JFK Staffer Shares Administration Stories

Hear more from Sue Mortensen, a Spokane guest who brought a fascinating collection of mementos from her years serving as a press aide to President John F. Kennedy, and see a gallery of draft speeches and other documents she kept from her time in the White House.

JFK Archive Owner — Sue Mortensen Vogelsinger visited the June 2015 ANTIQUES ROADSHOW event in Spokane to discuss her collection of JFK memorabilia — collected from her time working for Kennedy from 1958 to 1963 — with appraiser Martin Gammon.

Jan 11, 2016

BY Luke A. Crafton

In 1958, Sue Mortensen was a bright young lady fresh out of college when she landed a job working for Sen. John F. Kennedy’s nascent presidential campaign. This experience catapulted her a few short years later into the Kennedy White House, serving as a staff assistant under the president’s press secretary, Pierre Salinger. She worked closely and intensely with Kennedy during his brief time in office, helping with the drafting and revision of numerous speeches — a process that in that pre-laptop era still produced mountains of paper. And she was part of the president’s entourage on the fateful campaign trip to Dallas in late November 1963.

Owner Interview: 1961 - 1963 John F. Kennedy Archive

Transcript

INTERVIEWER: What does it feel like to reflect on having been so closely involved in those experiences that many of us have learned about in school?

GUEST: Quite honestly, much of the time it feels totally unbelievable. I did that? I was there? That's what it feels like. It's very hard to believe that it really happened.

INTERVIEWER: Your experience with the editorial process of working with the President on the, I can imagine, many, many speeches that were constantly in production in the White House, talk about what that felt like.

GUEST: One of my best examples is the speech that he was giving at Yale. It was a very important speech. I think it was an economic speech, I've forgotten what it was on. He changed ... he re-dictated major parts of the speech between New York and New Haven, which is a very short flight, and so I had all the changes in this major speech. He was going to a very brief reception, and then was going to give the speech. I had to have it done by the time he came. I asked the Secret Service to get me a typewriter under where he was going to speak, and we were literally handing pages up. But I didn't have time, thank goodness, until it was over to really get nervous about it.

INTERVIEWER: Talk a little bit more about the lighter side of your experience.

GUEST: Of course, I did work closely with him so I did know him. At some point, you get to the point that you realize he's not mad. He's not ... Whatever's going on or he's going to say, "This is fine." You’d be walking by his office and if he saw you and he had a question about something ... One morning I was walking by. He was reading the paper. Everybody read the paper as much as they could and as many as they could before you got to work, because he was bound to ask something. He grabbed me and said, "What is the meaning of this?" I didn't have any idea what he was even looking at.

I don't know, I made a wild guess because I'd heard some bit of news halfway. I happened to be right. Had I been wrong, it wouldn't have bothered him in the least. He would have just laughed about it. He was just fun to be around, really was. I think much of what is said about him, and has been said about him, is indeed true. He was, of course, an incredible presence. Part of it was his youth at that time. We were used to a much older White House and a much older President, so that was very exciting and his very gorgeous family was exciting. He was fast, funny, smart. He was an amazing person to be around.

On Mortensen's time serving Pres. Kennedy: “Quite honestly, much of the time it feels totally unbelievable. … I did that? I was there? … That's what it feels like. It's very hard to believe it really happened.”

Sue brought a personal archive of her mementos from the time she spent serving the president to the Spokane ROADSHOW in June 2015, sharing it and her fascinating story with appraiser Martin Gammon, who appraised the collection for between $60,000 and $80,000.

This slideshow gives an up-close view of some of Sue’s most interesting keepsakes from her time in the West Wing, including a photograph with the president in a ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Oriskany; a copy of the presidential schedule for November 22, 1963; and a number of typescript works-in-progress that offer vivid and intriguing glimpses of JFK's thinking during the intense and continual process of drafting presidential speeches — as well as of his awful handwriting.

In the accompanying video Sue also tells us more about her personal recollections of JFK, and her own poignant experience of one of the most shocking tragedies in American political history.