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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

ONIONS BURKE AND THE 1956 CONVENTION III


May 15, 2012


ONIONS BURKE & THE 1956 CONVENTION III


Knoxville, Tennessee (JFK+50) Today we continue our report on Chapter 4 of the book by Kenneth P. O'Donnell & David F. Powers with Joe McCarthy.  It is published by Little, Brown & Company.


The title of Chapter 4 is Onions Burke & The 1956 Convention.


Kenneth O'Donnell says that when JFK arrived at Palm Beach, Dave saw that his room was filled with cartons of books from the Library of Congress.


These books were for the research required to write a book to be titled "Profiles In Courage."


Recovering from back surgery, Kenny writes that JFK could only sleep for an hour or two so that he worked on the book "day & night, reading & writing notes & then drafts of the chapters on long yellow legal pads."


On May 23, 1955, JFK arrived in the Nation's Capital. It was 7 months after his 1st back surgery.  The next day, Kenny writes, Senator John F. Kennedy was on the Senate floor.


Kenny says that for the next 8 years while JFK was "never completely free from pain," he was "never as crippled as he had been in 1954."