Stan Stearns dies; captured immortal image at JFK’s funeral
“One exposure on a roll of 36 exposures,” Stan Stearns marveled decades later. The young news photographer, in one instinctive click, captured one of the most poignant and reproduced images of the past half-century: little John F. Kennedy Jr., grief-stricken, saluting his father’s coffin as it rolled by on a caisson. (WaPo)
Swearing in of Lyndon B. Johnson as President, Love Field, Dallas, Texas, 11/23/1963
This is one of a sequence of images taken aboard Air Force One — not the most famous with LBJ’s hand on the Bible taking the oath of office. To see all the photos, go here and enter the keyword Dallas.
Read LBJ’s diary for that day.
LBJ Library photo by Cecil Stoughton
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.
John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address 1961
If buildings could fly
TWA Terminal at Idlewild (now JFK) Airport, Eero Saarinen, New York, NY, 1962. © Ezra Stoller
The Newsman Leaveth
After 36 years, Jim Lehrer will leave the anchor chair of PBS’s NewsHour program next month. Below, a bit of his early history in journalism:
Jim Lehrer began his coverage of President Kennedy’s visit to Dallas at Love Field, as a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald. He was to file a report on the president’s arrival and departure from the airport. Lehrer watched as the president broke protocol and went to the fence to shake hands with the excited crowd. “Everything about it struck me as extraordinary,” he recalled. In less than an hour his assignment changed. Instead of a report on Love Field, Lehrer wrote a front-page story on the valiant efforts of the Secret Service. Later, he went to the police station where he remained all night. “I was there when they brought in Lee Harvey Oswald. I was there when they brought him into this news conference in the middle of the night.” Standing near Lehrer was Jack Ruby. (via Covering Chaos | The Sixth Floor Museum)
(Photo: Jim Leherer, covering the JFK assassination for the Dallas Times Herald/KRLD-TV, KDFW Collection)
1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles
(Garry Winogrand)
Jackie Kennedy’s pink hat is missing
“It’s one of the mysteries. And there is nobody around anymore who can ever fill that in.”
life:
January 20, 1961, was a bitterly cold day in Washington. And yet, as John and Jackie Kennedy set out on foot from the White House to the Capitol … the sense of cheer and confidence was palpable…. LIFE.com presents a gallery of photographs — the vast majority of them never published before — from JFK’s inauguration.
