Group seeks JFK memorabilia

The Canfield Historical
Society wants your
memories of the day the
Kennedys came to town.

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

CANFIELD — It happened on Lisbon Street right near the Village Green in 1960: Canfield resident Jack Dixey literally had a brush with American history.

John F. Kennedy came through the village with running mate Lyndon B. Johnson on an Oct. 9 campaign visit that also included other Northeast Ohio stops on a 100-mile trek.

Dixey was 6 years old.

“My father lifted me up, and my dad shook his hand,” Dixey recalled. “And I reached out and touched JFK’s hand as he was shaking my father’s hand.”

What Dixey wants to know now, of residents from all the towns JFK visited, is this: What are your memories? Share your stories with him. Do you have any pictures from that day, or any other memorabilia?

Dixey and the Canfield Historical Society want people to share what they remember before it’s too late, and the firsthand accounts of that hotly contested campaign against Richard Nixon are lost in history.

The historical society will compile the memories and display them, either at the society’s Bond House or the Mahoning Dispatch building, Dixey said. It will also make and sell DVDs as a fundraiser.

Canfield residents might want to watch for a special feature in this year’s Fourth of July: Jack and Jackie look-alikes in a 1960 Super 88 white convertible from the Classic Car Museum in Canton.

The museum doesn’t say it’s the car the Kennedys rode in, Dixey said. But it is at least just like it.

The hunt for memorabilia and stories will wind down by Labor Day, Dixey said. Contact him at (330) 533-4150.

“I’m doing this in anticipation of the upcoming election,” he said. “It will be nice to see what campaigns used to look like.”

The Kennedy campaign visit was a whirlwind. Ohio towns he visited besides Canfield included Canton, Akron, Alliance, Salem, Boardman, Youngstown and Warren. Then he flew out of the airport at Vienna. He did it all in one day.

People from Vienna to Warren lined his route to see him there, said retired Trumbull County and Warren city Judge Lynn Griffith Jr.

Griffith, who was running for county prosecutor at the time, got to stand behind Kennedy with other politicians on a stage in town.

“It was a huge crowd — it extended clear across the courthouse park,” he said.

Griffith said he and his wife, Frances, were at Vienna when Kennedy left.

“My wife put her hand on his shoulder. She turned to me and said she touched him,” he recalled.

That’s the way Kennedy made people feel, he said: There was an electricity about him. He captured people’s imaginations. Griffith said there hasn’t been a presidential candidate quite like him since.