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W hen the wheels of the Boeing 707 carrying President John F. Kennedy kissed the Standiford Field runway at 5:44 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 13, 1962, tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union under Premier Nikita Khrushchev were already wound tight. Since the poorly executed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by U.S.-backed anti-Castro rebels had failed the previous year, Kennedy's audacious Russian counterpart had been regularly testing the young president's mettle — most notably by endorsing East Germany's construction of the 96-mile Berlin Wall and by bragging to the world that the Soviets were making missiles "like sausages" as the nuclear-arms race accelerated. In Cuba, the Russians were openly bolstering security for Fidel Castro's fedgling communist government by supplying both "defensive" military equipment and heated rhetoric about U.S. intentions toward the island, just 90 miles of the tip of Florida. So the Cold War now had twin powder kegs — Berlin and Havana — and as Kennedy stepped of the Air Force jet in Louisville, more than a tinge of pessimism was beginning to envelop a nuclear-frightened America. (It's no coincidence that Bob Dylan was composing the songs "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" that autumn. Or that the Saturday Evening Post had published the frst of three installments of the doomsday novel Fail-Safe the same week as Kennedy's trip.) But the 45-year-old president had reasons to be optimistic. Te National Aeronautics and Space Administration, started just four years earlier, had joined forces with corporate giants AT&T; and Bell Labs to launch the frst telecommunications satellite — Telstar I — in July, and Project Mercury astronaut Wally Schirra had furthered Kennedy's stated man-on-the-moon goal by completing six orbits of Earth on Oct. 3. Te Senate was under frm Democratic control by a margin of 65-35; the House count was also blue, by 264-173, coming into the November midterm congressional elections. And Kennedy — not yet familiar with Khrushchev's maskirovka (concealment by deception) strategy — bought Soviet denials of the August charge by New York Republican Sen. Kenneth Keating that ofensive missile launchers were being installed in Cuba. Despite Khrushchev's public antics, JFK thought he had a private agreement with the Soviet premier that there would be no nasty surprises before Election Day. It was Kennedy's third visit to Louisville. He'd been here in October 1956 as a senator who had nearly scored the nomination for vice president on Adlai Stevenson's Democratic ticket, speaking at (then) Bellarmine College, and he returned in October 1960 during his successful campaign for the presidency, addressing an estimated 30,000 Louisvillians at Jeferson Square not long after his opponent, Vice President Richard Nixon, had spoken there. Tis time he would provide a "major address" Barker's post-World War II term broke the monopoly), progressive Republicans William Cowger (mayor) and Marlow Cook (county judge) had taken over in 1961. Cook — whose name remains familiar with Louisvillians as the man who brought the Belle of Louisville back home — would be reelected in '65, and Cowger-chosen successor Kenneth Schmied (mayors were limited to one term before 1986) moved into City Hall. Kennedy knew the Republican cemented hold on Kentucky's Senate seats (independent-minded G.O.P. Sen. John Sherman Cooper had been re-elected in 1960) would be tough to crack, given Morton's moderation, his ties to Louisville and his recent stint as chairman of the Republican National Committee. Te president also knew that there would be some slippage of his party's huge House majority in Kentucky — at the time 7-1 Democratic (a true mind-blower, considering today's So the Cold War now had twin powder kegs — Berlin and Havana — and as Kennedy stepped off the Air Force jet in Louisville, more than a tinge of pessimism was beginning to envelop a nuclearfrightened America. at Freedom Hall supporting, in large part, local Democratic congressional candidates Wilson Wyatt Jr. and Frank Burke — the former having served a term as Louisville mayor (1941-'45) and the latter a future mayor (1969-'73). Wyatt, the state's current lieutenant governor under Gov. Bert T. Combs and a prominent Louisville-born attorney whose name would head the law frm Wyatt Tarrant & Combs, was trying to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Truston Morton, another River City native (whose brother was running for a House seat in Maryland), while Burke was intent on defending his two-term 3rd District House seat from hard-right Republican Gene Snyder. Te Roman Catholic president — the nation's frst — would then spend Saturday night at the downtown Sheraton Seelbach Hotel and attend Sunday-morning Mass on the 14th before fying on to same-day campaign stops in Niagara Falls, Bufalo and New York City. Oddly enough, Louisville was not Democratic territory at the time. Although the city and Jeferson County had pretty much been run by Democrats since 1933 (only Republican County Judge Horace total reversal, with only John Yarmuth's 3rd District remaining Democratic). Redistricting was about to eliminate one blue seat, and early Barry Goldwater supporter Snyder was proving to be a tiger of a candidate. In the staf-written notes Kennedy brought with him to Louisville (preserved by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum), the president is warned to watch out — "Snyder is a Neanderthal." T he announcement on Oct. 6 that JFK was coming to Louisville punctuated a signifcant week in American civil-rights history. In Oxford, Miss., after months of being denied admission to the University of Mississippi, James Meredith — accompanied by federal marshals — fnally enrolled on Oct. 1, setting of a riot in which two people were killed and 200 marshals and National Guardsmen were injured. (Oct. 1 also happened to be the day entertainment icon Johnny Carson debuted on Te Tonight Show.) During the following three days, the U.S. fexed its biceps toward the Russians by resuming nuclear testing, and archconservative Sen. Goldwater, who would 10.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 63