November 21, 2013
Local News & Culture Marina del Rey
Westchester
Free S a n ta M o n i c a
P l aya d e l R e y
P l aya V i s t a
M a r V i s ta
Del Rey
VenicE
Photo by Joe Piasecki
Mar Vista journalist Bill Beebe photographed President Kennedy’s 1962 visit to Santa Monica Beach for the Los Angeles Times
Remembering JFK
Friday marks 50 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, whose life and death changed America forever Peter Lawford. That afternoon, Kennedy quietly slipped shirtless John Fitzgerald Kennedy out and headed to the water. A crowd swarmed by adoring beachgoers followed, and so did Beebe. after an impromptu swim in Santa “I tell you, that guy could really swim. Monica, sharing a smile with a stranger He went about 200 yards north along the in a polka-dot bikini: It was an image of shoreline, and when he started to come a sitting American president the likes of out of the water, word got out along the which may never be seen again. beach. I could see what was going to On Aug. 19, 1962, Bill Beebe was on happen, so I took off my shoes and went assignment for the Los Angeles Times staking out Kennedy during one of the out into the water, clothes and camera and president’s visits to the beachfront home all,” Beebe, now 86, recalled this week at of his brother-in-law, “Rat Pack” actor his home in Mar Vista.
By Joe Piasecki
A
“There wasn’t anything grand about it,” Beebe said. “The Secret Service and FBI there were beside themselves, but [Kennedy] made it seem like a natural thing to do.” A year and three months later — on Nov. 22, 1963 — the president who had appeared so much larger than life was shot dead in Dallas at age 46.
‘Celebrity in chief’
For a nation who, through television, developed an unprecedented sense of
closeness to a president and even toured the White House with the First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy from the comfort of their living rooms, Kennedy’s murder was a blow experienced like none before, said presidential scholar and Loyola Marymount University professor Michael Genovese. “The dawn of politics and television, that marriage, allowed us to see the ‘Camelot’ of the Kennedy family. TV brought them to us in a way previous presidents could not enter our lives. In a way, we felt we (Continued on page 12)