Massachusetts Archives
John F Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum
5.29.17
The traffic on the way into the JFK Library was just awful.
The parking lot was packed & turning people away. We had no idea why.
Across the parking lot from the library was the Massachusetts Archives...
so we went in and looked around quickly while Tim found a place to park.
This place houses some really amazing treasures...
It turned out that it just happened to be the JFK Centennial Celebration.
Seriously, we just happened to plan to stop there on the very day of his 100th birthday.
It was packed, and we didn't have a lot of time there, but it was good to learn more about JFK.
From the JFK Library website:
While Kennedy was serving in World War II a commander of the PT109, his boat was hit by a Japanese destroyer and his crew was stranded in the Solomon Islands. Lieutenant John F. Kennedy carved this Coconut shell with a message and gave it to two natives to deliver to the PT base at Rendova so he and his crew would be rescued. He later had the coconut shell encased in wood and plastic and used it as a paperweight on his desk in the Oval Office.
Message carved on coconut shell reads "NAURO ISL...COMMANDER...
NATIVE KNOWS POS-IT...HE CAN PILOT...11 ALIVE...NEED SMALL BOAT...KENNEDY".
"President Kennedy chats with author Pearl Buck as the first lady speaks to poet Robert Frost
at the April 29, 1962 White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners of the western hemisphere."
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