The other presidential inauguration I’ll always remember

Sam Smith - In January 1961, I made my only foray into the world of network television. I was hired for Kennedy's inauguration by CBS News as a news editor. Along with fellow WWDC newsman Ed Taishoff, I sat all day capped with a headset in a ballroom of the Hotel Washington , turning phone calls from CBS correspondents into stories then placed on Walter Cronkite's personal news ticker. If there was one thing Ed and I knew as local news guys, it was how to take news from callers, turn it into copy and get it on the air fast.

But when the calls weren't coming in, I looked around the room and tried to figure out what the scores of CBS minions and executives were doing. As far as I could tell, Ed and I and a few people in front of dials and screens were doing most of the work. Yet we were badly out-numbered and underpaid by men in suits who tore around yelling and looking concerned or angry or wanting to know where something was. It all didn't look like much fun and I think it was when I decided I didn't want to be a network anchorman after all.

Meanwhile, the military draft was breathing down on me and the Coast Guard had accepted me for its officer candidate school.  I would end up as operations officer aboard the CG cutter Spar out of Bristol RI. In November 1963 we were assigned to take two 40 foot patrol boats to be used to guard John F. Kennedy when he was vacationing in Florida. At a flank speed of 15 knots it had taken us days to get down there and days to get back. I had the conn as we finally pulled up to the dock at Bristol with everyone anxious to go ashore.

We weren't more than a hundred feet off when a crew member came out on the buoy deck below and called up to the bridge, "President Kennedy's been shot." I thought: what a stupid thing to say. I edged the ship up gently to the pier, got the lines properly secured and went below. Only then did I realize that it was true. Despite days away from home port, no one left the ship for three hours as we huddled around the mess deck television.