The third time’s the charm. On three different occasions I checked this book out of the library. The first two times I returned it without reading it. I was tempted by it, as I am by all things having to do with the sixties, but ultimately other books caught my attention more. This time, though I decided to plunge in fifty pages or so and get a feel for the text. I’m glad I did. I thought, at first, that it was a compilation of personal diary accounts from the era, or something like that, but it is something entirely different. Additionally, the “love story” in the title is a misnomer. It’s true that the frame around which the story takes place is the marriage of Doris Goodwin to Richard Goodwin and the two of them reminiscing about the sixties fifty years after the fact, but the heart of it concerns the tumultuous politics of the era, in which the two were involved: Doris briefly at the end of the decade, but Richard intimately as advisor and speechwriter to John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Eugene McCarthy, and Robert Kennedy.

Back before the internet and personal computers, people kept their documents on paper, and the impetus of this tale is the transfer of about three hundred boxes full of Richard’s documents and memorabilia concerning his political work in the 1960s from storage to their home. He and Doris decide to go through the documents together to form a clear picture of what happened back then. What follows is a fascinating in-depth look at events that shaped the decade from the perspective of someone with a front-row seat.

I grew up in the sixties. I clearly remember the day in class (I was in sixth grade I think) that the school principal entered the room and paused the lesson to inform us that President Kennedy had just been shot while in a motorcade in Texas. I also remember, as a young teen, becoming more and more apprehensive as under President Johnson’s watch the Vietnam War kept escalating, the draft was initiated, and there was a significant possibility that when I came of age I might be called up and sent to fight in Southeast Asia.

Doris Goodwin served for a time at the White House under President Johnson near the end of the decade, but the book is mainly about the career of Dick Goodwin. After a stint in the military, he returned to the States with a “self-appointed mission: to do whatever work he could to close the gap between our national ideals and the reality of our everyday lives.” With this in mind, he went to Harvard Law School, graduating at the top of his class and then clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Early on as a lawyer, he investigated the national quiz show scandals, which became famous through Robert Redford’s award-nominated film Quiz Show.

And then, in 1959, Goodwin joined Senator John F. Kennedy’s speechwriting staff. He wrote some of Kennedy’s most famous speeches as he campaigned for and won the presidency. During his time with Kennedy, he became close friends with Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.

There are many touching stories of dedication and service. One of these is the enthusiasm for the Peace Corps amidst America’s youth. When Kennedy initiated the Peace Corps, it struck a chord in the hearts of the young and elevated the country’s standing in the eyes of the rest of the world. As I read about this, I wondered if the same commitment might be found in this modern era if a suitable program was available. But the world has changed, of course. The author points out that “unlike today, the Sixties were still a time when a candidate’s word represented a commitment to a prescribed course of action. What one said mattered. If one reneged on that word, a future time of reckoning would be waiting.” That’s not to say that things always went smoothly. As this glimpse into the inner workings of power demonstrates, the way forward generally lurched from one crisis to the next.

(To be continued…)