Over the last few years I've been documenting the progress of the digital archive being built at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. The archive itself (described here) has been assembled with EMC products.
On January 3rd of this year I decided to bring my parents into the museum. It was an EMC holiday, and it was also the day of their 52nd anniversary. I was pretty excited about the announcement of the digital archive, and wanted to share that with them, given their many memories of his public service, both in Massachusetts, and to the nation.
For the first ten years of my life, I lived in Dorchester, Massachusetts, which is now home to the JFK Library. My Dad had sat a few rows away from a young Senator John Kennedy as he spoke at a local lecture. He had even received a letter of congratulations from him when he was accepted to college (note to Dad: find that letter and let's try and get it scanned into the archive!). "Jack" Kennedy was a Massachusetts kid, who went to a Massachusetts college, and served the people of Massachusetts as a State Senator. My parents remember him, and his call to public service, very well.
As we walked through the museum, the Cuban Missile Crisis stood out as a major memory in their lives. They feared the total destruction of America and the Soviet Union, and were often glued to the TV, not knowing whether a nuclear war would occur. During our tour we also sat and watched the first-ever televised presidential press conference, further evidence of how live news coverage impacted the era in which my parents began to raise a family.
Today David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and Caroline Kennedy, President of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, officially unveiled the nation’s first online digitized presidential archive. The Digital Archive contains materials from President Kennedy’s official and personal records. It's available to teachers, students, scholars, authors and the general public through any internet connection at www.jfklibrary.org.
I encourage you to take the time and click on the link above. Search is accurate and fast, and the navigation on the website is excellent.
The video below is a great description of the archive, and includes commentary by archivists from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), employees of the JFK Library and Museum, and some of my co-workers from EMC.
Given the impact that the Cuban Missile Crisis had on my parents, I decided to search the online archive to find more information that was not available during our museum tour. I found pictures of the leaders who met to discuss America's options. I found an audio of (and listened to) a phone call between President Kennedy and former President Dwight Eisenhower. I found a wealth of material describing the efforts that the administration undertook before President Kennedy unveiled the plan for a naval blockade.
Of course, I found the very speech that President Kennedy gave on the night of October 22, 1962, with my parents watching and listening on the edge of their seats. I was able to download the document and have inserted it below:
Life is a circle. My parents moved through the turbulent sixties, out of Dorchester, raised a kid that would go on to build information storage systems (with Russian co-workers!), and then marveled as so many of those JFK memories were preserved onto the information storage systems that their son had helped to build. Their granddaughter (my daughter) now goes to college in Dorchester, at UMASS Boston.
We sat in the cafeteria at the museum and talked about all of these things as we took in the view of beautiful Boston Harbor.
They say that the launch of the digital archive will increase the number of visitors to the museum.
I believe it.
Steve
Twitter: @SteveTodd
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