Ex-Colorado Lt. Gov. Hogan has vivid memories of JFK's outdoor acceptance

By Bill Gallo, Special to the Rocky

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Associated Press / 1960

In the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts accepts the Democratic presidential nomination.

Darin McGregor / The Rocky

Mark Hogan says he probably absorbed some of JFK's style.

Barack Obama will give his acceptance speech at Invesco Field during the Democratic National Convention. In 1960, John F. Kennedy also delivered his acceptance speech at an outdoor venue - the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Mark Hogan, a former Colorado lieutenant governor who is now a real estate and development consultant, recalls watching Kennedy's address on television. His comments have been edited for space and clarity.

* On the night JFK gave his acceptance speech at the Los Angeles Coliseum, I was a 29-year-old real estate salesman trying to eke out a living, like everyone else. I was not very political at the time. I watched the speech on TV with my then-wife, Nancy, and our three kids, in the living room of our little house.

I had just changed my registration from Republican to Democratic, and I have to confess that I had been supporting Adlai Stevenson for the nomination.

But Kennedy was incredibly inspiring. Like a lot of people, I have since melded together parts of that night's "New Frontier" speech with his Inaugural Address ("Ask not what your country can do for you . . . "). But I remember his witty comment in L.A. about his opponent, Richard Nixon ("charity towards none and malice for all"), and the line about lighting a candle instead of cursing the darkness, which he and Ted Sorensen, a great political speechwriter, had borrowed from the Christophers (a Christian group).

When Kennedy called the 1960s the New Frontier, fraught with perils and threats but also hope and opportunity, it stirred me to get out there and ring doorbells in the first political campaign where I was really active, and my first as a Democrat - a redeemed person. And I have to say, Barack Obama inspires me today like no one since JFK.

Did I absorb some of the Kennedy style I saw that night? Probably. I definitely benefited because I was also an Irish-Catholic guy, a reasonably attractive candidate with some hair and a weird sense of humor that I got from my mother. That served me well all my life. I may have been a JFK beneficiary, although I can't say I did anything to deserve it.

In retrospect, I can still say I was thrilled by JFK's acceptance speech and by his performance in office. Of course politics was a lot more civil in those days.