Camelot’s scribe
RICHARD GOODWIN, a former White House speechwriter and top aide to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, died Sunday at his home in Concord, Mass. He was 86.
The cause was complications from cancer, said his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.
A native of Boston and a Harvard Law graduate, Dick Goodwin — as he was known — rose from his working class background to the Kennedy White House before he turned 30.
Working with the Kennedy and Johnson administrations — and later with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy — Goodwin had deep impact and influence on American politics and diplomacy during the post-World War II era. Among the most memorable speeches on which he served either as lead author or collaborator is Kennedy’s first major address on Latin American affairs.
After JFK’s death, Goodwin saw to it that an eternal flame would be lit at his burial site in Arlington National Cemetery.
Making the arrangements for the memorial torch proved formidable, and were a testament to Goodwin’s passion and determination.
“If you can design an atomic bomb, you can put a little (undying) flame on the side of that hill,” Goodwin is remembered saying in the book “Reclaiming History.”
Goodwin also notably helped craft Johnson’s historic “We Shall Overcome” speech on civil rights in 1965, in which he called for what became the landmark Voting Rights Act. He declared, “All of us ... must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice — and we shall overcome.”
In addition, Goodwin worked on some of Johnson’s most memorable domestic policy initiatives, but he differed with the President about Vietnam and left the administration after 1965.
In the late 1960s, Goodwin helped author what many regard as then-Robert Kennedy’s finest speech, his address in South Africa in 1966.
Kennedy railed against the racist apartheid system, praised global protest movements and said those who speak and act against injustice send “forth a tiny ripple of hope.”
As a congressional investigator, Goodwin helped uncover systemic cheating during the infamous television quiz-show scandals of the 1950s. Goodwin’s memoir “Remembering America” inspired the 1994 film “Quiz Show,” featuring Rob Morrow as Goodwin. THE EX-PLAYBOY model who leaped to her death from her Midtown hotel penthouse suite pushed her 7-year-old son out of the 25th-floor window before taking the plunge herself, police said Monday.
The death of Stephanie Adams, 46, was ruled a suicide, the city medical examiner’s office said. Her son Vincent’s death was ruled a homicide.
Both died from multiple blunt impact injuries, autopsies showed.
The former Miss November 1992 was in the middle of a messy divorce from her husband, Dr. Charles Nicolai, owner of Wall Street Chiropractic & Wellness.
Adams had recently asked a judge to allow her to take Vincent to Spain but was denied.