Tube City Almanac

November 22, 2013

Looking Back: McKeesport's Kennedy Connection

Category: History || By

Other Tube City Almanac stories about Kennedy and McKeesport:

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McKeesport Mayor Andrew "Greeky" Jakomas greets President John F. Kennedy upon his arrival in the city, Oct. 13, 1962. Kennedy, campaigning on behalf of Democratic congressional candidates, spoke at what was then a municipal parking lot on Lysle Boulevard between city hall and The Daily News Building.

"The first time I came to this city was in 1947, when Mr. Nixon and I engaged in our first debate," Kennedy said, to the laughter and applause of the audience. "He won that debate, and we went onto other things. We came here to debate the Taft-Hartley law, which he was for and I was against."

Audio of Kennedy's speech in McKeesport is available via YouTube.


Here, dignitaries, including sculptor Percy Bryant Baker, unveil a statue of Kennedy on Feb. 28, 1965 along Lysle Boulevard, at the exact location where Kennedy spoke in 1962.

Fundraising for the Kennedy statue in McKeesport began almost immediately following the president's assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. McKeesport's Kennedy statue is nine feet tall and stands on an eight-foot granite base, and is believed to be among the first --- if not the first --- statue of Kennedy erected following his death.

The sculptor, Baker, was a British-born artist then in his early 80s. He sculpted five American presidents, including George Washington, Millard Fillmore and Grover Cleveland, and in 1910 had been commissioned by Queen Alexandra to create a bust of King Edward VII.

His most famous work, created after his emigration to the United States, is probably "Pioneer Woman," a statue that stands in Ponca City, Okla., but his bust of British wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, created in 1958, is part of the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery.

Kennedy's brother, the late U.S. Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy, in 1971 visited McKeesport and spoke at the statue.

Is the statue in McKeesport the world's oldest statue of Kennedy? It may be difficult to determine that. According to Wikipedia, a bust --- not a statue --- of Kennedy was dedicated on May 31, 1965 in Brooklyn, N.Y., three months after McKeesport's.






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