This story was written in response to the StoryWorth question, "What’s the first major news story you can remember living through as a child?" It is also posted on our blog.
On November 8th, 1960, Democrat John F Kennedy defeated Republican Richard Nixon for President of the United States. I was 14 years old, in 9th grade at Roxborough High School.
Of course, I was aware of the election but had no real preference as to the winner. However, I knew my father was for Nixon. I guess I’d never thought about whether he was a Democrat or Republican. And, honestly, it didn’t matter to me. That will probably surprise most of you reading this.😊
I should put the 1960 election into context: Dwight D. Eisenhower was the incumbent president and the former Army Five-star General who led allied forces to victory in WWII. Not surprisingly, he was enormously popular -- Eisenhower's Vice President was Richard Nixon. I saw no reason to disagree with my father’s choice. Nixon became my candidate too.
My dad was following the election results on TV throughout the evening of the 8th. As the night wore on, it was clear no winner would be decided until well into the night – or perhaps even the next day.
What I was not aware of was how narrow the race would be. The election was expected to be close. Americans were glued to their televisions until long after dawn. Coverage of the changing returns revealed some of the stresses and growing pains of early television news, which was little more than a decade old at the time.
NBC and CBS, wary of granting a head start to their competitor, each moved up its broadcast from 9 p.m. to the early evening. ABC News, showing how much of an also-ran it was at the time, interrupted its election coverage to run episodes of “Bugs Bunny” and “The Rifleman.”
The Big Two news divisions paid lavishly for their election-night coverage — commercials alone would not be enough to cover all expenses. NBC opted for a new space-age set at 30 Rock. Chet Huntley and David Brinkley sat at an X-shaped desk suspended above the floor of Studio 8-H, now home to "Saturday Night Live."
When I left for school the morning of November 9th, the election still had not been called.
Later that morning, Brinkley announced: “At 7:19 a.m. Eastern time, Senator Kennedy was elected president of the United States. The NBC Victory Desk has just given California to Kennedy, and that gives him the election.” (NBC proved to have been premature: After absentee ballots were counted the next week, California’s 32 electoral votes were assigned to Nixon.)
The electoral vote was the closest in any presidential election since 1916. In the popular vote, Kennedy's margin of victory was among the closest ever in American history.
Almost an hour after noon Eastern time, NBC interrupted “Play Your Hunch,” starring Merv Griffin, with the image of Nixon's press secretary, Herbert Klein, in Los Angeles. Klein was reading Nixon's telegram assuring Kennedy that "you will have the united support of all Americans as you lead the nation."
At about 3 p.m. that afternoon, I burst through our front door. I remember my dad sitting at the kitchen table, "Is it true?" My dad nodded.
Kennedy, 43, was the youngest man ever to be elected president of the United States. He was also the first Catholic to become president.
It would be almost exactly three years later that the second news story I remember crashed into the halls of Roxborough High School. President John F. Kennedy was dead, brought down by an assassin’s bullet.
Citations:
No Concession, No Sleep: Glued to the TV on Election Night 1960 - The New York Times (nytimes.com) by Michael Beschloss, October 29, 2016
John F. Kennedy elected president - HISTORY
Presidential Election of 1960 (270towin.com)