FACING PAGE: AMHERST COLLEGE ARCHIVES; LEFT: DICK FISH ’63
Kennedy rode in a motorcade along South Pleasant Street with Amherst President Calvin Plimpton ’39. The visit was a tribute to Robert Frost, who’d read at Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961. After the poet’s death in January 1963, Kennedy adviser John J. McCloy ’16 invited the president to campus.
Some 10,000 people came to Amherst on a crisp fall day to witness John F. Kennedy’s visit. “There is privilege here,” the president said in an address in the cage, “and with privilege goes responsibility.” The speech was unusual in its passionate support of the arts. “I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist,” he said, in what turned out to be one of his last public appearances.
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