A Concrete Memorial to Camelot

After 16 years, the John F. Kennedy Library is to open at last

The Kennedy clan will be on hand, of course, as will Arthur Schlesinger Jr., McGeorge Bundy, Pierre Salinger and about 6,000 other folks touched by the spirit of Camelot during the reign of J.F.K. With so many luminaries expected, an invitation to Saturday's dedication of the John F. Kennedy Library has become the hottest ticket in Boston since the 1978 playoff between the Red Sox and the Yankees in Fenway Park. The present President, Jimmy Carter, was invited, but ex-Presidents Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon were not. That was the decision of the Kennedy sisters--Eunice Shriver, Patricia Lawford and Jean Smith; they outvoted Brother Ted, who did not favor the public snub.

In fact, say insiders, Ted Kennedy has delayed naming a committee to explore his own presidential candidacy until after the dedication because he does not want to shift the spotlight on Saturday away from the memory of Brother John. And besides, President Carter graciously agreed to give a salutatory speech.

Last week at the library, workers in the first-floor museum area were carefully positioning J.F.K.'s rocking chair in a re-creation of the Oval Office. A replica of the large presidential desk was being moved from a storeroom; the original desk, still in the White House, was given by Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878. On the library's desk will rest the coconut shell on which Naval Lieutenant Kennedy carved a call for help after PT-109 was sunk by a Japanese destroyer off Guadalcanal in 1943. Under the supervision of former Kennedy Aide and Curator David Powers, the library has amassed a collection that includes 13,000 objects of Kennedy memorabilia (including an alligator desk set given Kennedy by General Charles de Gaulle and a gold-and-silver bowl presented by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie). There are also 28 million pages of documents, 115,000 still photographs, 24,000 volumes and 1,200 recorded interviews. One million visitors are expected annually to trek to the handsome nine-story building of white precast concrete, overlooking Dorchester Bay on the University of Massachusetts' Harbor Campus.

The Kennedys began to plan and raise funds for the $12 million library, which is to be donated to the Government and operated by the National Archives, within a year after the 1963 assassination. Their chosen site was on the campus of Harvard University. But the start of construction was delayed as Cambridge residents objected, fearful that library tourists would create more traffic snarls around already congested Harvard Square.

The university then proposed splitting the library into two parts--a Harvard research collection and a museum and tourist center elsewhere. Meanwhile, UMass offered the scenic harbor site. One drawback: it had once been used as a garbage dump. There was talk as well of more rural settings. But Widow Jacqueline argued that Jack was a man of the city, not the country, and that the library should be near the sea, which he loved. Finally, Ted Kennedy announced to a meeting of the library's board: "If Jackie wants her husband's presidential library in Dorchester, it will be in Dorchester." Architect I.M. Pei prepared new designs (he eventually made a total of five before the Kennedys--chiefly Jackie--approved). The new plans featured more flamboyant geometry and a glass pavilion with a view of the ocean.

Presidential libraries are a 20th century phenomenon. The papers of 23 Presidents are housed in the Library of Congress in Washington. But Presidents starting with Hoover have preferred that their papers rest in their own libraries. Some scholars have argued that it is more convenient to centralize presidential collections, rather than scatter them across the nation in what Columbia Historian Henry Graff terms "the pyramids of our times." Yet, as the National Archives points out, a quadrennial flood of documents by the millions would probably overwhelm any single institution. Also, as one Government archivist concedes, "not all scholars live in Washington."

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