Monessen marks 55th anniversary of President Kennedy visit
President Kennedy greets people outside of the Washington County Courthouse October 13, 1962. Published April 23, 2006, with Remember When feature, "The JFK Mystique."
MONESSEN – People began filling a supermarket parking lot in Monessen three hours before President John F. Kennedy was to arrive there to campaign for Democratic candidates in a midterm election.
Police from throughout the Mon Valley were stationed in storefronts, members of the Secret Service were on rooftops and people were lined up on the streets at every point along Kennedy’s motorcade as it traveled Oct. 13, 1962, from McKeesport to this Westmoreland County city.
“The moment he started talking the crowd went silent,” said Jack Bergstein, a semiretired Monessen attorney who gave a presentation Saturday in Monessen Public Library to mark the 55th anniversary of the Kennedy visit.
Kennedy spent about 24 hours in the region, having first spoken in Aliquippa, Beaver County, a day before arriving in Monessen, and he spent the first night Downtown after appearing at the University of Pittsburgh.
Kennedy was late arriving in Monessen, an appearance that had been scheduled for 11:30 a.m. His motorcade was loud as it made its way through Webster, Rostraver Township and onto Monessen via Route 906. He greeted the cheering crowds while seated on the trunk of a black Lincoln convertible.
A coal truck pulled out in front of the motorcade at Turkey Hollow Road in Rostraver, nearly striking two police officers on motorcycles.
“It just kept on going,” Bergstein said.
About 25,000 people were waiting for him in an A&P supermarket lot and nearby along Sixth Street and Donner Avenue. American flags attached to parachutes were dropped from the sky. Billboards everywhere welcomed the president to the city, which was home to a sprawling steel mill and a large majority of Democratic voters. It was the first visit to Monessen by a sitting U.S. president.
The press described Kennedy that day as being “nattily dressed in a black suit” and highly suntanned, Bergstein said.
He said many of the issues Kennedy discussed in his six minute speech ring true to today, including partisan politics, jobs and the need to increase the minimum wage, said Bergstein before a recording of Kennedy’s speech was played for the audience.
“The laws must be passed by the Congress, by the House and Senate, and I cannot believe that this country in 1962, after passing through a recession in 1958, after passing through a recession in 1960, after living as this state has lived, with unemployment, is going to decide that the destiny of this country should be turned over to the Republican party, because I can tell you that they are against progress, always have been, are now, and always will be,” Kennedy said that day.
He was there to campaign for Dick Dilworth, then-mayor of Philadelphia, who would go on to lose his bid that year for the office of Pennsylvania Governor.
Kennedy vowed to return to Monessen in 1964, a promise that wasn’t kept because he was assassinated 13 months later in Dallas.
However, that 1962 campaign tour ended in the small city of Washington in Washington County, where he spoke at the courthouse.