Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin made her first appearance at Festival of the Arts Boca 17 years ago, a visit that soon would soon inspire her to winter here—and to enjoy no fewer than six repeat lectures on the Festival stage, in presentations always flush with new and insightful information. She once again kicked off the Festival’s Authors and Ideas series Monday night, but this time felt different.
A tireless workhorse, she may well be back for future Festivals, but this one felt full circle, because it focused on her most personal work to date—”An Unfinished Love Story,” which chronicles the literal unpacking of the past on which she embarked with longtime husband Dick Goodwin in the last years of his life. Dick’s 300 boxes of correspondence and ephemera related to his work as a speechwriter for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and Doris’ experience of reliving it with her husband, would form the backbone of her poignant and impactful book, as well as last night’s lecture. In her talk, Goodwin referred to the project as “the last great adventure of our lives.”
Supplemented by projected photographs of the young Goodwins in and out of the halls of power in Washington, Goodwin spoke at her usual measured but rapid clip about her front-row seat to the transformative tumult of 1960s America. The way Goodwin recalled the decade, with an optimism engrained from taking the long view of history, the inspiring changes outweighed the tragedy of division and assassination. She discussed John F. Kennedy’s improvised conception of the Peace Corps, at a 2 a.m., three-minute address to students on the campaign trail at a Michigan university; his administration’s work on integrating the U.S. Coast Guard and the preservation of Egyptian monuments; and her own participation in the March on Washington, a seminal event in American history.
Her anecdotes from the Johnson administration, where Goodwin served as a member of his staff and later helped him draft his memoirs, provided both humor and inspiration, including the time Dick was forced to strip naked for a meeting with a similarly birthday-suited LBJ in the White House pool (Johnson “looked like a whale,” per Dick’s memory of it). She revealed the provenance of the “we shall overcome” line in the speech Dick wrote for Johnson for March 15, 1965, following the Bloody Sunday march for civil rights in Selma, which would come to define Johnson’s domestic legacy. I got more than a little misty-eyed during this portion of the talk, and I’m certain I’m not the only one.
Goodwin addressed current events only obliquely, and largely through the lens of the past, stating that in fractured times such as ours, change has always bubbled from the ground up, and never from the top down. She repeatedly mentioned local elections, PTAs and school boards as the best ways for citizens to effect the change they want to see on a national scale.
As expected from the packed left-of-center house at the Amphitheater, the Q&A portion of Goodwin’s appearance focused more on the looming or current constitutional crises facing the United States than the events of the 1960s, and how the 47th president’s actions have any historical precedent that might provide a light at the end of an authoritarian tunnel. Her response was sobering. “Everybody wants me to be optimistic, because it’s my temperament,” Goodwin said. “But this one really scares me.”
Rather than end this article on the doom and gloom of the 24-7 news cycle, I prefer to focus on the portion of her talk that addressed Dick’s passing, in 2018. She compared the last weeks of his hospice care to an Irish wake, full of laughter and friends and memories, and described his transition as “the most peaceful death one could imagine.” She also shared Dick’s last words to Doris: “You are a wonder.” The appreciative Festival audience would doubtless agree.
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