this NPS
unit for more than 30 years, until her retirement in 2020.
80
Cook provided new leadership
at the site level and came to understand how much still needed to be done at the John
Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site—the site still had no general management plan,
cultural landscape report, or historical resources study. Many of the founding documents
produced at the beginning of a site’s planning and development stages had never been
76
Shea, “Oral History.”
77
Shea, “Oral History.”
78
Cook, “Oral History.”
79
“Oral History.” Lee Farrow Cook was hired at the Olmsted site in 1987 and served her whole career at the
trisites, first under Superintendent Whitesell and then, after mentoring from Diamant, took on ever-expanding
administrative duties. Diamant, “Oral History.”
80
Shea, “Oral History.” Allen, The Olmsted National Historic Site and the Growth of Historic Landscape
Preservation, 180–81.
101
Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s Managing Kennedy as a Modern Historical Site: The 1990s
created for the Kennedy birthplace because Rose Kennedy had provided the site as a “turn
key gift” to the National Park Service.
81
As the site transitioned to a new superintendent in
1998, it was time to finally consider a plan for the site’s future.
Superintendent Rolf Diamant undoubtedly left the John Fitzgerald Kennedy site in
a much stronger place than he had found it. Physically the site was sounder; interpretation
had become more flexible, diverse, and modern; and the site’s annual operating budget
increased. One of Diamant’s most important contributions to all three sites was a decade of
consistent attention to their development and financial needs. However, the site, by com-
parison to Olmsted and Longfellow, did not see the same level of attention over his tenure
at the trisites, especially in the creation and nourishment of partnerships and advocates
outside the agency. Olmsted and Longfellow both saw the development of robust friends
groups, for example, and both sites had archival and collections projects that brought in
both funds, new staff, and a growing interest from scholars and professionals. At the
Kennedy site, the silencing of Rose Kennedy’s audio tour was perhaps the most remarkable
change. After 20 years and her death, Rose Kennedy’s voice no longer dominated the
visitors’ experience at the site. What stories and themes the site would focus on would be
the work of a new superintendent’s administration.
81
Conversation with Rolf Diamant, September 22, 2017.
103
CHAPTER SIX
The Politics of Memory, Gender,
and the Presidency at the Birthplace,
1999–2017
B
y the time Myra Harrison joined the trisites as superintendent, Rose Kennedy’s
interpretive voice had been all but silenced. Under Harrison, a new era of research
would help reveal a more complicated and dynamic picture of Rose Kennedy and
embrace the history of the site’s development as part of its historical significance. Staff did
this, in part, by both completing and commissioning new research that contextualized
Rose Kennedy’s role in the restoration of the house as a personal memorial act to mark the
birth and death of her son, President John F. Kennedy, and hiring a new Supervisory
Ranger. Much changed over Harrison’s 20 years at the site. However, by the end of
Harrison’s time at the site, things had shifted yet again; in the run-up to the celebration of
the Kennedy Centennial in 2017, interpretation changed once more, this time to a new era
of interpreting Kennedy’s work as president.
Myra Harrison came to the trisites as one of a handful of female superintendents
who had been mentored by women in the 1990s, specifically for leadership positions
within the National Park Service.
1
Harrison and Lee Farrow Cook became a powerful
administrative team. In their nearly 20 years together at the trisites, they would achieve
many of the goals that site administrators had been working toward since the site first
opened. One of their most essential tasks was putting together the foundational docu-
ments, plans, and studies the site would need to transition to the 21st century. Along with
an innovative Supervisory Park Ranger at the site, Christine Arato, they embraced new
scholarship. They sought out scholars to help them research the site and resee its primary
preservation criteria, interpretation, historical resources, and architectural history. Most of
the reports, publications, and plans needed at a modern federal site were finally completed
under their tenure. Among these were the Historic Furnishing Assessment, Historic
Resource Study, an Archeological Overview and Assessment, Scope of Collections, Cultural
Landscape Report, interpretation, facility studies on parking requirements, visitor studies,
and a host of other publications, like the site’s first unigrid brochure. These would bring
1
Myra Harrison, “Oral History,” interview by Hilary Iris Lowe, November 20, 2019. Though the number of
women employees had increased in the National Park Service, women’s roles in leadership were and are still rare.
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The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
the site up to national standards in most regards, and their creation was finally on the front
burner at the site. As Cook put it, it was a new era of “resource reports” and other essential
documents.
2
The Kennedy site’s partner sites, the Frederick Law Olmsted National
Historic Site and Longfellow National Historic Site, had stable leadership and funded
archival, conservation, and curatorial projects well underway. Coming out of these crises in
structural and collections care that marked their first decades with the National Park
Service, these sites were now both reasonably funded and were soon set to be open to
scholars, researchers, and friends groups that continued to support their research and
collections efforts.
3
Figure 11. Lee Farrow Cook. Joel Veak. NPS, circa 2009.
Rolf Diamant’s superintendency had set these sites on much firmer footing.
Longfellow and Olmsted were engaged in long-term projects that included significant
infrastructure investments and a decided focus on preserving and making accessible
2
Lee Farrow Cook, interview by Elena Rippel, April 26, and May 12, 2017.
3
See chapter 6 in David Grayson Allen, The Olmsted National Historic Site and the Growth of Historic
Landscape Preservation (Boston: Northeastern University Press; published by University Press of New England,
2007). See also chapter 5 in Sara Patton Zarrelli, The Long Road to Restoration: An Administrative History of
Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site (National Park Service: US Department of
the Interior 2021).
105
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017 The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
collections. The focus on collections, and the resulting research into them, put both sites
on a vital path toward reinvigorating their interpretation and broadening the historical
stories each site could engage. Meanwhile, the Kennedy site had a capable Site Manager in
Lee Farrow Cook. Administrative considerations among the three sites shifted to allow
Cook to turn some of her focus to the Kennedy site. After Harrison joined the trisites, “the
Kennedy site got a lot of attention, more so than it had—at the management level.”
4
The
resulting reports and publications had the added benefit of bringing several outside plan-
ners, experts, and stakeholders to the site and infusing the site with new energy focused on
reviving its interpretation and defining a mission for a new century of stewardship.
Superintendent Myra Harrison came to the trisites from the Cultural Resources
Center (CRC) based in Lowell, Massachusetts (Figure 12). There she worked with an
interdisciplinary staff of architects, historians, conservators, and archaeologists to preserve
and protect a wide variety of cultural resources. Before her time with the National Park
Service, Harrison held a number of preservation positions, including ones at the
Providence Preservation Society in Rhode Island and with the Heritage Conservation and
Recreation Service in Washington, DC, a separate branch of the Department of the Interior
until it was absorbed into the National Park Service in 1986. While she was at the Lowell
CRC, the Regional Director, Marie Rust, sought to match Harrison with a Boston-area
leadership position.
5
Rust first zeroed in on Minute Man National Historical Park for
Harrison, but the park was in the midst of community programming over the widening of a
local highway for the park that included many evening meetings that would keep its super-
intendent in Concord. Harrison and her family had just settled in at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology after the move from Washington, DC.
6
Rust eventually focused on
the trisites. According to Harrison, she was “plucked” out of her position at the Cultural
Resources Center and placed in the job as superintendent for the Longfellow, Kennedy, and
Olmsted sites.
7
4
Lee Farrow Cook, “Oral History,” interview by Elena Rippel, April 26 and May 12, 2017.
5
Harrison, “Oral History.”
6
Joan Zenzen, Bridging the Past: Minute Man National Historical Park Administrative History (National Park
Service, Northeast Region History Program, 2010), 287. Harrison, “Oral History.”
7
Harrison, “Oral History.”
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The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
Figure 12. Superintendent Myra Harrison in front of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site.
Matt Teuten Photography. NPS, 2015.
When Harrison arrived at the trisites in early 1999, much of the change that Rolf
Diamant had helped orchestrate for Longfellow and Olmsted was well in place. The
Longfellow National Historic Site closed in the fall of 1998 to prepare for significant
renovation work, funding for which Senator Ted Kennedy had helped secure in Congress.
The renovation of the house and the carriage house included a new HVAC system and
required all the house’s contents to move off-site.
8
Rehabilitation at the house would last
the first three years of Harrison’s tenure as superintendent, and the site reopened in June
of 2002.
9
Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, the site that had seen the bulk of
Diamant’s attentions, was also actively engaged in processing and making accessible many
of the landscape plans and drawings held in the massive collection at the site.
10
8
“Congress Approves $1.6 Million for Longfellow National Historic Site,” Longfellow House Bulletin 2, no. 2
(December 1998): 1.
9
“Longfellow House Re-Opens Its Doors after Three-Year Rehabilitation,” Longfellow House Bulletin 6, no. 1
(June 2002): 1.
10
Harrison, “Oral History.” Harrison made sure to mention that “of course, Sen. Kennedy was very careful
never to advocate strongly for the Kennedy site itself. He had a real sense of decorum about that.… But Sen.
Kennedy certainly helped enormously at Longfellow, and to some extent at Olmsted also.”
107
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017 The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
When asked how the Kennedy site seemed when she first took over management of
the site, Harrison remarked, “Kennedy was like this little music box that was off to the side
and had been wound up and was just playing its little music and going on. Mrs. Kennedy
had assembled all the objects and made the tapes.”
11
Harrison noted that the site had few of
the “understudies” that most new sites had, and importantly she could see that Longfellow
and Olmsted were “behemoth. They’re the drivers in most situations.” Nonetheless, for
Harrison, who had started her college career as a political science major and had lived
through the “Kennedy era,” she found “above all, the Kennedy site is unique.” As a preser-
vationist, Harrison was also immediately interested in the fact that much of the birthplace’s
surrounding neighborhood was also remarkably “darn near unchanged” from when the
Kennedys had lived there.
12
Harrison supported the staff’s burgeoning interest in women’s history, especially as
it related to interpreting the life of Rose Kennedy. In 1999, as the site explored options for
developing and hiring a historian to complete a historic resources study, one historian was
dismissed as a possibility. Correspondence from Harrison indicates that he did not have a
“demonstrated interest or experience in/comfort with/or necessarily sensitivity to the
layers of domestic/social/women’s history issues that might present themselves at JOFI.”
13
Lee Farrow Cook had been requesting funding to sponsor a Historic Resource Study since
at least 1993, but she had the internal support she needed under Harrison’s tenure to make
it happen. She hoped to see the historic resources at the house expand to include more
clearly the lives of Rose and Joseph Kennedy Sr.
14
Though the site was dedicated to John F.
Kennedy, it was clear that four years after the death of Rose Kennedy, the staff now
embraced exploring the women’s history that could be uncovered in her story.
Harrison also saw both the emotional appeal and importance of the Kennedy
birthplace; she also identified it as a “tiny intimate place” where visitors might have “a
powerful emotional experience.” Almost immediately after her arrival, it was clear to all
that the birthplace was deeply tied to Americans and their emotional response to the
Kennedy family, when John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. was killed in a plane crash on July 16,
1999. His death alone increased visitation to the site that year; Park Ranger David Kratz
noted about 5,000 visitors after his death. “It’s an obligation this site has. It’s what we’re
here for, but having thousands of people coming through is just too much for this house.”
15
His remarks expose the longstanding tension at the site—how to serve as many people as
11
Harrison, “Oral History.”
12
Harrison, “Oral History.”
13
Myra Harrison, March 21, 1999. Unprocessed files, found in Supervisory Ranger’s Office, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy National Historic Site, Brookline, Massachusetts.
14
“Request for Project Funding,” John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management Records,
1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 2, folder 2.
15
Kirk W. LeMessurier, “Birthplace Calmer, but not Quiet, after Tragedy,” Brookline Tab, September 9, 1999.
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The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
possible and still respect the limited physical capacity of the house. After JFK Jr.’s death,
staff set up a guestbook, put out flowers, and the site was open 12 hours a day, 9:00 a.m. to
9:00 p.m. for several days because so many people came to the site, according to Alan
Banks. “Why come here? It was really the only place where people could go,” though he
knew they also went to the JFK Library. “There’s something about the house, everybody
lives in a house, nobody lives in a library, that’s part of the connection that people make.”
Banks saw the impulse to visit the birthplace akin to the practice of going to someone’s
house after a funeral “to pay respects to the family.”
16
Harrison noted right away that the
Kennedy Library tells a vast ongoing story of Kennedy’s political influence. The library was
an “elephant,” in her mind, and the “Kennedy site was the little mouse, but a mouse with
great potential.” Harrison saw part of the site’s possibilities included the neighborhood
and the potential for a historic district that told the story of the Kennedy family in
Brookline.
17
Throughout the early period of Harrison’s tenure, staff at the Kennedy site contin-
ued to advocate for change—and not just changes in interpretation. Among continued
stressors were the hectic and understaffed summer months. At an all-staff retreat in 2000,
attendees’ notes indicate that the emotional responses generated by visitors at the site
never worried them; they claimed that actually, “staff would like to have better exhibits that
would encourage more emotion.” A primary concern was “being short staffed is much
more stressful than dealing with emotional visitors.” They also noted that “not having a site
superintendent is the most stressful. It helps to have a site supervisor who helps with
tours.”
18
Staff at the site clearly wanted to engage the moving story at the site more and
needed help and support to be able to do so.
16
Alan Banks, “Oral History,” interview by Elena Rippel, July 7, 2016.
17
There is no historic district dedicated in Brookline, either locally or nationally, that includes the Beals
Street address or its immediate neighbors. However, the Kennedys’ second house in Brookline, located at
51 Abbottsford Road, is included in the Graffam-McKay Local Historic District. See https://www.brooklinema.
gov/907/Local-Historic-Districts (accessed January 18, 2022). The Graffam Development, which includes the
Abbottsford Kennedy house, is also a National Historic District as of 1985. See the nomination report here:
https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/media/63792544/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/85003271.pdf
(accessed January 18, 2022).
18
“Staff Report,” November 7, 2000. This document summarizes JOFI staff notes after the all-staff retreat. In a
file folder marked “12.6.00 Mtg.” Unprocessed files, found in Supervisory Ranger’s Office, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy National Historic Site, Brookline, Massachusetts.
109
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017 The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
New Interpretation:
Rose Kennedy as Architect of Memory
As part of their efforts to give new energy to the Kennedy site, in 2001, Lee Farrow Cook
and Myra Harrison hired a new Supervisory Park Ranger for the park, Christine Arato.
Arato came to the site from a contract position at the Olmsted Center for Landscape
Preservation. There she had written cultural landscape reports for the New Bedford
Whaling Museum National Park and the Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park.
Staff at the site remember her time at the park vividly; Mark Swartz, a longtime Park
Ranger at Olmsted who worked closely with the site over his tenure, put it this way:
“Christine was an agent of change.”
19
Arato had a background as an academic researcher
and writer, and her skills as a historian were put to work immediately at the site. She
arrived at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site in October 2001, not long
after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She spent nearly all of her first winter at the
site alone while the site was closed for the winter months.
20
When the site opened the following spring and she saw the seasonal staff go
through their regular house tours, Arato realized that the interpretation that she saw there
did not match with the interpretation she had imagined as she delved into the site’s history
over the winter.
21
Though the staff no longer relied entirely on Rose Kennedy’s taped tour,
they had come to rely a great deal on her autobiography.
22
One seasonal ranger, in particu-
lar, seemed personally devoted to Rose Kennedy’s rose-colored memories about her life
and the hagiography concerned Arato. Though certainly influenced by the 9/11 attacks and
the fact that much of the country was responding to a great national trauma, Arato also had
started to see the house as a monument to a different national trauma. It was also a monu-
ment to the very personal trauma that Rose Kennedy experienced. Rose Kennedy had not
only lost her son, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, but as she worked to establish the
birthplace, her son Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 6, 1968. While the NPS and
staff at the site certainly acknowledged the Kennedy family’s tragedies, they had not seen
Rose Kennedy’s overwhelming loss as an essential founding element of the site itself until
Arato began to lobby for its consideration at the site. Arato ultimately argued for a new
interpretation that would engage the history of American commemoration, ideas about
political and national memory, women’s history, and eventually trauma as a potential
theme for the site.
23
19
Mark Swartz, “Oral History,” interview by Elena Rippel, November 29, 2016.
20
Christine Arato, “Oral History,” interview by Hilary Iris Lowe, August 10, 2020.
21
Christine Arato, “Oral History,” interview by Hilary Iris Lowe, August 10, 2020.
22
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Times to Remember, 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974).
23
Arato, “Oral History.”
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The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
Arato knew that she wanted to convince Harrison and Cook that the interpretation
at the house could expand beyond Kennedy’s early childhood and basic information about
Rose and Joseph Kennedy’s early marriage. Initially, not all of Arato’s ideas found traction.
This was partly because changing the interpretation at any historical site is not an easy
process. Themes for interpretation at National Park Service historic sites are usually based
on either a site’s founding legislation or a site’s argument for historical significance as put
forward in its National Landmark nomination. But because she was new to an interpretive
arm of the NPS and had served only as a contract researcher, Arato was not sure how to
proceed. Regional Historian Paul Weinbaum helped her find her footing, and he explained
the process. He also suggested ways to bring new scholarship in memory studies, women’s
history, the history of commemoration, Irish American life in greater Boston, Catholicism
in America, and the Kennedy family itself to the site staff. Weinbaum suggested that the site
prioritize updating the site’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Landmarks as
part of this process.
24
In the meantime, however, Rose Kennedy’s work developing the
commemorative landscape at the site could also be recognized in other ways.
One of these ways was through the research and work of Alexander von Hoffman.
His historic resource study, John F. Kennedy’s Birthplace: A Presidential Home in History
and Memory, was an essential step in helping the site establish a broader history at the
historic site. Its goals were, according to Harrison, to “first situate Joe and Rose Kennedy
within Brookline’s Beals Street neighborhood to provide a better understanding on the
spheres in which the Kennedy Family members lived, worked, and played. The second was
to analyze the significance of the creation of the site as a memorial to the recently assassi-
nated president.”
25
The study delved deeply into the secondary research on Rose and
Joseph Kennedy Sr. and looked closely at the conditions of the Brookline neighborhood in
which they lived and the kind of home they hoped to establish there. Von Hoffman traced
the basic history of Rose Kennedy’s efforts at the house and, in some ways, reinforced staff
lore that Kennedy’s “memory sometimes had to be ‘jogged’ by Luddington.” His later oral
history would contradict this to some degree.
26
The study also spent one chapter looking
into how Rose Kennedy’s efforts fit within the larger preservation movement in the United
States and the complications of “history and memorialization.”
27
The historic resource
study was ground-breaking work for the site. Von Hoffman’s efforts reinvigorated staff as
24
Arato, “Oral History.” Conversation with Paul Weinbaum, June 1, 2017.
25
Myra Harrison, “Foreword,” in Alexander Von Hoffman, John F. Kennedy’s Birthplace: A Presidential Home
in History and Memory (A Historic Resource Study) (John F. Kennedy National Historic Sity, Brookline,
Massachusetts: National Park Service, Department of the Interior, 2004), ix.
26
Robert Luddington, “Oral History,” interview by Elena Rippel et al., June 26, 2016.
27
Hoffman, John F. Kennedy’s Birthplace, 157.
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he completed his study between 2002 and 2007.
28
Importantly, his analysis was one of the
first places where the house’s commemorative or “memorial period” was officially docu-
mented as a historic resource that the National Park Service and staff at the Kennedy site
might interpret.
Among the changes that might come from recognizing the “memorial period” was
the unification of the inside of the house with its exterior. Early Boston Group staff, includ-
ing architectural historian Orville Carroll who completed the architectural study of the
house in 1970, advocated changing the house’s color from the gray and white that Rose
Kennedy had it painted to green with cream shutters that the NPS’s paint study had
revealed.
29
They did repaint the house in the early 1970s, but they left the interior primarily
as she had decorated it.
30
There was a pressing question at the site in its early years: could
or would the NPS correct what Rose Kennedy got wrong about 1917–20? For years this
question lingered, and ahistorical elements of her and Robert Luddington’s restoration of
the house bothered staff. Many wondered if the NPS would correct these issues after Rose
Kennedy and Robert Luddington died? Would they after all the Kennedy siblings had
passed? As the curatorial staff grew at Longfellow over the years, new professional stan-
dards were also more present at the Kennedy house.
31
For instance, the house included
children’s books in the nursery, published long after Kennedys lived at the house and baby
photos of children born after the family moved from Beals Street. Staff was concerned that
the nursery interpreted a childhood connection between John F. Kennedy to King Arthur
and Camelot that in reality only happened in the wake of the president’s assassination.
32
28
“John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site Chronology, 1990–2016,” bulleted timeline drafted by Elena
Rippel in conversation with Lee Farrow Cook, 2016.
29
Orville Carroll Weekly Field Report, September 11, 1970, Orville Carroll Papers, MIMA; Carroll. Orville
Carroll Weekly Field Report, September 23, 1970. Orville Carroll Papers, MIMA.
30
See Chapter 4 for a discussion of NPS staff concern about the lack of authenticity about the objects. The NPS
had little documentation about the house’s interior because Rose Kennedy had had all the interior paint stripped
and refinished in her refurbishment. The NPS did not technically have the evidence to make such changes inside
the house, even when they knew that some of Rose Kennedy’s and Robert Luddington’s choices were likely
wrong (like the pink interior carpeting). However, the exterior paint did have enough extant layers that change
could be justified with evidence from the paint samples. It’s worth noting that Janice Hodson’s Historic
Furnishings Assessment does not mention pink carpeting. It’s possible that Nan Rickey’s recollection is
incomplete and that she’s misremembering the modern solid color carpeting that was not appropriate for the
1910s period of restoration. See Janice Hodson, “Historic Furnishing Assessment: John F. Kennedy National
Historic Site,” Northeast Museum Services Center, National Park Service, 2005.
31
The trisites hired Liz Banks, creating a librarian position at Longfellow in 1977, and after the Olmsted site
was added, she became Supervisory Curator there. Longfellow eventually created a museum tech and collections
manager positions creating a true curatorial division; David Daly, now Curator at Longfellow, filled the position
of Collections Manager in 2001. But Daly noted in correspondence that many of the curatorial positions were
either unfilled or filled with details between 2003 and 2013. See also Sara Patton Zarrelli, The Long Road to
Restoration: An Administrative History of Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site
(National Park Service: US Department of the Interior 2021), 70, 107, 108.
32
Hoffman, John F. Kennedy’s Birthplace, 131.
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The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
Nearly as soon as the house opened, Nan Rickey had noted that “politically speaking, we
can’t change the house for a number of years at the least,” despite the hints about the
“validity of such a refurnishing in historical terms.”
33
When Supervisory Park Ranger Christine Arato got there, she argued, “No, that’s
wrong.”
34
She, Janice Hodson, Supervisory Museum Curator, and Carole Perrault, a staff
member with the regional Historic Architecture Program, were all engaged in independent
and overlapping research on the site. Hodson was completing a revelatory study of the
furnishing of the house that documented inconsistencies in the furnishings provided by
Rose Kennedy and Robert Luddington, which had been part of the paper trail of curatorial
research since the first collections notes put together by Charles Dorman, Anna Coxe
Toogood’s original stunted attempt at a historic furnishing plan, and Kathleen Catalano’s
collections guide.
35
Carole Perrault similarly was working on a historic structures report
that took seriously the site’s most important and biggest collection item: the house itself.
36
Together they believed that the period of historical significance for the park should also
critically include the “memorial period” and sought to recognize two distinct periods of
significance (1917–20 and 1963–69). Rose Kennedy had developed a complicated interpre-
tive narrative at the home, according to Arato, that made sense of “layers of tragedy, you
know the deaths of her children but also the deaths of her dreams and her ideals as a
mother.” The president’s mother, in Arato’s research and understanding, had to figure out
“how she would anchor her place and that of her children and her family in a narrative
about success and about democracy and about family and legacy that really changed over
the…years of her life.”
37
Part of claiming that space for Rose Kennedy’s interpretive vision to Arato,
Perrault, and Hodson, and eventually to others at the site meant championing the change
of the exterior paint back to the colors that Rose Kennedy had intended for the house
during the 1960s. Arato even found a local hardware store willing to donate the paint. She
hoped to make the painting of the house a community engagement project. It would have
been one that mirrored, in many ways, the way that the local chapter of the Paint and
Decoration Contractors Association of America had come together to paint the house
33
Nan Rickey, Interpretive Prospectus: John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, 1969, 13.
34
Arato, “Oral History.”
35
Anna Coxe Toogood, “John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts, Historic Furnishings
Plan, Eastern Service Center Office of History and Historic Architecture, National Park Service (Washington,
DC, 1971). Kathleen Catalano, “John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site Collections Preservation Guide”
(1985), Site Manager Lee Farrow Cook Documents, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.
36
Conversation with Carole Perrault March 4, 2016.
37
Arato, “Oral History.”
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when Martha Pollack still owned it in 1961.
38
However, as a new supervisory ranger, Arato
did not yet know how to manage such a donation within the structure of the trisites unit.
Painting had to be managed by a bidding process and through official channels.
39
She could
not convince her site manager or her superintendent to prioritize the painting of the house
as an essential interpretive need. But the house’s paint color was indicative of a more
considerable need to focus on women’s history, Rose Kennedy, and individual and national
trauma associated with the president’s assassination.
The idea of a scholars’ roundtable for the site inspired Arato. Program Manager for
the Northeast Region Paul Weinbaum worked with Cook and Harrison to find scholars for
the historic resource study over many years. He wanted to include historians engaged in the
history of American memory.
40
In 1998 and 1999, Weinbaum, Cook, and Harrison were
desperately looking for a historian focused on women’s history to take on the site’s
Historic Resource Study. They knew they wanted to provide context for interpreting and
understanding Rose Kennedy’s contributions to the house—both in 1917 when John F.
Kennedy was born and in 1966 when she started working on refurbishing the house for the
National Park Service. Even before Arato arrived, there was already a tension at the house
that staff recognized between “the birth period and early childhood” and the “commemo-
rative period.”
41
At the same time, the administration at the site was already wary whether
“this interest in memory/memorialization would end up driving the research, rather than
the research being allowed to yield what it will.”
42
Despite wariness, staff at the house
researched and interrogated the tensions that came up when investigating the NPS’s own
history with Rose Kennedy’s interpretation at the site. Some documents from the period
indicate that staff in the late 1990s was well aware that NPS staff in the late 1960s and early
1970s (and perhaps at other times) recognized and planned to correct Rose Kennedy’s
“mistakes.” At the same time, the same early staff at the site marveled at the value of the site
as a memorial of her creation. Staff in the 2000s saw themselves as having enough distance
from the memorial period to begin to research its significance at the site.
38
“Painters Swarm in Brookline: Free Facial for Kennedy House,” Boston Globe, September 12 1961. Arato,
“Oral History.”
39
Arato, “Oral History.”
40
Paul Weinbaum, June 26, 1998. Unprocessed files, printed email, found in Supervisory Ranger’s Office, John
Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Brookline, Massachusetts. Paul Weinbaum was Regional Historian
for the North Atlantic Region from 1990 to 1995, then Lead Historian for the Boston Support Office from 1995
to 2003, and from 2003 to 2010 he was the Program Manager for the Northeast Region of the National Park
Service.
41
Lee Farrow Cook, March 27, 1999. Unprocessed files, printed email, found in Supervisory Ranger’s Office,
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Brookline, Massachusetts.
42
Harrison. Unprocessed files, printed email, found in Supervisory Ranger’s Office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy
National Historic Site, Brookline, Massachusetts.
114
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
One bullet point in a long list of questions and concerns that Arato had filed away
in her notes about the site indicated: “In its management and interpretation of the site, the
National Park Service often has not made sound distinctions between the memorial value
and the factual accuracy of Mrs. Kennedy’s testimony.”
43
However, by 2006, Alexander von
Hoffman had nearly completed the Historic Resource Study for the site, and it helped
identify new areas of concentration for interpretation—including the commemorative
period. Von Hoffman, in many ways, made official what staff had long felt and had begun
to uncover in their own research—that Rose Kennedy’s efforts were historic, in and of
themselves. Her commemoration of her son was itself historically significant and part of
what made such a strong impact on visitors at the site. Staff began to meet in workshops
and started sketching out new interpretive themes for the site based on this study.
In July of 2006, Arato and Weinbaum and other site staff helped organize a scholars’
roundtable. They brought in Thomas Carty, a presidential and international relations
scholar from Springfield College, who had written a recent book on Kennedy’s presidential
campaign and Catholicism.
44
Michael Kammen, an eminent scholar of the history of
American memory from Cornell University, found that the site was an important site of
commemoration. Phyllis Palmer from George Washington University joined the round
table to tap into the history of domesticity and the histories of the domestic servants
uncovered at the site. James O’Toole from Boston College, as a scholar of Boston area
Catholic and Irish and Irish-American history, rounded out the group. Each scholar
responded to a set of questions from the site. Their responses to these questions were
meant to guide the staff as they developed new interpretive themes and rationale.
45
Neighborhood Preservation:
St. Aidan’s Catholic Church Threatened
By 2000, a neighborhood preservation issue became a concern that would resonate with
staff at the Kennedy site. As part of an effort to raise funds in a location that had a decreas-
ing interest in Catholic services, St. Aidan’s Church, the church that the Kennedy family
had been parishioners of during their time in Brookline, was threatened with demolition.
43
“John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Work Session, Memorial Period ‘The Issues,’” n.d.
Unprocessed files, printed document, found in a red folder containing information on the Comprehensive
Interpretation & Education Planning in Supervisory Ranger’s Office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic
Site, Brookline, Massachusetts.
44
Thomas Carty, A Catholic in the White House? Religion, Politics, and John Kennedy’s Presidential Campaign.
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, paperback 2008).
45
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Revisiting-and Re-Visioning-John Fitzgerald Kennedy NHS:
A Scholars’ Roundtable Co-Sponsored by the National Park Service and the Organization for American
Historians, July 2006 (John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Lee Farrow Cook files, unprocessed,
Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, Brookline, Massachusetts).
115
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017 The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
The main church building at St. Aidan’s was built in 1911, not long before the Kennedys
moved to Brookline, and the church was part of what drew the Kennedys to the Beals
Street neighborhood. The Kennedy children who were born in Brookline were baptized at
the church.
46
St. Aidan’s had played a role in interpreting the Kennedy family life in
Brookline from the beginning. Staff had initially worried that the Kennedy family’s “reli-
gion and wealth” might not come out in interpretation at the house. According to Nan
Rickey, these were facts of “great importance in the family’s history,” and she believed that
both concerns could be brought to light through a “Walking Tour” that emphasized “St.
Aidan’s Catholic Church and the house on Abbottsford Road.”
47
Not long after Robert
Kennedy’s assassination, regional NPS staff were worried about whether and how to
include information about his life at the site. They opted to leave it up to the neighborhood:
“We have not made any further provisions for including Robert F. Kennedy in our interpre-
tation of the house or the walking tour, inasmuch as we felt his association with the
Abbottsford Road House and St. Aidan’s Church was sufficiently covered by the basic
historical data provided, and that it would be difficult to go further in interpreting the life
of a younger brother at this Site [sic], which is important, essentially, because it is a
Presidential birthplace.”
48
St. Aidan’s church did the heavy lifting in this regard. Though stretched for space,
staff from this period could not imagine how the neighborhood might have suffered if, as
early local planners had imagined, eight nearby homes had been leveled to create space for
parking and a visitor center for the site.
49
The intact neighborhood was a crucial argument
in the effort to save St. Aidan’s. The church itself has a significant history in Brookline and
was among the historic sites targeted by vandals in the 1970s.
50
During the 1980s, Christmas
open houses that were so popular with staff and neighbors, children from St. Aidan’s
performed Christmas Carols in the living room.
51
46
Von Hoffman, John F. Kennedy’s Birthplace: A Presidential Home in History and Memory (A Historic
Resource Study), 23. See Von Hoffman’s study for architectural details and the history of the church site, 52–53.
47
Nan Rickey, “MEMO to Alan Kent, Planning and Interpretive Services, Subject: Mini Folder, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy National Historic Site, January 9, 1968, John F. Kennedy National Historic Site Resource Management
Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 4, Folder 2.”
48
Division of Planning and Interpretive Services (Alan E. Kent) Acting Chief to Regional Director, “MEMO:
Interpretive Prospectus, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,” July 1, 1969, John F. Kennedy
National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003 (JOFI 1504), Box 3, Folder 11.
49
“Neighbors Kick Up Fuss: They Don’t Want a Shrine Made of Kennedy Home,” Boston Globe, December 15,
1961. Harrison, “Oral History.”
50
The Dexter School was also a target of vandals. “Serious Vandalism at Historic Sites,” Brookline Chronicle
(Brookline, Massachusetts), February 4, 1971.
51
Statement for Interpretation, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site (1990), Lee Farrow Cook files,
unprocessed, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, Brookline, Massachusetts.
116
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
Although the church was closed in 1999, the church, the chapel, and the parish
house had been listed with the Massachusetts Historical Commission and on the National
Register of Historic Places in 1985. Many had assumed that these historical associations
would protect the church, as the Kennedy family’s association only makes up part of the
church’s historical significance statement.
52
Just as Harrison came to the unit, St. Aidan’s
Parish merged with St. Mary’s Parish. Less than a year later, “Monsignor Michael Groden,
Director of the Archdiocese’s Planning Office for Urban Affairs, contacted Brookline Town
officials about demolishing the church and using the St. Aidan’s site for mixed income
housing.” The Archdiocese’s initial plan included developing 140 rental units divided
evenly among low-, middle-, and upper-market renters. These units’ rental income would
provide the parish with funds to support St. Mary’s School.
53
Myra Harrison was deeply involved in the campaign to save St. Aidan’s from
demolition, as was C. Sue Rigney, who was the Kennedy site’s Chief of Interpretation and
Visitors’ Services. Harrison and others quickly formed a nonprofit, the Campaign to
Preserve St. Aidan’s, which advocated for the preservation of the church and for an
alternative use for the site itself as a potential community arts and culture center. The
campaign was wide-ranging and included partners from area preservation and green
space groups; much of it was managed by Harrison.
54
“I would say it took a couple of years
of my life and every drop of energy that I had to attend all the meetings and represent the
Park Service’s interest.”
55
Ultimately the structure was saved. “So, the good thing is that we did keep the
church from being demolished. The bad thing is that we were unable to convince the
Catholic Church to maintain the interior and it was renovated into apartments.” While
their efforts saved the structure and kept the exterior of the historic building primarily
intact, the church itself has been developed into nine “luxuriously appointed condo-
minium homes” that have now been named by a property management company the
Freeman Street Condominium. Elsewhere on property that was owned by the church,
Peabody Properties rents 20 “affordable” apartments and has offered 16 condominiums for
sale at an apartment building that they have named The St. Aidan.
56
52
“Form B—St. Aidan’s Church and Rectory,” submitted to the Massachusetts Historical Commission in the
Fall of 1978 and the Spring of 1985, by Carla Benka and Flora Greenan, unprocessed files, found in Supervisory
Ranger’s Office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Brookline, Massachusetts.
53
“Brookline Landmark Threatened,” Newsletter of the Brookline GreenSpace Alliance (Brookline,
Massachusetts), 2002, Winter.
54
See a variety of printed files and faxes on the Campaign to Preserve Saint Aidan’s in Open Files, Unprocessed
files, found in Supervisory Ranger’s Office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Brookline,
Massachusetts.
55
Harrison, “Oral History.”
56
Information about the units can be found on the Peabody Properties website. https://www.peabodyproperties.
com/communities/component/jea/130-the-st-aidan-pleasant-st.html (accessed December 21, 2021).
117
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017 The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
General Management Plan: “Only a Mirage”
General Management Plans (GMPs) were used by parks to argue for resources, staffing,
services, and growth, both interpretive and physical, within the NPS and are used as
governing documents with the communities in which NPS units reside. General
Management Plans were not only internal planning documents, but as of 1978, they were
required by law for all new units of the National Park Service. The John Fitzgerald Kennedy
National Historic Site has never, in its whole history, had a General Management Plan or a
Master Plan that could strategically spell out its strengths, needs, and priorities.
57
GMPs
provided a legal vehicle to analyze how the NPS preserved resources at a site; it required
that a site’s administrators take a hard look at the “intensities of development (including
visitor circulation and transportation patterns, systems and modes) associated with public
enjoyment and use of the area, including general locations, timing of implementation, and
anticipated costs.” A GMP necessitated that administrators look carefully at visitor capac-
ity and to think ahead about any future “potential modifications to the external boundaries
of the unit” and explain possible reasons for any expansion.
58
Once in place, GMPs became
a unit’s guiding document. The process of creating a GMP by the time Harrison was in
place was exhaustive and exhausting for a small unit like the Kennedy birthplace. The GMP
required several in-depth studies the site had been seeking since it was founded; it required
the site to put together and marshal new research about the Kennedy family that might be
used for interpretation. A GMP by the 2000s was also a community-engaged process that
required administrators to work through possible futures for the site in partnership with its
community stakeholders. Most important for the birthplace, it required that the trisites
administration think critically and holistically about and plan for the site’s future as an
individual and integral unit of the NPS, maybe for the first time.
Before Arato arrived at the site, Harrison and Cook knew that the site needed
foundational studies and documents to support a GMP process. Cook had overseen the
site’s first unigrid development (1999–2002). It was the first time the Kennedy site had any
official publication that matched the NPS style and content guidelines. The site’s pamphlet
that had been distributed for nearly 30 years had barely changed. The unigrid brochure
brought the unit, with full-color printing, into the 21st century (Figures 13 and 14).
57
Public Law 95-625, November 10, 1978.
58
Public Law 95-625, November 10, 1978.
118
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
Figure 13. An early JOFI brochure. NPS JOFI 1504, Box 9, Folder 8, 1973.
Figure 14. The first JOFI unigrid, interior. NPS, 2003.
119
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017 The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
Figure 14 (continued). The first JOFI unigrid, front. NPS, 2003.
Staff believed that the new brochure was only the beginning. It is hard to overesti-
mate the time and consideration that park staff put into developing elements and drafts of
the GMP over the 2000s. The early 2000s were dedicated to working on “comprehensive”
interpretation and education planning, which was in part later connected to the GMP and
Foundation Document processes.
59
Between 2007 and 2011, staff worked on the GMP
internally and in public meetings.
60
By 2005, the GMP process seemed to stumble, but the slowdown was not coming
from the park unit but rather the regional office. According to Harrison, in her annual state
of the park report, the site needed a budget increase as “an infusion to move ahead.” But
more importantly, it needed to complete the GMP process. “Having a site in the system for
over 35 years without any basic park planning documents is at best very difficult, at worst
59
Foundation Documents are also vital planning documents that each unit of the National Park Service must
create. They address mission-related issues and are meant to answer these essential questions: “What is the
purpose of this park? Why was it included in the national park system? What makes it significant? What are its
fundamental resources and values? What legal and policy requirements, special mandates, and administrative
commitments apply to the park? What are the park’s key planning and data needs?” See “Foundation Documents
for National Park Units,” Park Planning, National Park Service, Department of the Interior: https://parkplanning.
nps.gov/foundationDocuments.cfm, accessed February 20, 2022.
60
“John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site Chronology, 1990–2016,” bulleted timeline drafted by Elena
Rippel in conversation with Lee Farrow Cook, 2016.
120
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
disgraceful: the GMP needs to be mounted in the very near future.”
61
With only one full-
time site-specific employee, the site had, as Superintendent Harrison summarized it, a
“shockingly diminished visitor season (down from 12 months, 7 days (in 1994) to 5 months,
5 days (in 2005).”
62
However, in her summary, Harrison also emphasized that the site
management in Lee Cook, though only part-time, was powerful. She also pointed out that
the one full-time employee was “ranger leadership on-site…was intelligent, committed,
creative.” Arato had made significant improvements in the interpretive program and in
leading an “important exploration and evolution in interpretive themes.” What concerned
the administration most in 2005 was that the General Management Plan effort seemed
stalled. The site finally had committed leadership at the administrative and site level, had
put in place many of the foundational studies, and had community connections from
Harrison’s work on the St. Aidan’s preservation efforts. She saw all of this momentum
stalling out and wrote: “The site’s first-ever GMP is on the horizon…though ever-receding
[sic]…is it a mirage?”
63
Work on the GMP did proceed. While these planning processes went on, daily life at
the site was also a struggle for resources. In December of 2006, Robert Allen, Brookline’s
Chair of the Board of Selectmen, wrote to Congressman Barney Frank to bring to his
attention “maintenance needs at the John F. Kennedy Birthplace on Beals Street.” He
asserted that he had “no doubt that you [Frank] would want to make sure that all federal
authorities with responsibilities for providing resources to meet these needs are doing
everything possible within their power to provide appropriate funding for these purposes.”
64
Brookline’s community officials were becoming concerned about the backlog of mainte-
nance needs at the site. These, too, would be taken up in the GMP.
Specifically, during the planning process, regional planners, including Chief of
Planning and Special Studies, Terry Moore and Jim O’Connell, Project Manager from the
Northeast Regional Office, helped staff think through goals for the unit’s future. They
emphasized the need to provide multiple feasible “alternative ways” to achieve these goals.
65
61
“State of the Park: 2005; John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,” unprocessed files, found in
Superintendent’s Office, folder name: “Myra—2005 State of the Park,” Frederick Law Olmsted National
Historic, Brookline, Massachusetts.
62
Bold in original. “State of the Park: 2005; John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,” unprocessed files,
found in Superintendent’s Office, folder name: “Myra—2005 State of the Park,” Frederick Law Olmsted
National Historic, Brookline, Massachusetts.
63
Bold and ellipse in the original. “State of the Park: 2005; John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site,”
unprocessed files, found in Superintendent’s Office, folder name: “Myra—2005 State of the Park,” Frederick
Law Olmsted National Historic, Brookline, Massachusetts.
64
Robert L. Allen to Congressman Barney Frank, December 11, 2006. Unprocessed files, found in
Superintendent’s Office, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic, Brookline, Massachusetts.
65
Christine Arato, “GMP Notes Cook Ads,” from GMP Internal Scoping Meeting, December 11, 2007. Arato’s
notes seem to have been vetted by Lee Farrow Cook as the official account of the meeting internally. Central
Drive, Folder: Internal Scoping Meeting. This document was provided to the researcher on a thumb drive, so the
current file structure/path is unknown.
121
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017 The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
In imagining a goal to create a more robust visitor experience, the site administrators
started thinking through several options that would help mitigate the size limitations that
the site had faced since its founding. O’Connell noted some of the issues visitors face at the
site included an “awkward arrival to site,” which left visitors “confused.” He noticed that
the stairs to the basement visitors area were not ADA compliant. In addition, he pointed
out a lack of contemplative space for orientation and to deal with the “emotionally
charged” site, along with no exhibit space to “tell [the] story of JFK’s boyhood and his path
to the presidency.” Visitors also faced a limited season and hours, a lack of parking, and the
potential for a long wait given the 12-visitors-at-a-time policy because of the structural load
limit for the house’s upper floors.
66
In thinking about addressing these issues feasibly, Harrison and Cook proposed
several options. Because they worked on careful community engagement with the Beals
Street neighborhood around preservation concerns, they had cultivated a strong working
relationship with the owners of the nearby former Kennedy House on Abbottsford Road.
With the owners, they had made tentative plans for one option: acquiring the second
Kennedy house, perhaps through a gift or purchase, to serve as an interpretive space, staff
headquarters, and visitors center. The staff was nervous about putting forward the possibil-
ity of expanding the site. Knowing that this first option would likely require funds and
staffing that the federal government might balk at during meetings and workshops, staff
also saw other opportunities. One possibility was developing an orientation center for the
site somewhere on Harvard Street near its intersection with Beals Street. There, visitors
seeking the site could watch an orientation video and access bathrooms. Such a location
might also draw in foot traffic or traffic from the MBTA bus route on Harvard Street and
trolley line that regularly runs on Beacon Street. A third option was to find a way to orient
visitors at the Kennedy birthplace itself by reorganizing the basement space in a way that
would be more welcoming to visitors.
67
The GMP process kicked into gear between 2007 and 2009. Events included formal
internal scoping meetings, an open house to introduce the neighbors to the process on May
3, 2009, to which “approximately 100 people” came, and a public scoping meeting with 40
66
Jim O’Connell’s notes as saved by Christine Arato, “JOFI Scoping notes—Jim,” internally labeled, “Notes
from John F. Kennedy National Historic Site General Management Plan Scoping Meeting, Longfellow NHS,
December 11, 2007,” Central Drive, Folder: Internal Scoping Meeting. This document was provided to the
researcher on a thumb drive, so the current file structure/path is unknown.
67
This researcher never had access to the complete draft of the GMP that Harrison and Cook worked on; instead,
these proposed options come from conversations with both as well as paper notes found in Cook’s unprocessed
files at Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site and digital files culled from Christine Arato’s notes in the
site’s central drive by Elena Rippel and Archivist Christine Wirth. The complete draft of the GMP certainly
warrants study for future researchers. See Arato, “Oral History”; Harrison, “Oral History”; and Cook, “Oral
History.” As well as Jim O’Connell’s notes as saved by Christine Arato, “JOFI Scoping notes—Jim,” Internally
labeled: “Notes from John F. Kennedy National Historic Site General Management Plan Scoping Meeting,
Longfellow NHS, December 11, 2007,” Central Drive, Folder: Internal Scoping Meeting. Some of these
documents were provided to the researcher on a thumb drive, so their current file structure/path is unknown.
122
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
people on May 6, 2009, held at the Edward Devotion School.
68
Public comments presented
great ideas for the GMP planners. Visitors and community members suggested: making the
house more accessible to the disabled, timed tickets, so there was less confusion about the
twelve-person-at-a-time limit, an orientation film, and creating a meeting space for com-
munity events and history. They also pointed to developing digital resources that could be
accessed by iPods or phones, putting kiosks at nearby trolley stops to raise awareness and
interest, and a resounding call for more days open with at least occasional later hours.
Others suggested the development of a larger historic district for the neighborhood. Ten
people mentioned a need to reach out more to local schools, and at least five people sug-
gested a need for a “Friends of the JFK Birthplace” group. Harrison, Cook, and others took
these suggestions to heart; they drafted and circulated a plan in 2009 to their internal
partners in the region. The General Management Plan draft included all possible options
for any boundary expansion and the accompanying reasoning, as GMP plans required. The
GMP draft also addressed other concerns like educational and programming goals, office
space and maintenance needs, ways to expand interpretive themes, a new orientation film,
and collections management.
Devastatingly, presenting the GMP plan to the regional office did not go well. Staff
was forced to present their ideas via video call rather than in person. Harrison was not able
to be there. Reports back to her said that the regional director, to whom they presented the
plan, “practically threw up” at the notion that the site might expand to the Abbottsford
house or another site. There was some sense that the region’s position might have been at
least partially political. As Harrison put it, the plan “made his Republican blood run cold.”
Harrison’s reflection on events came after she retired from the National Park Service in
2017. She noted that “today, with the enormously vituperative political environment that
we’re in right now, I can imagine that that might be a problem if the Kennedy site [expan-
sion] issue came before the House of Representatives.”
69
Nonetheless, in the middle of
taking in particularly negative feedback from the regional director on their draft and
drafting a new version of their plan that would remove, at his request, any possible expan-
sion of the park, the planning process took a strange turn.
The region stopped participating in the GMP process shortly after staff presented a
revised version of the GMP draft on January 28, 2011. Myra Harrison, Terry Moore, and
Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site Site Manager Beth
Law presented their scaled-down and more “fiscally friendly” plan to the Directorate of the
Northeast Regional Office. It does not seem that this version appealed to the region. The
68
“Comprehensive JOFI GMP Issues,” August 5, 2009. There is no clear author of these notes. K Drive, Folder:
Internal Scoping Meeting. Some of these documents were provided to the researcher on a thumb drive, so their
current file structure/path is unknown. “New Strategic Plan to be Developed for John Fitzgerald Kennedy
National Historic Site,” John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, General Management Plan, Newsletter
1, Spring 2009, 1.
69
Harrison, “Oral History.”
123
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Regional Director Dennis Reidenbach pointed out that all options still presented costs and
staffing increases. Still, he seemed amenable to continued exploration of the alternative to
partner with the town of Brookline. But other than this immediate feedback in the meet-
ing, they had little response, and it took weeks for staff at the trisites to understand why.
70
The GMP planning process for most existing sites came to a complete halt within the NPS.
As Harrison put it, “the whole planning function was obliterated at the same time. No more
General Management Plans were to be done.” The policy change seemed to leave no room
for units in the middle of the process to finish their work. The Kennedy site was not the
only site affected. Harrison was also working on a new GMP for the Olmsted site with the
hope of expanding its boundaries to include an adjacent Olmsted-designed property. But
the Kennedy GMP process, despite its difficult reception, was halted right at the moment it
was “ready to be born.”
71
So despite years of getting ready for the process, at least five years
preparing the plan, and community input, the Kennedy site was left without a General
Management Plan. The community leaders and members of the public who had worked on
the GMP process would not get to respond to a draft of the plan like the staff had prom-
ised. Explaining this institutional default would be difficult for site staff, and it would
undoubtedly put developing a friends group on hold for years.
On its way through the GMP planning process, the site did an enormous amount of
work and had compiled and processed a decade of critical studies and reports. These were
reports that superintendents had been seeking for decades. Nonetheless, as Harrison put it
bluntly, these reports “don’t make a plan. They…list the resources, they list issues, and
they make no plan.”
72
Staffing at the Kennedy Birthplace
When Myra Harrison came to the trisites in 1999, about 45 employees were spread out
among the three units. By the time she left, there were only 30 staff remaining.
73
The loss of
one-third of the staff over her tenure was not the direct result of cost-cutting or poor man-
agement at the sites, but rather the slow erosion of the unit’s base operating funds because
the units saw little change in their federal operating budgets over this period. During the
early 1990s, Diamant’s time at the unit, many parks across the country saw increased fund-
ing, but that was not the case during the end of the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack
Obama, or Donald Trump administrations. Over these years, inflation and costs like heating
70
Conversation with Lee Farrow Cook, April 12, 2019.
71
Harrison, “Oral History.”
72
Harrison, “Oral History.”
73
Harrison, “Oral History.”
124
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
and electricity went up, but the operating budgets did not. Likewise, the cost of staffing, in
part the result of mandatory pay raises for federal employees, also went up. When a staff
member left a position, it was often financially impossible to replace them. In a significant
shift from the Diamant era, the trisite no longer had its own robust maintenance crew.
74
As
crew members retired, Harrison could not “back-fill” to replace them.
75
This meant some
maintenance delays and added time and cost of bidding for work done outside the unit. The
lack of funds for staffing has also meant that many important positions were filled on a
temporary or “detail” basis. During this decade some of the positions at the trisites did shift,
for instance the Longfellow site added a Museum Technician position that shared a percent-
age of time at the Kennedy birthplace, while other curatorial positions remained unfilled.
However, across the board, permanent employees in the National Park Service decreased
nationally between 2010 and 2020 by nearly 1,000 employees.
76
Carla Price, a long-time member of the maintenance team and perhaps the only
full-time Black employee at the trisites from its opening until the end of Harrison’s time as
superintendent, pointed out that in the 2000s, the unit had to “struggle for every little bit.”
She found that she could no longer get overtime, and she observed that most new employ-
ees were only seasonal or temporary, with no job security. Price was an active recruiter for
the NPS, and she pointed out that there were no longer any job fairs. She thought this might
be one reason “why the Park Service is so lily-white.”
77
But the Kennedy birthplace was not
the only site with a lack of diversity among staff members. President John F. Kennedy’s
administration was the first, under NPS Director Conrad Wirth (1951–64), to attempt to
diversify the National Park Service. His successor, Director George Hartzog’s (1964–75),
prioritized diversifying employees. As a result, in 1975, 12.6 percent of the full-time
employees of the park service were Black, almost reaching parity with the U.S. Black
population percentage. But despite the total number of full-time service employees dou-
bling between 1975 and 2020, by 2020 the percentage of Black employees had dropped
nearly in half to 6.7 percent.
78
“Lily” whiteness was a system-wide hiring issue.
74
The site did and does still have maintenance staff, but not the well-staffed crew that it had in the 1990s.
75
Carla Price, “Oral History,” interview by Kate Hanson Plass, Elena Rippel, and Rufai Shardow, April 22,
2016.
76
“By the Numbers,” National Park Service, Department of the Interior, updated May 4, 2021, https://www.nps.
gov/articles/000/by-the-numbers.htm.
77
Price, “Oral History.” While Price may have been the only fulltime Black staff member that she could recall,
there were certainly other Black employees who were employed as seasonal workers, details, and in other
positions at the trisites over the years.
78
The numbers for 1975 dates may be somewhat unreliable. In 1975 and the surrounding years, the NPS hired
high numbers of new employees to help cover bicentennial celebrations. Still, even allowing for some margin of
error, total percentages of Black employees certainly decreased over the 45 years between 1975 and 2020. “By
the Numbers.”
125
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017 The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
Paint, Perseverance, and the Presidency
Ultimately, despite not having a GMP plan in place, Harrison continued to make small
changes at the site. Harrison and Cook agreed with Arato, Hodson, and Perrault about the
paint color on the house’s exterior, but it took years of research and budget requests to
make it happen. The birthplace was repainted gray in 2012, three years after Arato had
moved on to a new position elsewhere within the NPS (Figure 15).
Figure 15. House repainted. JOFI uncatalogued collections. NPS, 2012.
126
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
According to Harrison, park staff in the early years did not have the opportunity to
think through the “site clearly from the start and having the studies done and the thought
processes to truly undergird what you’ve got on your hands.” While NPS’s arguments
about historical authenticity usually won the day, the house, as Arato and others had come
to see it, actually presented two different historical eras until 2012. The house exterior
matched the green that researchers thought was accurate for the period of historical
significance during President Kennedy’s three-year residence. At the same time, the inte-
rior was full of the 1960s refurbishments of Mrs. Kennedy and Robert Luddington. During
the shift to thinking about the whole house as a historic site that told Americans as much
about the memorial moment of the 1960s as the childhood of a three-year-old, staff began
to rethink the house’s color. Arato’s was “an important point,” Harrison noted later, “to
have the outside of the house and the inside of the house match.”
79
The decision to change
the house color back to the gray that Rose Kennedy had chosen unified the house to a
single, if complicated, historical moment. The house could now tell a unified story of how
Rose Kennedy remembered her son’s early life. The Park Service and the staff have come to
embrace that Rose Kennedy was indeed the best source for information about John F.
Kennedy’s childhood, even if she reconstructed it 50 years later under extraordinarily
tragic circumstances.
A new Supervisory Ranger, James Roberts, was hired a year and a half after Arato’s
departure and took charge of interpretation, educational programming, and events at the
now century-old home. During the time between supervisors, the site was led by several
details and primarily run by returning and experienced seasonal guides in the summer. The
brief period between Supervisory Rangers led to a lack of consistency and a sense that the
temporary staff was, once again, left to its own devices to decide work order, schedules, and
interpretation. When Roberts joined the site, moving to the Kennedy site from a ranger
position at Lowell National Historical Park, he noted, “My priority was always customer
service is number one.”
80
Roberts streamlined scheduling, developed an employee hand-
book, and worked hard with seasonal staff to make tours consistent. He also advocated for
and received a new full-time lead ranger position, which significantly moved the site from
one full-time employee to two. For the first time in the site’s history, two staff members were
tasked with the care and interpretation of the house on a full-time basis. The site found
incredibly qualified lead rangers first in Sara Patton Zarrelli and then in Jason Atsales.
Roberts was less concerned with the memorial moment than Arato. He saw the
recent work on Rose Kennedy and thought, “Her role became more emphasized [at the
site] and the legacy, the presidential legacy of JFK was kind of left off.”
81
Roberts saw that
79
Harrison, “Oral History.”
80
James Roberts, “Oral History,” interview by Elena Rippel, November 16, 2016.
81
Roberts, “Oral History.”
127
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017 The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
most visitors had little firsthand knowledge of the president’s life and brief term in office.
For him, it was Kennedy’s “rhetoric, his speeches, his inspiration for a generation,” and the
“idea of public service that was engendered at a very early age in the family” that needed
emphasis at the site.
82
His work picked up where earlier programs interested in civil rights
left off—he wanted to make sure that the policy decisions that either Kennedy made while
in office or that came about because of his legacy were part of the larger story interpreted
at the site. These interests matched well with commemorative milestones the site would see
during his tenure. The year 2010 marked the 50th anniversary of JFK’s election; in 2013,
the site recognized the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination; in 2016, the National
Park Service itself celebrated a Centennial; and in 2017, the site celebrated “JFK
Centennial,” its biggest anniversary yet for the centennial of President Kennedy’s birth. For
the NPS centennial, Jim Roberts and temporary Lead Park Ranger Victor Medina put
together a small exhibit in the basement visitor’s center that focused on the units that
entered the NPS during President Kennedy’s too brief time in office.
83
One of the projects that the site had started to develop as a part of the GMP plan-
ning projects was the idea of a new orientation video. Each year following, the staff submit-
ted a proposal for the film for funding, and in 2015 the project was funded with the hopes
that it could be in place in 2017 to coincide with JFK Centennial.
84
Jim Roberts took the
lead organizing both the film and the celebration. Harrison hoped that the film would “tie
in…[Kennedy’s] larger, later achievements…rooting them in his family. A lot of presiden-
tial birthplaces, they tell you about the man in the period of his presidency. We felt there
were other places that told that story better already and that it wasn’t necessarily our story.
That…we needed to understand its roots. Especially with, perhaps, the world’s most
intentional parents…so, to understand that intentionality and that role and how to make
the site a valuable present-day experience for people, for young parents.”
85
Another essential document came, in part, out of the planning efforts, workshops,
research, and scoping that happened in the run-up to the failed GMP: the JOFI Foundation
Document. In 2015, after many edits and a fundamental revision in interpretive purpose
under the leadership of Jim Roberts, the site had the most concrete articulation of its mis-
sion, purpose, resources, and future path.
86
On the cover of the document was the birthplace
with its new gray paint job, and three photos that symbolized the coming together of the
interpretation trends of the 1960s, 2000s, and the 2010s: a photo of JFK as a toddler, Rose
82
Roberts, “Oral History.”
83
Jason Atsales, “Timeline of Key Events,” shared with researcher on April 4, 2019.
84
The film was completed in 2017 and is available in seven languages.
85
Harrison, “Oral History.”
86
While many of the reports that were in the works in the years leading up to and during the GMP planning
process were integral to that process, they were also simultaneously used to draft a Foundation Document.
128
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
Kennedy at the opening of the site, and an image of John F. Kennedy as a president. The
24-page document is a monument in its own way, tracing the NPS’s interpretive trends and
careful stewardship at the site over the 46 years. In its carefully wrought articulation of the
site’s historical significance, we can see what Nan Rickey, Maurice Kowal, Rolf Diamant, Lee
Cook, Christine Arato, Myra Harrison, Jim Roberts, and others had imagined at the site.
Most substantially, though, shining through the document is Rose Kennedy: scientific
mother, the matriarch of the Kennedy family, park-builder, and political matriarch. Two of
the four statements of significance are tied clearly to her biography rather than the presi-
dent’s. The objects featured in the document also seem perfectly pitched to bring Rose
Kennedy’s audio tour to mind. For instance, there’s a close-up of the stove with the Boston
baked beans. She remarked, in perhaps her most poignant moment in her tour: “We always
ate Boston baked beans on Saturday night. Warmed over for Sunday morning breakfast,
they were perfectly delicious. We were very happy here. And although we did not know
about the days ahead, we were enthusiastic and optimistic about the future.”
87
A photo of her handwritten notecard is also featured that details John Fitzgerald
Kennedy’s childhood illnesses: whooping cough, measles, chickenpox, and scarlet fever.
Five photos feature JFK as a child or adult, and four feature Rose Kennedy in her splendor.
One, from 1969, shows her standing proudly with Robert Luddington next to the bed
where she gave birth to a president, emphasizing that she later gave the country a monu-
ment to his childhood and her legacy.
87
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, “Audiotaped Interview by National Park Service, May 22, 1969. John F. Kennedy
National Historic Site Resource Management Records, 1963–2003” (JOFI 1504).
129
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017 The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
Figure 16. Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy and Robert Luddington, near the bed where President Kennedy was born.
Cecil W. Stoughton, JOFI Dedication, JOFI 1504, Box 10, Folder 8, NPS, 1969.
Figure 17. Myra Harrison with Robert Luddington, 2016. NPS.
130
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
Figure 18. NPS Staff with Robert Luddington in front of the JFK Birthplace, 2016.
(Top) L-R Jim Roberts, Lee Farrow Cook, Myra Harrison.
(Bottom) L-R Carole Perrault, David Daly, Elena Rippel, Robert Luddington, and Jason Atsales. NPS.
131
The Politics of Memory, Gender, and the Presidency at the Birthplace, 1999–2017
CHAPTER SEVEN
Conclusion
T
hroughout 2017, the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site was abuzz.
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the President’s birth at the birthplace was no
small effort. Site Manager Lee Farrow Cook, Supervisory Ranger Jim Roberts,
Lead Ranger Jason Atsales, and a whole slate of trisites-wide help were called in to develop
a series of events that culminated in a weekend of highly attended events and a birthday
celebration with an open house that shut down Beals Street (Figure 19). The celebration
included speakers like former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis and then
Massachusetts Congressman from the 4th district, Joseph P. Kennedy, III under a giant
tent. The events brought back employees from the 1990s to celebrate and lend a hand in the
festivities. More than 800 people went through the house on the day of the celebration.
Visitors were met with staff from the trisites and Student Conservation Association interns
who presented a living history performance of their research on household staff at the
house during the Kennedy residence (Figure 20).
1
The event resonated throughout Brookline. The Brookline High School published a
special edition of its student newspaper, The Sagamore, which just covered the events of the
JFK 100 celebration, commemorated John F. Kennedy’s connection to Brookline, and reflected
on his time in office. The issue even collected accounts from locals who remembered his time in
the public eye.
2
Current and former staff marched in Brookline’s annual Memorial Day parade
dedicated to John F. Kennedy. The yearly “What JFK Means to Me” essay contest for local
elementary students held its awards program over the long birthday weekend and was timed
perfectly to coincide with the celebration. Attendees came from all over the world, but Brookline
residents were out in numbers. Local officials from the NPS regional office were on hand as
well, as was the Boston Postmaster, who, with Congressman Kennedy and NPS Northeast
Region Deputy Director Rose Fennell, unveiled a new commemorative stamp dedicated to JFK.
3
1
Most of these details are from my own recollection of the event, but for further information, see “John Fitzgerald
Kennedy National Historic Site Celebrates Semi-Centennial and President Kennedy’s 100th Birthday,” John Fitzgerald
Kennedy National Historic Site, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/john-fitzgerald-kennedy-
national-historic-site-celebrates-semi-centennial-and-president-kennedy-s-100th-birthday.htm, accessed May 29, 2022.
2
Susanna Kemp, “Annual Project at Devotion Honors Kennedy,” and Iman Khan, “Remembering Kennedy:
Residents’ Stories,” The Sagamore, JFK Issue, May 2017.
3
“John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site Celebrates Semi-Centennial and President Kennedy’s 100th
Birthday,” John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/
john-fitzgerald-kennedy-national-historic-site-celebrates-semi-centennial-and-president-kennedy-s-100th-
birthday.htm, accessed May 29, 2022.
132
Conclusion
Figure 19. Jim Roberts, Supervisory Ranger, speaking during the Kennedy Centennial Celebration.
Matt Teuten Photography. NPS, 2017.
Figure 20. Student Conservation Associate Interns Elena Rippel and Kathleen O’Leary
at the Kennedy Centennial Celebration. Matt Teuten Photograph. NPS, 2017.
133
Conclusion Conclusion
Even a little rain did not dampen the goodwill that the Boston area still holds for
President Kennedy, and it was a moment for the site to shine and show off its incredible
historical resources and the stories that could be told in one small home. More people than
usual came through the house in 2017, in part, because the site experimented with staying
open seven days a week during the summer season of the anniversary year. The concerns
and challenges the site had faced since it opened in 1969 seemed surmountable during the
celebration. The staff was excited that there were plans in the work to renovate the basement
to suit both visitors and staff better. There would be a very creative rearrangement of space
to allow separate bathrooms for staff, a new gift shop area, a wheelchair lift, an accessible
bathroom for the public, and a place to show the new introductory film that the staff had
worked hard to produce The Shaping of a President, The First Home of John F. Kennedy.
The film was the culmination of the shift in interpretation from focusing solely on
the president’s childhood and his family’s life in the house to presenting Kennedy’s legacy
in public life. The film used Rose Kennedy’s audio tour for the home and strategically used
President Kennedy’s speeches to present a vision of the man as an inspiring leader during
an era of great change in the United States.
4
This was the first real introductory film for
visitors that the site had ever produced. In many ways, this work was possible after the
nearly two decades of work, funding, and research that happened at the site under
Superintendent Myra Harrison’s tenure.
Over the more than 50 years the site has been open to the public, staff at the
Kennedy birthplace have faced many of the same challenges: parking, space limitations,
interpretive concerns, concerns about respectfully representing the history of a powerful
political family, and wear and tear on the structure itself. While early advocates for a
Kennedy shrine at the birthplace concluded that the site would need, at minimum, parking
and grounds that would require the demolition of at least eight neighboring homes,
Harrison and other preservation-minded NPS staff today recognize the essential historical
value of an intact neighborhood that has helped staff relay the history of this quiet street in
Brookline. They’ve also faced struggles over interpretation, whether to focus on JFK’s
childhood, the early married lives of his parents, Rose Kennedy’s commemorative efforts,
or Kennedy’s presidential legacy. Each theme has produced extensive research and inter-
pretive work at the site.
Many of the same challenges will perpetually trouble the site, like parking, finding
attention and funds in a competitive unit and public historical environment, and grappling
with the constantly growing historical study of the Kennedy family. However, the process
4
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, “The Shaping of a President, The First Home of John F.
Kennedy.” Produced by Northern Light Productions (Boston, 2017), film, with the National Park Service,
Department of the Interior.
134
Conclusion
that staff went through to describe “alternatives” during GMP planning offers some con-
crete, though long-term, solutions. The most compelling of these was to expand the site to
include the second home of the Kennedy family in Brookline, just two-and-half blocks
away at the corner of Abbottsford and Naples Roads. If the house might come through a
donation and if there were advocates in Congress, the space could allow a much further
discussion of the Kennedy family and its legacy. There would be room for exhibits covering
the full range of interpretive approaches that the NPS has explored at the birthplace. But
given the austerity measures in place across the Service, such an opportunity, and the
necessary budget increase for staff, could seem far-fetched. Perhaps the Town of Brookline,
a powerful new friends group, or other philanthropic organizations will step in.
The 50-year history of the site reveals much about how an extraordinary history
can be held in a home that is deceivingly ordinary at its surface. Considering the long
history of spurious or “recreated” presidential birthplaces, it’s important to remember that
Kennedy’s birthplace is quite authentic historically by comparison to other NPS presiden-
tial birthplaces. After all Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace is not an example of an authentic
birthplace; the “memorial house” at George Washington’s birthplace is completely fabri-
cated; Teddy Roosevelt’s birthplace was reconstructed after it was demolished, Lyndon
Baines Johnson’s birthplace is also a complete reconstruction. Even Herbert Hoover’s
birthplace has a complicated history of additions and relocations. The Kennedy birthplace
has had a few changes, some because of the 1975 fire and efforts to stabilize the house.
Thanks to Rose Kennedy, the site also holds a number of furnishings that are tied to the
President’s birth and childhood. Adding to interpretive interest at the site, the Kennedy
birthplace is also nearly perfect in its representation of Rose Kennedy’s memory of the
house. Though staff in the 1960s and 1970s, and perhaps today, were concerned about the
occasional anachronistic item in the home, most other presidential birthplaces under the
NPS’s care are nowhere near as genuine. By 2017, the site equitably balanced histories
about Rose Kennedy, who left her mark by committing her depiction of the president’s
idealized childhood to the historical record through her work restoring the house, and
those of John F. Kennedy, who left his mark on the nation.
Nan Rickey’s 1969 Interpretive Prospectus really did identify nearly every concern
that the site would face over the next 50 years. She speculated that it would take the NPS
100 years to come to terms with the key historical concerns at the site, and she might be
right. But with the reflection that staff did in the run-up to the JFK Centennial and with a
series of long-sought important studies from the last decade in place, perhaps the site is
ready to take on the “Kennedy phenomenon” anew.
135
Conclusion Conclusion
Considerations for Further Study
There are many areas of study that came up in the research for this administrative history
that researchers at the Kennedy birthplace, in the region, and in the NPS more broadly may
want to focus efforts and research.
The Political Legacy of the Kennedy Family
Perhaps the most pressing area of suggested further research for the site is the legacy of the
Kennedy family as it relates to the Democratic Party in the United States. Given that Patrick
Joseph (P. J.) Kennedy was first elected to state office in 1884, the nearly 140 years of family
politics are worth investigating by the National Park Service. It is not an uncomplicated
history. But the history of political parties is not the same thing as partisan history. John
Fitzgerald Kennedy was part of this story, but the legacy of his family’s involvement in US
politics, and as perhaps the most recognizable political family in the United States, should
not go unstudied. Rose Fitzgerald and Joseph Kennedy’s roles in founding this powerful
political family are perhaps underinterpreted at the site. It is also essential to recognize how
party politics have played a role in the site’s administration. Maurice Kowal, the first
supervising ranger at the house, saw the downside of political affiliation with the Kennedys.
Ted Kennedy’s politics were physically linked to the site when antibusing arsonists targeted
the house in 1975. The Kennedy family has had an important role in the history of the Park
Service more generally. Over the years, it’s also been clear that NPS staff were to varying
degrees concerned about offending the Kennedy family with interpretation or changes at
the birthplace. What better way to shake off this fear than by taking on the history of the
family’s role in party politics head-on?
The Boston Group
The study of any unit of the National Park Service brings up threads of connection to other
sites and significant historical figures. The timing of this study and the administrative
histories of Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site and the
Boston National Historical Park has meant that several historians have pieced together
parts of the history of work of the Boston Service Group. The group was a powerful admin-
istrative unit in the Northeast Regional Office until 1974. The “Boston Group” and Edwin
Small had its hands in the beginnings of almost every historical park in the region. It had
regular meetings that spanned multiple units, and it ran both from inside Minute Man
National Historical Park and outside the park. The participants in this group made up the
preeminent NPS expertise in the region. As a unit of the Northeast Regional Office, it is
136
Conclusion
well worthy of further study. Several administrative histories hold hints of the service
group’s importance. Still, an account of how such service groups worked within the NPS in
the 1960s and 1970s might provide a meaningful picture of the origins of most parks in the
region and an understanding of how service groups might function today. Chief among the
individuals charged with leading this group was Edwin Small; his hand in developing
historic sites in the Northeast is hard to overestimate. Perhaps a study that recounts his
long role in the NPS is also overdue and would be exceedingly valuable to those trying to
understand the history of many units.
Urban Redevelopment, Federal Preservation,
and Gentrification
While urban redevelopment played a minor role at places like the Kennedy birthplace, even
Brookline felt the effects of federal urban renewal. While the Kennedy site’s Brookline
neighbors were suspicious that historic preservation efforts at the house could be connected
to urban renewal and the seizing of properties by the federal government through eminent
domain, elsewhere, especially in Boston, we see that there were real overt connections
between federal, state, and local urban renewal efforts and the development of historic sites
by the National Park Service. A complete study of the NPS’s work alongside urban renewal
efforts would be an essential addition to our understanding of the service. Done well, it
would undoubtedly look at the role that the NPS efforts at preservation and conservation
have played in contemporary gentrification. Such a study would significantly aid parks that
share this complicated history of development in the 1950s and 1960s, and it would help
current park planners think through the long-term historical effects of park development.
Multisites as Units of Study
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site is part of a multisite administration group-
ing that is not uncommon in the NPS. While the Kennedy birthplace is administratively
connected to the Longfellow and Olmsted sites, it does not share a holistic approach across
sites. While efforts to centralize services to the three distinct units have largely been suc-
cessful, they have also required changes over time (especially as Superintendent Diamant’s
time at the site indicates). Other multisites like the John Muir and Eugene O’Neill National
Historic Sites, Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, and the Rosie the
Riveter—World War II National Historical Park in California might share similar concerns.
While spanning centuries of history, various and unrelated constituents, and sometimes
complicated geographies, multisite units meet challenges differently than large single parks.
137
Conclusion Conclusion
These administrative structures are rarely looked at as a whole, even though the NPS has
several such units. It’s possible that such units have much to learn from each other, and
administrative histories of their structures and choices might suggest modes of success and
avenues for improvement.
Robert T. Luddington Papers (JOFI 1510)
While this researcher was able to review the Luddington Papers before the publication of
this report, the papers had not been archivally processed and arranged. Another look,
especially for researchers and staff interested in the furnishing of the house, would be
beneficial for further study.
Email Access for Researchers
Study of the Kennedy site was difficult after the 1990s, when staff began making use of
email. There are many reasons why email is a tricky source for historians looking to write
histories of the National Park Service. The NPS has changed email service providers over
the years, staff have been negligent about printing up important emails, and the “thread”
and forwarding functions of email mean that email can be an unstable and changing source
of communication for researchers to parse through. Moreover, email can often feel per-
sonal to individuals rather than a form of official federal communication. Nonetheless, it is
an essential one. Not having access to but a very select email trail has meant that research-
ers are not able to piece together the daily life of the site, nor even some of the more
important events and decisions over the last two decades. Researchers are completely
reliant upon oral histories and a variety of other sparse paper trails to reconstruct events. I
would recommend two actions on this front: (1) that the NPS puts in place a monthly email
review and archiving process and (2) that the NPS (and other federal units) start a ser-
vice-wide forensic process to reclaim lost communications. If some sort of solution to
email functions for researchers and staff is not found, it would behoove those engaged in
administrative histories to submit Freedom of Information Act requests about essential
administrative topics prior to taking on projects. It’s clear that there is a great deal lost to
this history and others in missing the last nearly 30 years of electronic communications.
139
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Von Hoffman, Alexander. John F. Kennedy’s Birthplace: A Presidential Home in History and
Memory (a Historic Resource Study). John F. Kennedy National Historic Site, Brookline,
Massachusetts: National Park Service, Department of the Interior, 2004.
Vrabel, Jim. A People’s History of the New Boston. Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 2014.
Ward, Robert. “State Sites Get Tighter Security.” Boston Globe, June 4, 1976.
Weinbaum, Paul. Unprocessed files, printed email, found in Supervisory Ranger’s Office,
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Brookline, Massachusetts. June 26,
1998.
155
Bibliography Bibliography
West, Patricia. Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America’s House
Museums. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999.
Whitesell, Stephen. “Resource Management Plan Update, John Fitzgerald Kennedy
National Historic Site.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Resource
Management Records, 1963–2003, Box 6, Folder 11, 1987.
Wilkie, Curtis. “Busing Foes Again Heckle Kennedy in Boston.” Boston Globe,
March 8, 1975.
Yudis, Anthony. “Old Buildings Must Be Replaced by Modern Construction, Brookline
Problem: No Room to Expand.” Boston Globe, October 3, 1965.
Zarrelli, Sara Patton. The Long Road to Restoration: An Administrative History of
Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site. National Park
Service: US Department of the Interior, 2021.
Zenzen, Joan. Bridging the Past: Minute Man National Historical Park Administrative
History. National Park Service, Northeast Region History Program, 2010.
Zerbey, Benjamin. “Notes from Telephone Interview with Charlene K. Roise, January 8.”
Minute Man National Historical Park Archives, 1981.
———. “Oral History.” By Joan Zenzen, April 13, 2005.
157
Page numbers in italics indicate a figure on the
corresponding page.
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park,
15, 15n37, 22
Adams, John, 5, 14, 15, 15n36
Adams, John Quincy, 5, 5, 14, 15, 15n36
Adams National Historical Park, 15, 15n36, 44, 44n63,
58
administrative histories, 44, 79, 83, 136; of George
Washington’s Birthplace National Monument,
10–11; of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library,
36n34; of Minute Man National Historical Park,
44n63; of related regional sites and future study,
135–37; requests for JOFI, 79–80, 83n2
ADT security system, 52
Advisory Committee for National Landmarks, 16–17
African Americans: Black employees at JOFI, 124,
124n77, 124n78; Black History Month, 91; Black
Lives Matter movement, 35; employed at JOFI, 124,
124n77, 124n78; Frederick Douglass Memorial,
New York City, 12; history, 7n8, 19n60, 35n29, 93;
see also segregation
Alger, Horatio, 23, 23n75
Allen, Robert, 120
American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA),
84–85, 94
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 77, 121
Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, 15, 15n39
Anthony, Susan B., 13
Arato, Christine, 3, 52n101, 90, 103, 109–10, 112–14,
120, 120n65, 121n67, 125–28
Archeological Overview and Assessment, 103
archival collections. See primary sources
Arthur, Chester A., 9, 14, 17, 17n56
assassination: birthplaces of assassinated presidents,
20–26; of John F. Kennedy, 1, 26, 29–32, 29n11, 30,
53, 110, 111, 113, 127; of Robert Kennedy, 45, 49,
109, 115; see also memorialization/memory
Atsales, Jason, 126, 130, 131
audiovisual materials, 50; Eleanor Roosevelt’s audio
tour at Hyde Park, 40–41, 50n90; new orientation
video, 97, 121–22, 127, 133; NPS Division of
Audiovisual Arts, 52, 54; Rose Kennedy’s audio
tour at JOFI, 2, 40–41, 49–54, 62–63, 79, 88–92, 101,
128, 133; The Shaping of a President, The First Home
of John F. Kennedy (introductory film), 133; slide
show for educational purposes, 62; Ted Kennedy’s
audio tour at the JFK Library, 94–95; “To Each
Their Own,” presentation of Kenndy women,
91–92
authenticity, 8, 11–12, 13–19; growing professional
standards for, 26; hoaxes, 13; of Lincoln’s cabin,
20–22, 21, 134; refurbishing and furnishing JOFI,
40–41, 48, 111n30, 126, 134; replica houses, 6, 8, 10,
11–12, 13–17, 13n30, 13n32, 19, 20, 22, 25; see also
memorialization/memory
Baker, Robert M., 19
Banks, Alan, 95, 108
Banks, Liz, 111n31
Battle, Bill “Bitter,” 59n8
“Beirut Massacre,” 81
Belle Grove Plantation, Virginia, 14
Berry, Russell W., 57n1, 68–69, 68n48, 69, 69n52, 70, 72,
73, 75
Bicentennial (1976), the, 19, 24, 74–75
Big Bend National Park, 68n49
birthplaces and childhood homes: Abraham Lincoln’s
birthplace, 20–22, 21, 134; American interest in,
7–8; “birthplace of” sites, 13, 13n31; birthplaces of
assassinated presidents, 20–26; childhood homes,
5–26; for-profit, privately owned sites, 14; George
Washington’s childhood home, 9–11; hoaxes, 13;
house museums, 1, 5, 11, 41, 48; Jefferson Davis’s
cabin, 20, 21, 21n67; replica houses, 6, 8, 10, 11–12,
13–17, 13n30, 13n32, 19, 20, 22, 25; rise as sites of
national memory, 13–19; women’s roles in
preserving and recreating presidential, 11–12; see
also authenticity; John Fitzgerald Kennedy National
Historic Site; preservation; other former presidents
Black History Month, 91
Black Lives Matter movement, 35n29
Index
158
Index
“blight,” 32n21
Bloomer, Ray, 77
Boston: Cambridge, 1, 67; Congress Street pier, 74;
Democratic machine politics, 34, 89, 94, 96, 135;
Dorchester neighborhood, 33, 36, 84; Freedom
Trail, 84; Harvard University, 36, 73, 83; JFK’s
apartment at 122 Bowdoin Street, 29, 37; John F.
Kennedy Federal Building, 69; Jordan Marsh
department store, 39–40; North End
neighborhood, 75; Paul Revere’s ride reenacted,
38n41; Roxbury neighborhood, 32, 32n13, 69; see
also Brookline
Boston African-American National Historic Site, 93
Boston Globe, The, 27, 29, 58, 76, 98n73
Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park, 109
Boston Marathon, 32n21
Boston National Historical Park, 45, 85, 135
Boston National Historic Sites Commission, 34
Boston Service Group, 1, 43–45, 44n63, 54, 55, 57, 58,
59, 65–68, 135–36; Maurice Kowal’s time at, 59–60,
60n12, 61, 65–68; newsletter, The Group Scoop, 44,
67; superintendents of, 34, 43n61, 58, 59, 60n12
Brookline: annual Memorial Day parade, 131;
burglaries in, 52; Dexter School, 61; Edward M.
Devotion School, 77, 84, 87, 122; Kennedy family
house at 51 Abbottsford Road, 36, 108n17, 115,
121, 122, 134; neighborhood walking tours, 50–51,
67, 88, 88n21, 115; the now Jewish neighborhood
of, 36, 50; preservation of an intact neighborhood,
114–15, 133; selectmen of, 27–29, 29n11, 32–33,
32n21, 37–38, 120; St. Aidan’s Catholic Church, 53,
86, 114–16, 120
Brookline Barracks of the Veterans of World War I, 28,
35
Brookline Birthplace Memorial Committee, 32–33
Brookline Civil Rights Committee, 32n18
“Brookline Farm Area,” 29n8, 32n21
Brookline High School, 131
Brookline Historical Society, 32n21, 33
Brookline Planning Board, 32–33
Brookline Redevelopment Authority, 29n8, 32n21, 33
Broudy, Natalie, 28
Brown, George V., Jr., 32, 32n21
Brown, James L., 57n1, 75
Brown, Matthew, 33
Bruggeman, Seth, 7
Bryan, William Jennings, 24, 24n83
Buchanan, James, 14
budgeting, 4, 42, 57, 81–82, 134; budget increases, 4, 42,
84–86, 101, 119; cost-cutting measures, 81, 123;
earmarks, 83, 86, 100; estimates, 42; flowers, 81;
fundraising, 21, 25n87; government shutdown of
1990, 93–94; misconceptions about local taxation,
84; operating cost shortfalls, 123–24; Operation of
the National Park Service (ONPS) base monies, 78;
salaries, 81; structural and maintenance concerns,
92–93, 125; system-wide increase in entrance fees,
94
“Building X,” 10n16
Bulger, James “Whitey,” 72, 72n67
Burns, James MacGregor, 34–35
Bush, George H. W., 14, 83–84
Bush, George W., 5–6, 14, 123
busing, 57, 69–70, 71, 72, 74–75, 95, 135
Butler, Joseph C., 25
Buttrick Mansion, 44
California, 15n34, 18, 19, 136
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1, 36, 67, 73, 83
“Camelot,” 111
Cammerer, Arno B., 33
Carroll, Kevin, 78, 80–82
Carroll, Orville, 61, 66–67, 111
Carter, Jimmy, 5, 14, 16, 19, 75–77
Carver, Eugene P., Jr., 27, 32
Catalano, Kathleen, 57n1, 68, 68n48, 77, 85, 112
Catholicism, 49, 51, 110, 114–16
CBS News, 46
Chappaquiddick car accident, 69
Charlotte Temple (Rowson), 7n7
Chertok, Sumner, 32, 32n21
Chester A. Arthur State Historic Site in Fairfield, VT,
17n56
childhood homes. See birthplaces and childhood
homes
church. See Catholicism
civil rights, 31, 32n18, 91, 127
159
Index Index
Civil War, 9, 9n12, 12, 20
Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain), 13, 21
Clifton, Albert, 13
Clinton, Bill, 5, 14, 16, 93, 100, 123
Clinton, Hillary, 99
Cliver, Blaine, 73
Coffin, Charles Carleton, 23
Cohen, Beryl, 31, 33, 33n24
Cold War, 28, 81
Collections Preservation Guide (1985), 77, 112
college basketball, birthplace of, 13
Collier, Robert, 21
commemoration. See memorialization/memory
community. See Brookline; stakeholders
Concord, Massachusetts, 36, 44, 105. See also Minute
Man National Historical Park
Congregation Kehillath Israel, 32
Cook, Lee Farrow, 83n2, 100–101, 100n79, 103–5, 104,
107, 109, 110, 113, 117, 120–22, 120n65, 121n67,
125, 128, 130, 131
Coolidge, Hamilton, 32
Cooper, John Sherman, 41–43
Coquette, The (Foster), 7n7
costs. See budgeting
costumed interpreters, 3n5, 50
Crawford, Diana, 58
Cultural Resources Center (CRC), 105
Custis, George Washington Parke, 9
“Daily Log,” 81, 81n105, 98n73
Daly, David, 111n31, 130
“Dames, the,” 11
Dare, Virginia, 7n8
Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), 11, 12
Davis, Jefferson, 20, 21, 21n67
Dawes, William, 38n41
Day After, The (TV drama), 81
Deegan, Carl, 46–47, 52
Democratic Party, 34, 89, 94, 96, 135
Dennett, Alfred W., 20–21
Denver Service Center, 65
Departmental Management Program, 68, 68n49, 75
Dexter School, 61
Diamant, Rolf, 83–85; changes in administration of the
trisites, 96–101, 98n73, 104, 106, 136; changes in
interpretation, 88–92; expansion of educational
programming under, 87–88; funding under, 123–24;
new Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation,
97, 100, 109; removal of Rose Kennedy’s audio tour
under, 88–92; reorganization by, 82, 85–86, 85n10;
structural and maintenance concerns under, 92–93
Diethorn, Karie, 85
Dilsaver, Larry, 94
Division of Audiovisual Arts, 52, 54
Dix, Dorothea Lynde, 13
Doherty, Brian, 96n64, 98–99, 98n73
donor relations, 2. See also Kennedy family
Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, 33, 36, 84
Dorman, Charles, 62, 66, 112
Douglass, Frederick, 12
Dukakis, Michael, 131
Dutton, Wilbur, 46–47
education: Brookline High School, 131; desegregating
Boston public schools (busing), 57, 69–70, 71, 72,
74–75, 95, 135; Dexter School, 61; educational
programming at JOFI, 62, 87–88, 92, 100, 126;
Edward M. Devotion School, 77, 84, 87, 122;
METCO school desegregation program, 69–70;
Park School, 32n21; Student Conservation
Association interns, 131; “What JFK Means to Me”
essay contest, 87, 131
Edward M. Devotion School, 77, 84, 87, 122
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 5, 14, 15n34, 16
eminent domain, 32, 32n21, 35–36, 58, 67n42, 114, 136
executive orders, 9–10, 15n39, 21–22, 59, 60n12
“Family History: The Legacy Endures, The”
educational programming, 87
Family Medical Leave Act (1993), 81–82
Farm Urban Renewal Project, 29n8
Fay, Paul “Red,” 59n8
FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), 70–72, 98
160
Index
federal government: Department of Justice, 72; federal
preservation programs, 136; government shutdown
of 1990, 93–94; National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA), 5, 15n34, 73n79; urban
redevelopment and renewal, 28–29, 29n8, 32n21,
136; War Department, 22; see also National Park
Service (NPS); presidential history; US Congress;
US Department of the Interior
Fennell, Rose, 131
Ferry Farm, Fredericksburg, VA, 13
Fillmore, Millard, 14, 65
firebombing of JOFI, 69–75, 71, 77, 93, 95, 134
First Ladies, 14, 22, 33, 99
Fitzgerald, John Francis (“Honey Fitz”), 35, 89
Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, The (Kearns Goodwin),
89, 89n25
Florida Ruffin Ridley School (Edward M. Devotion
School), 77, 84, 87, 122
Fogg Art Museum, 73
Ford, Gerald, 14, 19
for-profit, privately owned sites, 14
Foster, Hannah Webster, 7n7
Foundation Documents, 3, 100, 103, 119, 119n59, 127,
127n86
Frank, Barney, 86, 120
Frederick Douglass Memorial, New York City, 12
Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, 1, 57, 75,
77, 83–85, 106, 123, 136; archival collections at,
83–84, 92, 100–101; budget at, 84, 92–93, 94;
developing its archival holdings for public access,
84, 97; lobbying by the American Society of
Landscape Architects (ASLA), 84–85, 94; Olmsted
Center for Landscape Preservation, 97, 100, 109;
staff at, 85, 95–101; visitors to, 94, 94n48
Freedom of Information Act, 137
Freedom Trail, 84
Freeman Street Condominium, 116
friends groups, 57, 100, 101, 104, 122, 123, 134
“Friends of the JFK Birthplace” group, 122
From Canal Boy to President (Alger), 23, 23n75
fundraising, 21, 25n87
Garfield, James A., 5, 14, 20, 22–24, 22n73–23n75
Garfield, Lucretia Rudolph, 22–23
Garfield National Monument Association, 22
Gargan, Joseph F. (Rose Kennedy’s nephew), 38, 39
Garrison, Lemuel, 46, 60n12
General Management Plan (GMP), 100, 117–23, 125,
127, 127n86, 134
gentrification, 136
George W. Bush Childhood Home, 5–6, 14
“ghosting” on walls, 73
Gilded Age, 11
Goodwin, Doris Kearns, 89, 89n25
Goodwin, Richard, 89n25
government shutdown of 1990, 93–94
Graffam-McKay Local Historic District, 108n17
Grant, Ulysses S., 5, 13, 14, 28
grave tourism, 7, 7n7
Great Depression, 33
Group Scoop, The (newsletter), 44, 67
hagiography, dangers of, 88, 109
Hale, Eugene, 13
Hanse, James, 94
Harcourt Brace publishing company, 34
Harpers Ferry Center for Media Development, 65
Harris, Earl, 57n1
Harrison, Myra, 103–8, 106; elevating Rose Kenedy’s
role, 6, 109–10; on the Kennedy family, 106n19;
politics of memory and, 113; reflections after
retirement, 122; site development without a GMP,
117, 119–23, 121n47, 124–28, 133; St. Aidan’s
church, 116; staffing at JOFI and, 123–24, 129, 130,
133
Harrison, William Henry, 8, 14
Hartzog, George B., 17, 39, 40–41, 43, 65–66, 124
Harvard University, 36, 73, 83
Hassenfeld, Merrill, 38, 38n41
Hayes, Rutherford B., 14
Health, John, 57n1
Herbert Hoover National Historic Site, 15, 15n42
Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, 105
heritage organizations, 11–12
161
Index Index
Hernandez, Rhinelander, 57n1
Hiram College, Hiram, Ohio, 22n73
Historic Architecture Program, 112
Historic Furnishing Plan (1971), 66, 80, 112
Historic Furnishings Assessment (2005), 111n30, 112
historic markers, 14
history: of American memory and commemoration, 7,
109–10, 113–14; architectural, 44n43, 103, 111; of
domesticity and domestic servants, 114;
educational, 9; historians employed at JOFI, 41, 52,
107, 113; presidential historians, 34–35, 89n25; see
also administrative histories; archival collections;
birthplaces and childhood homes; presidential
history; primary sources; women’s history
hoaxes, 13
Hodson, Janice, 111n30, 112, 125
Hoffman, Michael A., 35n29
Hogan, Michael, 31n25
Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site,
Hyde Park, NY, 15, 16, 40–41, 50n90
Hoover, Herbert, 5, 9–10, 14, 15, 15n42, 16, 18, 134
Horn, Christine, 79
house museums, 1, 5, 11, 41, 48
Huxtable, Ada Louise, 76
Iannarelli, Thomas, 60n12
Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia,
PA, 62
interpretation: changes under Diamant, 88–92;
costumed interpreters, 3n5, 50; dangers of
hagiography, 88, 109; Interpretive Prospectus
(1969), 2–3, 49–52, 65, 68, 91, 134; neighborhood
walking tours, 50–51, 67, 88, 88n21, 115; nine
primary “themes,” 65; visitor acceptance of
changes in, 90–92
Interpretive Prospectus (1969), 2–3, 49–52, 65, 68, 91,
134
Irish immigrants and Irish Americans, 35, 35n29, 63,
80, 89, 110, 114
Jackson, Henry M., 41–43
James A. Garfield Monument, Cleveland, OH, 22
James A. Garfield National Historic Site (Lawnfield),
Mentor, OH, 22–24
James K. Polk House, Columbia, TN, 5, 14
jazz, birthplace of, 13
Jefferson, Thomas, 5, 14, 19n60
“JFK Centennial” celebration (2017), 103, 127, 132, 134
“JFK: How We Know What We Know” educational
program, 87
Jimmy Carter National Historical Park, 16, 16n47
Joffe, Ruth, 28
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site (as
administrative unit), 1–4, 131–37; Archeological
Overview and Assessment, 103; busing and the
firebombing of, 69–75; changes in administration,
96–101; in the context of childhood homes of US
presidents, 5–26; in the context of “the trisites,” 82,
83–86, 93–94, 96, 99–101, 103, 104, 113, 117,
123–24, 131; “Daily Log,” 81, 81n105, 98n73; daily
work in the 1980s, 78–82; dedication and opening
in 1969, 53–54; development of the site, 43–42;
during the Carter and Reagan Years, 75–78; early
management to the late 1980s, 57–82; early
recognition as a site of importance, 27–55; early
studies at, 61–68; first unigrid, 117, 118–19;
Foundation Documents, 3, 100, 103, 119, 119n59,
127, 127n86; General Management Plan (GMP),
100, 117–23, 125, 127, 127n86, 134; Interpretive
Prospectus (1969), 2–3, 49–52, 65, 68, 91, 134; “JFK
Centennial” celebration (2017), 103, 127, 132, 134;
lack of an administrative history until now, 79–80,
83n2; legislation establishing, 39–43; Master Plan,
47, 68, 117; memorializing the Kennedy family
generally, 95–96, 107–8, 114; modern management
in the 1990s, 83–101; operations, 57, 83–84; oral
history program at, 61, 79; personal connections,
59–61; politics of memory in the new century,
103–28; politics of the 1990s, 93–94; reorganization
under Diamant, 85–86; as “satellite” of Longfellow,
80n102, 82; staffing at, 123–24; Standard Operation
Procedures, 99; Statement for Management (1977),
68, 80; suggestions for further study, 135–37; threat
of eminent domain in developing/expanding, 32,
32n21, 35–36, 58, 67n42, 114, 136; see also
administrative histories; Boston Service Group;
primary sources
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site
(structure and collections): acquisition of the site,
21, 38, 43–44; ADA compliance and, 121;
authenticity when refurbishing and furnishing,
40–41, 48, 111n30, 126, 134; basement of, 62, 71,
77–78, 80, 88, 121, 127, 133; bassinette, 73;
162
Index
bathrooms, 62, 68, 121, 133; bed where JFK was
born, 27, 37, 44, 46, 128, 129; bedspreads from
Ireland, 1, 79, 79n96; bronze plaque from the
Brookline Board of Selectmen, 27–29; busing and
the firebombing of, 69–75; challenges of limited
space at JOFI, 43, 49, 95, 117; children’s books in
the nursery, 51, 111; children’s silver porringers, 1,
46; climate control/HVAC system, 78, 106;
collections management concerns, 75, 122;
Collections Preservation Guide (1985), 77; erosion
of the foundation, 77–78; furnishings, 4, 47–52,
62–66, 112, 134; exterior paint, 3, 27–28, 28, 61,
65–66, 69, 111–13, 111n30, 125–28, 125; fire safety
systems, 70; firebombing of, 69–75, 71, 77, 93, 95,
134; “ghosting” on the walls, 73; handwritten
notecard, 128; Historic Furnishing Plan (1971), 66,
80, 112; Historic Furnishings Assessment (2005),
111n30, 112; Historic Resource Maintenance Plan
(1976), 80; Historic Resource Study (2004), 79–80,
103, 107, 113–14; horsehair plaster, 72; kitchen, 48,
64, 70–73, 71, 93; National Day of Mourning at, 30;
neighborhood walking tours, 50–51, 67, 88, 88n21,
115; open houses at, 86, 95, 115, 131; parking, 35,
43, 50–52, 58, 95, 103, 121, 133; pink carpeting, 47,
51, 111n30; plastic bottle of Johnson’s baby
powder, 64, 111; porringers engraved for Joe and
Jack Kennedy, 1, 46; public transportation, 121–22;
radiators, 72, 80; security at the site, 51–52, 74, 77,
99; stove, 64, 73, 123; structural and maintenance
concerns, 61, 77, 83, 92–93, 121; third floor fire
hazard, 99–100; visitor facilities at, 62, 78–79;
wallpaper, 45, 52, 71, 72, 80
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 31,
31n15, 55, 76
John F. Kennedy Federal Building, Boston, MA, 69
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
(JFK Library), 36, 36n34, 59n8, 76, 87, 95, 95n53,
108
John F. Kennedy’s Birthplace: A Presidential Home in
History and Memory (von Hoffman), 110–11
John Muir and Eugene O’Neill National Historic Sites,
136
Johnson, Andrew, 5, 14, 15, 15n29
Johnson, Harriet Lane, 14
Johnson, Lyndon B., 5, 7, 14, 16–19, 18, 16n46, 39, 55,
89n27, 134
Jordan Marsh department store, 39–40
Kammen, Michael, 114
Kennedy, Caroline, 87
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 31, 31n15, 55,
76
Kennedy, Edward (Ted), 33n24, 37–38, 53, 55, 94–95,
99, 105; the politics of busing and, 69–70, 69n52,
72, 135
Kennedy family, 1, 31n15, 35n29, 37–43, 94–96;
compound at Hyannis Port, 18, 39n45; in the
context of Irish immigrants and Irish Americans,
35, 35n29, 63, 80, 89, 110, 114; death of JFK Jr.,
107–8; house at 51 Abbottsford Road, 36, 108n17,
115, 121, 122, 134; obligation to living members of
the, 95; political legacy of, 89, 135; in the politics
and administration of JOFI, 59, 95–96, 135; private
family reunion at the site, 95; religion and wealth
of, 115; role in the history of the Park Service more
generally, 135; see also Smith, Jean Kennedy
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald: “Address to the Nation on
Civil Rights,” 91; apartment at 122 Bowdoin Street,
Boston, 29, 37; assassination of, 1, 26, 29–32, 29n11,
30, 53, 110, 111, 113, 127; biography of, 34–35, 49;
Catholicism, 49, 51, 110, 114–16; Centennial
celebration, 103, 127, 132, 134; childhood illnesses
of, 128; connection with King Arthur and Camelot
after death, 111; at the Dexter School, 61; early
biographies of, 63–64; embracing his adult life and
presidency, 91; as the first Catholic president, 49;
postage stamps in Kennedy’s honor, 30;
presidential campaign, 27, 35, 39, 114; PT (Patrol
Torpedo) boats, 59, 59n8, 60; speeches of, 127, 133;
tomb at Arlington National Cemetery, 31, 31n15,
42, 55; Warren Commission, 41n52
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald., Jr., 107–8
Kennedy, Joseph P., 27, 35, 81, 81n105, 89, 95, 107, 110,
135
Kennedy, Joseph P., III, 131
Kennedy Onassis, Jacqueline, 31n15, 36–38, 52, 95
Kennedy, Patrick Joseph (P. J.), 135
“Kennedy phenomenon,” 34, 34n27, 49, 51, 134
Kennedy, Robert, 34n34, 45, 109, 115
Kennedy, Roger G. (no relation), 93–94
Kennedy, Rose, 1–2, 2, 37–54, 54, 129; as architect of
memory, 109–14; assorted biographical notes by,
63–64; audio tour by, 2, 40–41, 49–54, 62–63, 79,
88–92, 101, 128, 133; autobiography of, 51, 89,
89n25, 109; death of, 91, 95, 101; elevating the role
163
Index Index
of, 6, 109–10; herself an important historical
subject, 90–91; letter to the Department of the
Interior, 91; as mother and matriarch, 3–4, 48, 64,
92, 112, 128; nephew of, 38, 39; refurbishing and
furnishing JOFI, 37–38, 42; relationship with
interior designer Robert T. Luddington, 3, 39–41,
40, 45–48, 48n78, 48n81, 53, 72–73, 110–12, 111n30,
126, 128, 129; Rickey’s interviews of, 46–47, 62–63;
see also Luddington, Robert T.
Kennedy, Rosemary, 95
“Kennedy Story, The,” 87
“Kennedy Walk, The,” 87–88
“Kennedy Women: To Each Their Own, The”
educational programming, 91–92
Kentucky, 20–21
Keresey, Dick, 59n8
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 13
Kopechne, Mary Jo, 69
Koplow, Fredya, 33, 33n24
Korean War, 59
Kowal, Maurice, 3, 57n1, 59–61, 59n8, 61–68, 60, 60n12,
128, 135
Kratz, David, 107
“Land of Kennedy” vanity license plates, 3
Law, Beth, 122
Lawnfield (James A. Garfield National Historic Site),
22–24
Lebanon, 81
Lee, Robert E., 13
legislation. See US Congress
Lexington, Massachusetts, 36, 44. See also Minute Man
National Historical Park
libraries: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and
Museum (JFK Library), 36, 36n34, 59n8, 76, 87, 95,
95n53, 108; McKinley Memorial Library, 25;
presidential, 5, 15n34, 19, 23, 42
Life of Washington (Weems), 9–10, 23
Lincoln, Abraham, 5, 7, 8, 12, 14–16, 20; Abraham
Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, 15,
15n37, 22; birthplace cabin, 20–22, 21, 134
Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, 15, 15n38
Lincoln Farm Association (LFA), 21
lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy, 95
log-cabin presidents, 6, 8, 15, 20–22, 21, 21n67, 23–24,
25
Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters
National Historic Site, 1, 57–58, 67–68, 75, 77,
80n102, 82, 104, 124, 135, 136; archival collections
at, 68, 100–101; in the context of “the trisites,” 82,
83–86, 93–94, 96, 99–101, 103, 104, 113, 117,
123–24, 131; JOFI as “satellite” of, 80n102, 82;
during the 1990s, 93; staff at, 85, 95–101
Loveless, Andrew M., 47
Lowell, James A., 32, 32n21
Lowell National Historical Park, 84, 126
Luddington, Robert T.: objects from his own family
homes, 64; personal papers and oral history of, 48,
62–63, 63n28, 137; working with Rose Kennedy, 3,
39–41, 40, 45–48, 48n78, 48n81, 53, 72–73, 110–12,
111n30, 126, 128, 129, 130
Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park,
Stonewall, TX, 16, 16n46, 17
Mackey, Lula E., 12, 25
Mackintosh, Barry, 39n45
Madison, James, 14
Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park,
Woodstock, Vermont, 100
Massachusetts: Cultural Resources Center (CRC) in
Lowell, 105; Hyannis Port, 18, 39n45; Lexington
and Concord, 36, 44, 105; Lowell National
Historical Park, 84, 126; misconceptions about
local taxation, 84; New Bedford Whaling Museum
National Park, 109; Plymouth Rock, 74; Salem
Maritime National Historic Site, 34, 44, 44n63, 58,
84, 93; Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site,
43, 44, 44n63, 45n68, 58, 93–94; Springfield Armory
National Historic Site, 93; state legislature, 31–33;
see also Boston; Brookline
Massachusetts Historical Commission, 116
Massachusetts state legislature, 31–33
Massachusetts Turnpike, 61
Master Plan, 47, 68, 117
MBTA trolley line, 121–22
McInerny, John E., 70
McKinley Memorial Library, 25, 25n89
McKinley Memorial Museum, 25
164
Index
McKinley, William, 12, 14, 20, 24–25, 25n87, 65
McNeilly, George D., 32
Medina, Victor, 127
memorialization/memory: history of, 7, 109–10,
113–14; Brookline’s annual Memorial Day parade,
131; coins, 25n87, 30; commemorative plaque at 83
Beals Street, 27–29; the emotional experiences of
visitors, 6, 49, 107–8, 121; dangers of hagiography,
88, 109; historic markers, 14; “JFK Centennial”
celebration (2017), 103, 127, 132, 134; the
“Kennedy phenomenon,” 34, 34n27, 49, 51, 134;
memorabilia and souvenirs, 25, 25n87, 61; national
day of mourning, 30, 31–32; the nation’s
Bicentennial, 19, 24, 74–75; patriotism and, 7, 9;
postage stamps, 7n8, 30; trauma and, 98–99, 109,
113; memory studies, 110; politics of memory in
the new century, 103–28
Metcalf, Lee Warren, 43
METCO school desegregation program, 69–70
Mid-Atlantic Regional Office, 44, 67
Millard Fillmore Boyhood Home Site, 14
Minute Man National Historical Park, 33–34, 36, 44–45,
58, 135; administrative history of, 44n63; Buttrick
Mansion, 44; community advisory commission,
57n3; in the context of “the trisites,” 82, 83–86,
93–94, 96, 99–101, 103, 104, 113, 117, 123–24, 131;
superintendents of, 33, 43n61, 44
Mission 66, 49
Moffit, David, 57n1
Montford, Franklin, 57n1
monuments. See memorialization/memory
Moore, Terry, 120, 122
Moreland Hills Historical Society, 24
Morse, Alan, 32n21
Morse, Theresa, 32, 32n21
Mount Rushmore, 5, 15n34
Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, 9n12, 11, 19n60
“Museum Upstages the Library, The,” 76
“Nation of Immigrants, A” educational program, 87
National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA), 5, 15n34, 73n79
National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), 60n12
National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, 12
National Historic District, 108n17
National Historic Landmark status, 16
National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, 39
National Historic Sites Act, 33
National Landmarks Program, 6–7, 17, 39, 110
National McKinley Birthplace Memorial, 24–25, 25n87
National Park Service (NPS): Advisory Committee for
National Landmarks, 16–17; Building
Conservation Branch, 92; Cultural Resources
Center (CRC), 105; Denver Service Center, 65;
Departmental Management Program, 68, 68n49,
75; diversifying the, 124; Division of Audiovisual
Arts, 52, 54; early assessment of the site, 27–55;
emails for research, 137; executive orders related to
historic sites, 9–10, 15n39, 21–22; FDR’s Executive
Order No. 6166, 21–22; Harpers Ferry Center for
Media Development, 65; historians in the, 16,
21n47, 31n25, 33, 58, 62, 94, 110; Historic
Architecture Program, 112; legislation requiring
General Management Plans (GMPs), 117; Mid-
Atlantic Regional Office, 44, 67; Mission 66, 49;
multisites as units of study, 136; National
Landmarks Program, 6–7, 17, 39, 110; New Deal
programs in historic architecture and preservation,
33; newsletter The Courier, 76; North Atlantic
Regional Office, 44, 83, 67, 90–91, 92; Northeast
Regional Office, 44, 46, 60, 66–67, 135–36; Office of
History and Historic Architecture, 62; Operation of
the National Park Service (ONPS) base monies, 78;
Philadelphia Planning Services Center, 45;
“politicization of the directorship,” 82, 94; system-
wide increase in entrance fees, 94; unit types in the,
64–65; women serving in the, 62, 103, 103n1; work
alongside urban renewal, 136; see also
administrative histories; Boston Service Group
National Park System Plan (Hartzog), 65–66
National Register of Historic Places, 5, 18, 110, 116
National Society of the Colonial Dames of America
(Dames), 11
Nelson, Nancy, 57n1
New Bedford Whaling Museum National Park, 109
New Deal, 33
New Orleans, 13
New York City: Frederick Douglass Memorial, 12; John
F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 31,
31n15, 55, 76
165
Index Index
New York State: Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt
National Historic Site in Hyde Park, 15, 16, 40–41,
50n90; Pan-American Exposition of 1901 in
Buffalo, NY, 20, 25; Roosevelt Campobello
International Park, 15n44, 16; Roosevelt-
Vanderbilt National Historic Sites, 53, 59
New York Times, The, 76
Niles Historical Society, 25n86
“1917: A Time to Remember,” educational program, 87
Nixon, Richard, 14, 15n34, 19, 55, 64n35, 65
Noonan, Thomas J., 32
North Atlantic Regional Office, 44, 83, 67, 90–91, 92
Northeast Regional Office, 44, 46, 60, 66–67, 135–36
Obama, Barack, 6, 123
Obleschuk, Leslie, 80, 87, 88, 88n23
O’Connell, Jim, 120–21, 121n67
Office of History and Historic Architecture, 62
Ohio, 12, 13, 23, 24–25, 25n86, 25n87
Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, 97, 100,
109
Olmsted, Frederic Law. See Frederick Law Olmsted
National Historic Site
Olsen, Herbert, 58–59, 58n5, 66, 66n39
O’Neill, Tip, 37, 41, 55, 99
open houses, 86, 95, 115, 131
Operation of the National Park Service (ONPS) base
monies, 78
oral histories, 36n34, 61, 79, 83n2, 85n10, 137
O’Toole, James, 114
Paint and Decoration Contractors Association of
America, 27, 28, 112–13
Palladino, Florence, 29
Palmer, Phyllis, 114
Pan-American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo, NY, 20, 25
parking, 35, 43, 50–52, 58, 95, 103, 121, 133
Park School, 32n21
patriotism, 7, 9
Paul Revere’s ride reenacted, 38n41
Peabody Properties, 116
Pei, I. M., 76
Pennsylvania, 13, 62
Perrault, Carole, 112, 125, 130
Phelps, James, 91
Philadelphia Planning Services Center, 45
Pitcaithley, Dwight, 21n67
Plymouth Rock, 74
politics: Boston’s Democratic machine politics, 34, 89,
94, 96, 135; Democratic Party, 34, 89, 94, 96, 135;
the Kennedy family, politics, and the
administration of JOFI, 59, 95–96, 135; in the
Massachusetts state legislature, 31–33; of the 1990s,
93–94; “politicization of the directorship,” 82, 94;
politics of memory, gender, and the presidency,
103–28; Republican Party, 32n21, 37, 41n52, 83–84,
93–94; the Whig Party, 6; threat of eminent domain
in developing/expanding JOFI, 32, 32n21, 35–36,
58, 67n42, 114, 136
Polk, James K., 5, 14
Pollack, Martha, 27–28, 31–32, 37–38, 38n41, 112–13
Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, 136
preservation: climate control/HVAC system, 78, 106;
federal preservation programs, 136; of an intact
neighborhood, 114–15, 133; National Park Service
(NPS) during the New Deal, 33; St. Aidan’s
Catholic Church, 53, 86, 114–16, 120; women’s
roles in preserving and recreating presidential
history, 5–6, 8, 9n12, 11–12
President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home
National Historic Site, 16, 16n48
presidential history: elections, 6, 24–25, 81; executive
orders, 9–10, 15n39, 21–22, 59, 60n12; First Ladies,
14, 22, 33, 99; the “log-cabin” presidents, 6, 8, 15,
20–22, 21, 21n67, 23–24, 25; presidential historians,
34–35, 89n25; see also assassinations; birthplaces
and childhood homes
presidential libraries, 5, 15n34, 19, 23, 42. See also John
F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (JFK
Library)
Price, Carla, 124, 124n77
primary sources: anti-Kennedy bias at NPS not
supported by, 60n12; archival collections at
Longfellow, 100–101; archival collections at Minute
Man National Historical Park, 44n63;
autobiographies, 6, 51, 89, 89n25, 109; Collections
Preservation Guide (1985), 77, 112; “Daily Log,”
81, 81n105, 98n73; emails as, 137; Foundation
Documents, 3, 100, 103, 119, 119n59, 127, 127n86;
166
Index
Historic Furnishing Plan (1971), 66, 80, 112;
Historic Furnishings Assessment (2005), 111n30,
112; Historic Resource Maintenance Plan (1976),
80; Historic Resource Study (2004), 79–80;
Interpretive Prospectus (1969), 2–3, 49–52, 65, 68,
91, 134; at the JFK Library, 36, 36n34; management
of archival collections, 75; Master Plan, 47, 68, 117;
oral histories, 36n34, 61, 79, 83n2, 85n10, 137;
personal papers and oral history of Robert T.
Luddington, 48, 62–63, 63n28, 137; published
research vs., 51; Statement for Management (1977),
68, 80; see also administrative histories; archival
collections; audiovisual materials; John Fitzgerald
Kennedy National Historic Site (as administrative
unit)
private organizations. See stakeholders
Providence Preservation Society, 105
PT (Patrol Torpedo) boats, 59, 59n8, 60. See also Kowal,
Maurice
public transportation, 121–22
race and racism: civil rights, 31, 32n18, 91, 127; heritage
organizations, 11–12; Irish immigrants and Irish
Americans, 35, 35n29, 63, 80, 89, 110, 114; White
supremacy, 7n8, 11; see also African Americans;
segregation
Ragged Dick (Alger), 23n75
rangers: at JOFI, 68, 78, 80, 87, 95, 98–99, 107, 109, 120;
resistance to change among, 96; supervisory,
80n102, 83n2, 96–97, 96n64, 98–99, 103, 109,
112–13, 126, 131, 132; tours led by, 50, 87–88,
88n21, 89–91
Reagan, Ronald, 14, 77–78, 81
Reconstruction, 9n12
Reidenbach, Dennis, 123
replica houses, 6, 8, 10, 11–12, 13–17, 13n30, 13n32, 19,
20, 22, 25
Republican Party, 32n21, 37, 41n52, 83–84, 93–94
Rhode Island, 105
Rickey, Nan: on exterior paint color and furnishings,
66, 111n30, 112; Interpretive Prospectus (1969),
2–3, 49–52, 65, 68, 91, 134; interviews of Rose
Kennedy, 46–47, 62–63; during JOFI’s early
development, 2–3, 46, 49–50, 111; on need for a
Master Plan, 68; on parking and safety, 51–52; on
staffing needs, 52; on the religion and wealth of the
Kennedy family, 115
Riddle, Theodate Pope, 12
Rigney, C. Sue, 96, 116
Rippel, Elena, 46n69, 121n67, 130, 132
Roanoke colony, Virginia, 7n7
Roberts, James, 126–27, 130, 131, 132
Roosevelt Campobello International Park, 15n44, 16
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 40–41, 50n90, 53
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 5, 7n8, 14–15, 15n43; childhood
summer retreat at Campobello, 15, 15n44, 16;
Executive Order No. 6166, 21–22; Home of
Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site in
Hyde Park, 15, 16, 40–41, 50n90; New Deal, 33;
postage stamps, 30–31; Roosevelt-Vanderbilt
National Historic Sites, 53, 59
Roosevelt, Theodore, 5, 12, 14, 15–16, 93, 134
Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites, 53, 59
Rosie the Riveter—World War II National Historical
Park in California, 136
Rowson, Susanna, 7n7
Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, 32, 32n13, 69
Rust, Josephine Wheelwright, 10
Rust, Marie, 105
Sabin, Douglass, 57n1
Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, 75
Sagamore, The (student newspaper), 131
Saint-Gaudens, August, 21
Salem Maritime National Historic Site, 34, 44, 44n63,
58, 84, 93
Saltonstall, Leverett, 37
Saltzman, Manuel, 32, 32n21
Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site, 43, 44,
44n63, 45n68, 58, 93–94
Savage, Teri, 57n1
security, 51–52, 74, 77, 99
segregation: in Boston and Brookline, 31–32, 32n18;
desegregating Boston public schools (busing), 57,
69–70, 71, 72, 74–75, 95, 135; Jim Crow, 35n29; see
also African Americans; race and racism
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 109
Shaping of a President, The First Home of John F.
Kennedy, The (introductory film), 133
167
Index Index
Shary Berg, 57n1;
Shea, Jim, 96–100, 96n64, 98n73, 99
Sheehan, Thomas A., 33
Shiloh National Military Park, 58
“Shortfellow,” 82
Small, Edwin, 3, 33–37, 43, 53, 60, 60n12, 135–36;
community advisory group, 57n3; as “Project
Keyman,” 44–46, 45n68, 46n69, 48
Smith, Jean Kennedy, 53
Springfield Armory National Historic Site, 93
staffing: Black employees at JOFI, 124, 124n77, 124n78;
costumed interpreters, 3n5, 50; curatorial staff, 85,
98 111; cuts in, 124; dramatic turnover, 57, 98;
executive orders related to staffing, 59, 60n12;
Family Medical Leave Act (1993), 81–82; First
Amendment rights of federal employees, 60n12;
historians employed at JOFI, 41, 52, 107, 113;
mandatory pay raises for federal employees, 124;
morale, 81–82, 83, 98–99; museum technicians,
52n100, 111n31, 124; Project Keyman, 44–46,
45n68, 46n69, 48; salaries, 81; seasonal/temporary
staff, 41, 49, 79, 98, 109, 124, 124n77, 126; site
managers, 52n100, 59, 66–67, 96–98, 99, 100, 105,
113, 122–23, 131; staff concerns about authenticity,
111n30; staff retreat, 108; Student Conservation
Association interns, 131; see also rangers;
superintendents
St. Aidan’s Catholic Church, 53, 86, 114–16, 120
stakeholders, 11–12; Daughters of the American
Revolution (DAR), 11, 12; donor relations, 2;
friends groups, 57, 100, 101, 104, 122, 123, 134;
“Friends of the JFK Birthplace” group, 122;
fundraising, 21, 25n87; Garfield National
Monument Association, 22; heritage organizations,
11–12; Lincoln Farm Association (LFA), 21;
Moreland Hills Historical Society, 24; National
Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, 12;
National Society of the Colonial Dames of America
(Dames), 11; Niles Historical Society, 25n86; public
scoping meeting, 121–22; Student Conservation
Association interns, 131; United Daughters of the
Confederacy, 13; see also Kennedy family
Standard Operation Procedures, 99
Stark, Jack, 76
Statement for Management (1977), 68, 80
Stearns, Liza, 87
Storrie, Muriel, 62, 68, 79n99
Stratford Hall, Robert E. Lee’s birthplace, 13
Student Conservation Association interns, 131
suffrage, 7n8, 11
superintendents: Berry’s tenure, 68, 68n50, 70, 72, 75;
of the Boston Service Group, 34, 43n61, 58, 59,
60n12; managing JOFI, 57, 57n1, 61; of Minute
Man, 33, 43n61, 44; Olsen’s tenure, 58–59, 58n5,
66, 66n39; of Salem Maritime National Historical
Park, 34; Whitesell’s tenure, 57n1, 77, 79–80,
79n99, 83; Zerbey’s tenure, 43n61, 44–45, 51–52,
57n1, 57n3, 58, 62, 66; see also Diamant, Rolf;
Harrison, Myra; Small, Edwin
Taft, William Howard, 5, 14, 15, 15n41
Tarbell, Ida, 21
Taylor, Zachary, 5, 14
Temple Kehillath Israel, 32
Tennessee, 5, 15, 20, 58
Texas, 5–6, 16, 16n46, 17
They Were White and They Were Slaves (Hoffman),
35n29
Thorfinnsson, Snorri, 7n8
Times to Remember (R. Kennedy), 51, 89, 89n25, 109
“To Each Their Own,” presentation on the Kenndy
women, 91–92
Toogood, Anna Coxe, 62–66, 112
tourism: historic grave tourism, 7, 7n7; house
museums, 1, 5, 11, 41, 48; local trolley tours, 94–95;
memorabilia and souvenirs, 61; neighborhood
walking tours, 50–51, 67, 88, 88n21, 115; see also
birthplaces and childhood homes
trauma, 98–99, 109, 113
“trisites, the,” 82, 83–86, 93–94, 96, 99–101, 103, 104,
113, 117, 123–24, 131. See also Longfellow House-
Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site;
John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site;
Minute Man National Historical Park
Truman, Harry S., 5, 14, 16–17, 53
Trump, Donald J., 6, 123
Tuckahoe Plantation, VA, 14
Twain, Mark, 13, 21
Tyler, Daniel, Jr., 32, 32n21
Tyler, John, 14
168
Index
Udall, Stewart, 16, 41–43, 42n53, 55
United Daughters of the Confederacy, 13
urban redevelopment and renewal, 28–29, 29n8, 32n21,
136
US Congress, 9–10; Americans with Disabilities Act
(ADA), 77, 121; appropriations for the Department
of the Interior, 86n15; appropriations for the John
F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, 31n15; and
the challenge of expanding the site, 47, 49; enabling
the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site,
75; Family Medical Leave Act (1993), 81–82;
Freedom of Information Act, 137; legislation
allowing the federal government to accept
property, 15n43; lobbying in, 84–85, 94; National
Historic Preservation Act of 1966, 39; National
Historic Sites Act, 33; requiring General
Management Plans (GMPs), 117; role in acquiring
and developing JOFI, 37, 39, 41–43, 45, 47, 49;
Secretary Udall’s testimony before, 41–43, 42n53;
the Republican Congress of the 1990s, 84, 93–94;
themes in founding legislation, 110
US Department of the Interior, 41–43; appropriations
for, 86n15; Heritage Conservation and Recreation
Service, 105; internal communication records of,
83n2; National Historic Landmark Status, 16–17;
Rose Kennedy’s letter to, 91; see also National Park
Service (NPS)
Van Buren, Martin, 5
Vanderwoude, Saul, 31
Vermont, 17n56, 100
Veterans for Kennedy, 59
Virginia: Arlington National Cemetery, 31, 31n15, 42,
55; Ferry Farm in Fredericksburg, 13; Jefferson’s
birthplace at Tuckahoe Plantation, VA, 14;
Jefferson’s estate at Monticello, 19n60; Madison’s
birthplace at Belle Grove Plantation, 14; Roanoke
colony, 7n7; Robert E. Lee’s birthplace, 13;
Washington family house at Pope’s Creek, 9–10;
Washington’s estate at Mount Vernon, 9n12, 11,
19n60
visitors/visitation, 1, 6; to Abraham Lincoln Birthplace
National Historical Park, 22; American with
Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance and, 77, 121;
challenges of limited space at JOFI, 43, 49, 95, 117;
changing opening hours, 81; elderly visitors, 77;
emotional experiences of, 6, 49, 107–8, 121;
interpretation at JOFI and, 90–92; JOFI’s prospects
for visitation, 35–36, 49–51, 67; limits to the visitor
season at JOFI, 82, 86, 97, 120–21; to Olmsted, 94,
94n48; visitation levels at JOFI, 61–62, 74–77, 79,
86, 88, 107–8; visitor knowledge, 79, 90–91, 126–27;
visitor reception areas, 78, 84, 88, 97; “Year of the
Visitor,” 77; see also education; interpretation;
memorialization/memory
von Hoffman, Alexander, 110–11, 114
Voyageurs National Park, 68n49
Wade, Jeptha A., 22
Wakefield National Memorial Association, 10–11, 12
walking tours, 50–51, 67, 88, 88n21, 115
wallpaper, 45, 52, 71, 72, 80
Warren Commission, 41n52
Washington, George, 5, 7, 8, 9–11, 12, 13, 13n30, 13n32,
14–15; “Building X,” 10n16; George Washington’s
Birthplace National Monument, 10–11, 10n16, 15,
22; hatchet and cherry tree story, 9, 9n11; Life of
Washington (by Weems), 9–10, 23; Mount Vernon,
9n12, 11, 19n60; second childhood home replica at
Ferry Farm, 13; Washington family house at Pope’s
Creek, Virginia, 9–10; see also Longfellow House-
Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site
Washington Monument, 9
Watt, James, 82
Weems, Parson Mason Locke, 9–10, 23
Weinbaum, Paul, 110, 113, 113n40, 114
“What JFK Means to Me” essay contest, 87, 131
Whig Party, 6
White, Peregrine, 7n8
Whitesell, Stephen, 57n1, 77, 79–80, 79n99, 83
White supremacy, 7n8, 11
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 13
William Howard Taft National Historic Site, 15, 15n41
William McKinley Birthplace Memorial in Niles, OH,
24–25
William, Ryan, 32n18
Wilson, Woodrow, 14, 17
Winter, Diane, 52
Wirth, Christine, 121n67
Wirth, Conrad, 124
169
Index Index
women’s history: African American women, 7n8; in
educational programming, 19n60, 91–92, 107; First
Ladies, 14, 22, 33, 99; Gilded Age “public
motherhood,” 11; motherhood and memorializing
presidents, 6, 11; role in preserving and recreating
presidential history, 5–6, 8, 9n12, 11–12; Rose
Kennedy as architect of memory, 109–14; Rose
Kennedy as mother and matriarch, 3–4, 48, 64, 92,
112, 128; suffrage, 7n8, 11
Women’s History Month, 92
Women’s Roosevelt Memorial Association (WRMA),
12
World War I, 28, 33, 35, 89
World War II, 5, 34, 59, 59n8, 136
“Year of the Visitor,” 77
Yorba Linda, California, 15n34, 19
Zarrelli, Sara Patton, 126
Zenzen, Joan, 44n65
Zerbey, Benjamin, 43n61, 44–45, 51–52, 57n1, 57n3, 58,
62, 66
