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When JFK Came to Town
Some 10,000 came to hear the president’s 10-minute speech in Ashland. This photo and others from the day hang in the Ashland airport, now named JFK Memorial Airport.
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When JFK Came to Town
U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, far right, and Wisconsin Governor John Reynolds walk with President John Kennedy on his visit to Ashland, Wisconsin.
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When JFK Came to Town
The September 25, 1963, issue of the Duluth News-Tribune shows the crowd for the president's speech at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Fifty years ago, in 1963, freshman Senator Gaylord Nelson encouraged President John F. Kennedy to stage a national tour to raise awareness of environmental issues – something for which he felt the country was ripe. The president agreed, but declined to add Wisconsin to the tour. Shortly before the tour, in an unrelated matter, President Kennedy angered Gaylord, who in a fit of fury asked his aide, William Bechtel, to drive him over to the White House.
“Then I sat outside the White House for a long, long time,” recalls William, 89, and still living in Washington, D.C.
Gaylord finally returned.
“All the steam is gone, you see, and then he says, ‘By the way, the president wants to come to Ashland.’
“The president wanted to disarm Nelson, and it had worked,” William laughs. “This is what Nelson had wanted all along – to get the president to Ashland to endorse the Apostle Islands park idea.”
And so, on September 24, 1963 – almost exactly two months before he would be assassinated in Dallas – John Kennedy stepped off a Boeing 707 jet at the Duluth International Airport with 15 minutes to spare – an unexpected thrill for the Duluthians who arrived early for a chance glance at the popular president, according to the Duluth News Tribune.
But, first, with storms looming, President Kennedy stepped aboard a military helicopter to fly to Ashland. Gaylord and another Democratic operative and Apostle Islands booster, Martin Hanson, talked to the helicopter pilot in advance, instructing him to fly low over the Apostle Islands. While William Bechtel raced at 85 mph in a car in an effort to greet the military helicopter in Ashland, Martin sat next to the president, talking up the 21 Lake Superior islands called the Apostles.
The Wisconsin Conservation Commission was in the process of buying Apostle Islands land for a state park. Gaylord wanted a national park on the islands, something that would happen in 1970 with creation of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.
“Kennedy was most interested in the number of sailboats,” William recalls. “They reminded him of Cape Cod, so you see the sailboats were an unexpected benefit.”
In his speech, the president credited Gaylord with suggesting the trip, and then said, “Anyone who flies over those islands, as we just did, looks at that long beach, looks at those marshes, looks at what a tremendous natural resource this can be, and is now, for nearly 50 million Americans, who will live in this section of the United States in the coming years, must realize how significant this occasion is.”
Further in his speech, he continued lauding the region’s characteristics. “Lake Superior, the Apostle Islands, the Bad River area, are all unique. … In an age of congestion and pollution, manmade noise and dirt, Lake Superior has a beauty that millions can enjoy.”
The speech lasted 10 minutes, the entire stop 20, but for those who were there, the president left an impression that remains 50 years later.
“The general feeling was that this was the greatest day in Ashland’s history. Everybody was excited to the limit,” said John Chapple, who covered the story for the Daily Press, quoted when that paper marked the event’s 20th anniversary.
Rollie Hicks, 69, of Eau Claire, remembers sitting in the student union at Northland College and his friends saying, “The president is going to be out at the airport. Let’s go.”
A mathematics and physics major, Rollie was apolitical and didn’t have much interest, but his friends persuaded him. The three Northland College men drove over to the Ashland Airport, later renamed JFK Memorial Airport, surrounded by snow fencing – the sheriff’s department had arranged parking for 5,000 cars on 80 acres near the airport, which normally had parking for 25.
Rollie and his friends stood at the fence line, Hicks with a Northland College booster button in his pocket. A shorter man, his friends lifted Rollie so he could see the president speak.
In talking about the event recently, Rollie was surprised to hear that 10,000 or more people were there (a common reaction from others who attended the speech). The military helicopter made an impression – it was the first one he had seen – and all his focus was on the president, up close and in color.
“He was handsome and had a distinctive presence.”
William Bechtel jokes that Kennedy, a practicing Catholic, was so charismatic that he had the power to convert even hardline Protestants. The joke has meaning for William – in the 1920s and ’30s, his father was a minister at the Hammond Avenue Presbyterian Church in Superior, later enjoying a distinguished career in Detroit. By 1963, William’s parents were retired and living in Herbster and drove to Ashland for the speech.
“They were always cool to Kennedy because he was a Catholic,” William says. “Well, my mother came back gushing. ‘Did you see that wonderful smile?’ she asked.”
Kennedy gave his most on-point speech about conservation in his entire five-day, 11-state “conservation tour,” according to historians; later speeches strayed from that topic. The president was walking back to his helicopter when he made an abrupt turnabout to Rollie. “He shook my hand, and I handed him the Northland College booster pin.”
John Kennedy had challenged Rollie’s generation with his “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” inaugural speech in 1961.
“I think after that visit,” says Rollie, “it sunk in for me.”
William emphasizes the importance of the president’s speech that day for the Apostle Islands and the nation. Even though JFK stopped short of endorsing the idea of a national park there, and though conservation as a national agenda didn’t take hold for another seven years, “he gave prestige to the Apostle Islands, gave us a symbol to raise the Apostle Islands, that this wasn’t just a town park, it was of national importance.”
Rollie, who grew up in Ashland, devoted his life to public service as a result of that chance handshake. The apolitical college student went on to serve on the Democratic National Committee, the Electoral College in 2008, and is vice chair of the Democratic Party of Eau Claire County. He kayaks with his wife in the Apostle Islands every summer.
“I don’t want to overplay it, but it certainly was a memorable time,” Rollie says. “He was an inspiring person for a lot of the young people at the time to serve in different ways.”
On the president’s return later that day to Duluth, some 50,000 rain-drenched people lined the 5-mile parade route as his motorcade drove down Miller Trunk Highway. He addressed 5,000 at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
The president impressed thousands, but one young woman had a special one-on-one encounter. Tempe Debe was a 24-year-old from the Fond du Lac Reservation. She worked in downtown Duluth as an executive secretary and guessed that JFK might stay at the Hotel Duluth (now Greysolon Plaza). So on her lunch hour the day after his speech, she walked to the hotel, where she stood and stood some more. After 30 minutes, she got ready to leave when a door opened. Two guys in suits, cords in their ears, stepped out. A man walked through them and toward her.
The man grabbed her hand and said, “I’m John Kennedy.”
“I was stunned,” she recalls. “All I could think about is how perfect he looked – his smile, his hair, his suit. I’d never seen a man look like that.”
Then Tempe found courage and introduced herself. “I’m Temprance Elizabeth Debe Flyckt, but my friends call me Tempe.”
JFK said he would call her Tempe. Then he asked questions, lots of questions: What did she do? What did she want to do? Where was she from? He asked about the reservation and about her Ojibwe mother and World War I veteran father.
“It seemed time stood still,” says Tempe, 73. “He wanted to know what I liked about Duluth, and I told him the Lake, the water. He said that this country was beautiful, and that he, too, loved the water.”
President Kennedy told Tempe to look him up once she graduated, that he’d find a place for her. “We need people like you,” he told her. “Now until we meet again, go forward.”
With that, he walked back across the street, turning once to wave.
“My life changed that day. I was never the same. I felt anything was possible, and I never settled for less.”
Tempe went on to get an associate degree, then a bachelor’s and finally, her master of social work degree. She helped to start the first preschool program at Fond du Lac. She has worked in the Twin Cities and on the reservation, she says, trying to define mental health from a Native American perspective. After retirement, she worked on a doctorate degree.
“To meet someone like that and have him talk to you like a friend, it gave me the courage to step up to the plate. He helped me find my voice.”
Julie Buckles’ first book, Paddling to Winter, will be released by Raven Productions this fall.