A Boston Globe editorial that makes sense? One that normal people can agree with?
If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it – and yet there it was, a thoughtful, well written piece on relocating the sidelined State House statue of President John F. Kennedy to a friendlier place where people, especially tourists, can actually see it.
As things stand now, the statue, once prominently displayed on the plaza of the West Wing of the historic building, sits in lonely isolation having been shunted aside and practically hidden for years.
Its decline in State House statue stature is perhaps an indication of the lost power that the Kennedy Family once had in Massachusetts.
There was a time when a politician could not squeak in Massachusetts without the Kennedys knowing about it.
Now there is hardly a Kennedy around with the pull to do even the JFK statue justice.
Dedicated on May 29, 1990—which would have been JFK’s 73rd birthday—the bronze memorial to the slain president, which was accessible to all, was removed and placed aside on the State House grounds as a result of heightened security in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Jackie Kennedy, the president’s widow, John F. Kennedy Jr., the president’s son, and Sen. Ted Kennedy, JFK’s brother, all now long gone, attended the dedication.
Prior to its relocation, tourists from around the country and the world could walk up to the statue and touch it. They could pose for pictures or sit on nearby benches and contemplate the life of a remarkable president who was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22,1963.
Now, unless somebody told you something different, you wouldn’t even know the statue was there.
Kennedy was not only president, but represented Beacon Hill when he was in Congress, and he kept an apartment and voting address at 122 Bowdoin Street, beside the State House.
The Boston Globe editorial board is suggesting a couple of adjoining State House sites for the statue to sit and once again become visible.
In the interest of full disclosure and before anyone takes me aside for writing about the Globe, I must point out that I once worked for the Globe, although the two years I spent there, before quitting, were worse than the two years I spent in the U.S. Army. In fact, I liked the Army better.
That aside, however, the reasonable editorial suggested that the statue be placed on the site now displaying the statue of Mary Dyer, a Quaker missionary who was hanged for her religious beliefs.
That site is by the Hooker entrance to the State House on the corner of Beacon and Bowdoin Streets. Across from the site are private residences in a building that once housed the Bellevue Hotel.
That was where John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, JFK’s grandfather and a former Boston mayor of Boston, held court. JFK usually stopped by before heading to his nearby apartment.
A better site for the Kennedy statue might be Ashburton Park, which is directly behind the State House on Bowdoin St. and a former entrance to the State House.
The park is directly opposite 122 Bowdoin St and the apartment, Number 36, the Kennedy family maintained for years following JFK’s death. The building alone is a tourist bus attraction.
At one end of the bucolic park is the Massachusetts Law Enforcement Memorial. At the other end is the Massachusetts Firefighters Memorial.
In between, before current renovations began, is an open area of tables and chairs, surrounded by greenery where State House workers, tourists and nearby Suffolk Law School students stop by for coffee or lunch.
It is the perfect place for the Kennedy statue.
It is so perfect that JFK, if he were alive, could look down upon it from his apartment across the street and declare that it was good.
Perhaps his spirit can.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
