Thursday, January 20, 2011

It Was 50 Years Ago Today

Fifty years ago, I watched the inauguration of John F. Kennedy on a small black-and-white TV set. I was an English major with a love of poetry, and the only thing I remember about what I saw is that Robert Frost read a poem that he'd written for the occasion, or he was supposed to. The sunlight and the wind made it too hard from him to see the paper, so instead of reading that poem, he recited "The Gift Outright," one he'd written many years before. My memory being what it is, I don't know if this really happened, but that's the way it is in my head.

Update: Since everything's on the Internet, I did a Google search. By golly, my memory was pretty much on the money.

1 comment:

Richard R. said...

Thanks for that, Bill, I'd forgotten the scene and not read the poem. You gave me a very nice few minutes of enjoyment with that link.