The Rice Festival Welcomes Mr. Kennedy!

In October 1959, John F. Kennedy was just over a year away from becoming president of the United States.

The country was on the brink of change. President Dwight Eisenhower had just turned sixty-nine and could not run for reelection. A congressional committee was investigating the TV quiz shows, which were accused of being fixed. 

Most of Baton Rouge’s 152,000 citizens were focused on LSU football. Coach Paul Dietzel’s Tigers, national champions in 1958, were still unbeaten, topping the AP poll with sixteen straight victories. 

Governor Earl Long, who had recently separated from his wife Blanche, was enmeshed in a bid for the lieutenant governorship. Former governors Jimmie Davis and James A. Noe, along with New Orleans mayor deLesseps “Chep” Morrison, were also gearing up for the December primary.

But the rivals temporarily banded together to welcome Kennedy, the forty-two-year-old senator from Massachusetts, during his two-day campaign stop in Louisiana. Although not yet officially a candidate for president, Kennedy was seeking support for his bid to be the Democratic nominee.

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According to an article in the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, “Kennedy is expected to announce his quest for the . . . nomination in January [1960].”  

Kennedy arrived on Thursday, October 15, accompanied by his wife Jacqueline. (He took a private plane; she went commercial.) Hosted by the Downtown Kiwanis Club, he addressed a sold-out crowd of 1,000 at the Capitol House Hotel. Morning Advocate reporter Anne Price described the senator as “handsome, smiling and straightforward.” She noted, “Kennedy answered questions from the floor on civil rights, integration, and Teamsters boss James Hoffa, and he pulled no punches on any issue.”

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The Louisiana delegation had backed Kennedy for the Democratic nomination for vice president in 1956. “I must say that if I had been successful in getting the nomination [then], my political career would now be over,” Kennedy joked to the gathered crowd. “But nevertheless I am grateful.”

The chances of a Democrat winning the White House were good, he said, but the Republicans would be formidable. “It’s going to be tough,” said Kennedy, who just over a year later would beat Richard Nixon in a close race. Asked about Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, who had recently visited the U.S., Kennedy said, “Our system is superior to Russia’s.” He added that “China may be more dangerous than Russia.”

JFK then held a press conference, where he took time to chat with Baton Rougean Morton Hurston, who had served with him in the Pacific in World War II. 

Then it was on to New Orleans for a $50-a-plate fundraising dinner for Louisiana’s Democratic Party. Campaigning in north Louisiana, Governor Long declined to attend, but his wife Blanche emerged from “almost complete seclusion” to stand in for him. Television stations in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Lafayette, Monroe, and Alexandria carried the speech.

Margaret Dixon, then managing editor of the Advocate, reported that Kennedy “said the Democratic party is the party of hope while the Republican party is the party of the status quo.”  He added: “If Louisiana goes Democratic in 1960, both the state and the LSU football team will be No. 1 in the nation.” 

[Henneberger] treasures her collection of photos from that day. “My grandchildren think it’s cool. They write book reports about it.” 

Kennedy also spoke at the Radio and Television News Directors Association convention in New Orleans, where, as reported by the UPI, he “lauded television coverage of the Khrushchev visit.”

The next day, the Kennedys rode past Lafayette to Crowley in a limousine with Ellen Bryan Moore, the register of the state land office. On a warm Indian summer day, Kennedy was an honored guest at the 23rd International Rice Festival. Scores of costumed revelers cheered the parade of twenty-eight floats and seventeen bands. 

Some one hundred thousand persons thronged Crowley’s courthouse square to hear the dashing young senator speak. He “smiled with pleasure” at signs in the crowd reading “Louisiana Loves Kennedy,” “Serve Rice in the White House,” and “We Back Jack.”

Future four-time governor Edwin Edwards, then a Crowley city councilman, was president of the festival and master of ceremonies. City judge Edmund Reggie, who had arranged the state visit, introduced Kennedy.

“He left a great impression on the city,” said Edwards in a telephone interview. So overwhelming was the crowd response that Kennedy cut short his planned remarks, assuring the listeners, “The South is rising again.” Then he placed a rhinestone crown on the head of blonde, brown-eyed Judith Ann Haydel of Houma, noting, “It is a great honor for a Yankee to crown the Rice Queen.” 

Kennedy, who later would famously decline to wear headgear, gamely donned a hat covered with big grains of rice. 

Judy Haydel Henneberger, D.Min., now an associate chaplain at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, recalled that long-ago October day in a phone interview. 

“I was seventeen and a freshman at Loyola in New Orleans,” she said. “I had no idea who Jack Kennedy was. My parents drove me to Crowley for the Rice Festival beauty contest. While we were in the car, a radio announcer said that Senator Kennedy would speak there. My dad said, ‘It would be amazing if you got to meet him.’ But I wasn’t that impressed. I was doing my English homework in the car.”

After beating out “girls from all over Louisiana” in the beauty pageant, Henneberger was crowned by Kennedy. “I never dreamed I’d meet him,” she said. “He was very gracious, very kind.”

Jackie Kennedy was also a hit, addressing the French-speaking citizens in her Sorbonne French. “She wowed the crowd,” said Henneberger. “My parents spoke French, so that made them great fans.”

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While Kennedy’s Catholic faith was considered a liability in some parts of the nation, Acadiana citizens considered it a plus. “That was Catholic country,” said Henneberger. “He was very popular.” 

Henneberger’s own Catholic family kept a close eye on her. “My mother made my gowns, and my dad didn’t let me wear bathing suits in the competitions.”

She treasures her collection of photos from that day. “My grandchildren think it’s cool. They write book reports about it.” 

Another woman thrilled to meet the Kennedys was Moore, the state lands register, one of the few women in politics then. Photographer John B. Gasquet snapped a photo of her flanked by the glamorous couple. Later, when campaigning for reelection, she used the photo in a campaign brochure. “He was completely charming,” she recalled in a 1989 interview. “He could charm the socks off a rooster. She was very reserved, much more so than Jack, and beautiful. He’s looking at her with adoring eyes.”

According to Edwin Edwards, about thirty people met for cocktails and “polite conversation” at the Reggie home. Then the Kennedys headed for Lake Charles in a caravan of white limousines. 

Edmund Reggie had met Kennedy and backed his unsuccessful attempt to become the party’s vice-presidential nominee in 1956. In 1960, he became Kennedy’s Louisiana campaign manager and a presidential elector. Shortly after Kennedy took office in January 1961, he sent Reggie as his special envoy to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

The Kennedy connection continued in 1992, when Reggie’s daughter Victoria married JFK’s brother Ted. In 1996, son Denis Reggie photographed the wedding of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, grabbing the iconic shot of the groom kissing the bride’s gloved hand on the steps of the small chapel on Cumberland Island, Georgia.

Another son, Gregory, represented the Reggie family in May 2008 when a historic marker was placed on the spot where Kennedy had addressed the crowd in 1959. 

Henneberger returned to Crowley for the unveiling of the marker. “Little did I know how much that day would change my life,” she said. 

Ruth Laney can be reached at ruthlaney@cox.net. The 81st International Rice Festival will be held on October 19–22. For details, visit ricefestival.com.