Helen Thomas!
We suppose that we might have been a sort of precocious child when it came to the news and current events back in the early sixties when we were in grade school. When John F. Kennedy was elected president, we went from a Kennedy hater to a great love for our thirty fifth president during his short less than three year run in the presidency.
One of the things we liked the most about the Kennedy presidency and about Kennedy himself were his press conferences which were often held weekly during the term that he was in office. Unlike modern presidents who may hold a press conference one every month or two, leaving the daily stuff to their press secretaries, Kennedy liked his joists with the press. It gave him a chance to get his point of view across and to let his natural Irish charm and wit show forth to both those in the press and to the nation at large.
One of the great attractions during the Kennedy years were his encounters with Helen Thomas, the first female reporter to truly cover the White House beat and to actually ask questions of the president. Kennedy took to her naturally and loved it when she would ask him one of her trademark penetrating and often sarcastic questions. A twinkle would come into his eyes as he would say “Ms. Thomas” and prepare himself for what was surely to come in response.
Helen Thomas’s questions were seldom easy and she really almost revolutionized the way that questions were asked of the president. Before her encounters with Kennedy, reporters were almost reverential in the way that they handled their encounters with the president and the presidency. And, in some ways, Helen Thomas was reverential in the way that she handled Kennedy just as well. There were the constant rumors swirling around the press room during Kennedy’s time that he was involved with extra marital affairs but Thomas considered that hands off along with the other reporters of the press corps who protected the president that they appreciated attention from and who they came to love.
It became a tradition at White house press conferences for Helen Thomas to end them with a simple “Thank You, Mr. President!” while the occupant of the office, no matter whom that might be, was starting to walk out of the room. It was a few days before that fateful November weekend that John F. Kennedy died that Helen Thomas last uttered that response to a Kennedy press conference and she, like the rest, weren’t aware that they would never see Kennedy alive again. Helen Thomas would interview and question every president up to and including Barack Obama in her long tenure at the White house but if she were asked we bet that she would say that John F. Kennedy was here favorite of all. They had that special connection and relationship that enhanced both of their lives and careers and it went, with both of them, far beyond a professional relationship and entered a sort of mystical love and respect that we never see at the White House any longer in an age when so any reporters think that the press briefings and press conferences are a time to go to combat with the current office holder, no matter whom that might be. It is perhaps why the current occupant does not see the need to hold very many of them, following in a tradition that has gone back for several decades now.
John F. Kennedy knew what few presidents seem to realize today. And that is the fact that the leader of the free world can never really be overexposed in the press and that they are an excellent way to get direct contact with the American people as a whole. Helen Thomas helped to humanize both the press and the presidency and we can never thank her enough for that. And she helped to set a standard for news reporting at the highest levels that is seldom ever met today. And, as the years lengthened in her long career, she became a treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom that we simply cannot duplicate with her passage from the scene. The president and the presidency became more isolated the day that Helen Thomas walked out of the White House press room for the last time and we are all the poorer for that fact.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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