Ike and 1960
I remember little about Ike. I do recall New Years Eve, December 31, 1959. After our midnight watch service at Illmo (now Scott City) Baptist Church we headed to a local restaurant with other church families. This was a rare event for us. We always went to bed early, but every year our church brought in the new year with a circle of prayer, after which we headed straight home and went to bed. Not so on the last night of the 1950s.
That night there were images on the walls of the restaurant commemorating the decade. There was a large picture of Ike, and another of Khrushchev. The latter had a mean, mad snarl on his face. At barely eight years old, all I remember knowing for sure was that the Russian leader was a bad, evil man. That's the sum total of my memories about Eisenhower's Presidency.
But what happened in 1960 politics was burned into my psyche. I remember many details of the 1960 Presidential election as if I had been an adult rather than a boy when it happened. I remember it vividly because of the strong anti-Catholic sentiment that marked my family. (Fortunately this prejudice is not in my family any more.)
My dad, a Baptist preacher, was horrified at the prospect of a Catholic President. He could see images of the mark of the beast, of the anti-Christ, and was repulsed at the thought of a USA President kneeling to kiss the ring of the Pope. I remember the election of 1960 because my dad was on the warpath. He was on a mission to save the world, and I had a front row seat to watch the Apocalypse.
Dad was irate that Johnson agreed to run as VP with Kennedy. Believing LBJ had signed his own political death warrant, Dad wrote him a scathing letter, which prompted a letter from Johnson in response. LBJ actually signed it, and said he could not believe a Pastor could say such terrible things. Dad was wrong, Johnson was right. We still have the letter, but for obvious reasons we have never shown it around much.
My Grandpa Marshall, also a Baptist preacher, took his opposition to Kennedy to the pulpit. He preached with all his might that Kennedy needed to be defeated. This was huge, because my Grandpa had always been a yellow dog Democrat, a to-the-death lover of FDR. Poor Grandpa—after preaching against Kennedy, he couldn't bring himself to vote for a Republican. Thus, after all his bluster, in the solitude of a voting booth, he voted for Kennedy.
That night there were images on the walls of the restaurant commemorating the decade. There was a large picture of Ike, and another of Khrushchev. The latter had a mean, mad snarl on his face. At barely eight years old, all I remember knowing for sure was that the Russian leader was a bad, evil man. That's the sum total of my memories about Eisenhower's Presidency.
But what happened in 1960 politics was burned into my psyche. I remember many details of the 1960 Presidential election as if I had been an adult rather than a boy when it happened. I remember it vividly because of the strong anti-Catholic sentiment that marked my family. (Fortunately this prejudice is not in my family any more.)
My dad, a Baptist preacher, was horrified at the prospect of a Catholic President. He could see images of the mark of the beast, of the anti-Christ, and was repulsed at the thought of a USA President kneeling to kiss the ring of the Pope. I remember the election of 1960 because my dad was on the warpath. He was on a mission to save the world, and I had a front row seat to watch the Apocalypse.
Dad was irate that Johnson agreed to run as VP with Kennedy. Believing LBJ had signed his own political death warrant, Dad wrote him a scathing letter, which prompted a letter from Johnson in response. LBJ actually signed it, and said he could not believe a Pastor could say such terrible things. Dad was wrong, Johnson was right. We still have the letter, but for obvious reasons we have never shown it around much.
My Grandpa Marshall, also a Baptist preacher, took his opposition to Kennedy to the pulpit. He preached with all his might that Kennedy needed to be defeated. This was huge, because my Grandpa had always been a yellow dog Democrat, a to-the-death lover of FDR. Poor Grandpa—after preaching against Kennedy, he couldn't bring himself to vote for a Republican. Thus, after all his bluster, in the solitude of a voting booth, he voted for Kennedy.