The Power of Words

 

I just finished reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s An Unfinished Love Story – A personal history of the 1960s. This is a must-read for history lovers, especially if you came of age in the decade of the 60s. It will take you through all the milestones etched in your memory: the first televised presidential debates; Kennedy’s inaugural address; the Cuban Missile Crisis; and on and on. There are triumphs, such as the Civil Rights Act (1964), Voting Rights Act (1965), and Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon in 1969. And there are tragedies: the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK; riots in many of our great cities; and of course, the Vietnam War and the debacle of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Richard “Dick” Goodwin was in his twenties when he joined the Kennedy campaign in 1960 as an assistant to chief speech writer Ted Sorenson. During a remarkable career in public life, Dick Goodwin worked for John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Eugene McCarthy, and Robert Kennedy. His fingerprints and his words are found in major speeches and policy declarations for all these men. Pick a major policy initiative of the 60s and Dick Goodwin was there.

I first became aware of Doris Kearns Goodwin in 1994 when she appeared in Ken Burns’s documentary, Baseball. She recalled listening to Brooklyn Dodger games on the radio and keeping score to give her father a play-by-play account when he arrived home from work. She was six years old and convinced she was keeping her father’s love of the Dodgers alive. I’ve been a fan of DKG ever since hearing that story. In addition to being a baseball fan, she has compiled a distinguished career as a presidential historian. Her books include: Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream; Team of Rivals – the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln; Leadership in Turbulent Times.   

Dick Goodwin met Doris Kearns in 1972; they married and were together until his death in 2018 at the age of eighty-six. This book was their last collaborative effort, a sequential review of more than three hundred boxes of archival material Dick had accumulated over his years in public life. The fact that he died before the book was completed suggests the title: An Unfinished Love Story. That Doris went on to complete the project gives their story its exclamation point.

Beautifully written. Packed with emotion. Highly recommended. As I said in the beginning, this is a must-read, especially if you are of a certain age.

 

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