Tuesday, January 29, 1946

January 29, 1946

JFK attends a meeting of Gold Star mothers at the American Legion Hall in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Dave Powers meets him at the Bellevue where Jack was renting a room and they take the elevated train to the afternoon meeting.

On the way to the hall, JFK looks down from the tracks on the neighborhoods of Charlestown when Powers tells him, “this is almost a panaroma view of your district.” Jack responds “You know, this is the kind of district that I would like to represent.”

He talked for about ten minutes and Powers reports that he seemed awkward and clumsy and did not connect with his audience until he almost blurted out, “I think I know how you feel because my mother is a gold-star mother also.”

That seemed to turn the room almost instantly and after his talk, Kennedy was surrounded by dozens of women.

After leaving the hall, Kennedy and Powers decide to walk back to the Bellevue and stop in at Faneuil Hall and Paul Revere’s house. Kennedy asks Powers how he did? And, when Powers replies great, Jack asks, “Then you will be with me?”

Powers agrees right there to support Kennedy and not his boyhood chum.

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