John F. Kennedy '40 made his last visit to Harvard as a football fan. Taking a balmy Staurday afternoon off from politicking and official business, the President attended the first half of the Oct. 19 Harvard-Columbia football game.

He looked tan and relaxed; apparently he enjoyed himself although he did not express much emotion. Kennedy stood up to cheer only once as the teams moved up and down the field, scoring only three points apiece. Most of the time the President smoked a small cigar, chewed on his sunglasses, and chatted with aides Dave Powers and Larry O'Brien.

After watching the half-time show--in which both bonds razzed him lightly--Kennedy left Harvard for the last time to visit the grave of his son Patrick in a Brookline Cemetery.

Chose Princeton First

John Kennedy had first come to Harvard 27 years earlier. He entered the college in the fall of 1936--a thin, 19-year-old graduate of Choate with a mop of unruly hair and a tooth-paste ad smile. Originally, he did not want to come to Harvard. Kennedy enrolled at Princeton in 1935, but a case of yellow jaundice forced him to withdraw. His four years as a Harvard undergraduate were to be inconsistent, as were his later relations with the University.

Surrounded by a large group of friends, Kennedy joined many organizations, but gained eminence in none. Despite thinness and back trouble he worked hard at swimming and football, but enjoyed only moderate success in them. Although undeniably quick and bright, his academic record was generally mediocre, and he made little impression on Faculty members. Yet despite the over-all mediocrity of his record, Kennedy did well enough senior year to graduate cum laude--better than 70 per cent of his classmates. And his thesis on appeasement at Munich earned a magna and became a best-seller.

After graduation, Kennedy was active in alumni affairs. He served on the Board of Overseers and received an honorary Doctor of Laws. But as a Congressman, he once told an audience of Winthrop House undergraduates that nothing at Harvard had been useful to him in politics.

He received wide support from Harvard Faculty members in the 1960 campaign. Amid great publicity, he brought a number of them into his Administration. But Kennedy conferred great power upon only one Harvard figure--McGeorge Bundy, a Republican who had been only a quiet Kennedy supporter in the campaign. And Kennedy never won from the intellectuals the deep committment they gave to Adlai Stevenson.

As one friend of the President remarked; "Jack Kennedy was extremely smart. He could grasp large things and detail very quickly. But he was not an intellectual. He had respect for intellectuals. The most important point, though, is that he knew how to use them well."

"Harvard was not an important aspect of political reality to him," the friend continued. "He knew that if he over-emphasized Harvard, it would get him in wrong with the general electorate. he did not put Harvard in the forefront."

Brain-Trusters

This point was made clear several times. During a telephone speech to a rally of "brain-trusters" in Sanders Theatre, Kennedy praised the role of Harvard advisers in his presidential campaign.

"It has converted politicians into eggheads, and eggheads into politicians," he said, "and both groups have benefited." Most of the "eggheads" laughed appreciatively when Abraham Chayes '43, professor of Law and Kennedy's Cambridge liason man quipped, "That's the first time any of us have had a direct line to Sen. Kennedy since the campaign began."

Kennedy carried within him a deep cultural divide. He was marked both by the intellectual and social values of Harvard and by the political outlook of the Boston Irish. In his speech to the Harvard Alumni Association after receiving his honorary degree in 1956, Kennedy discussed these conflicting viewpoints.

It is important for politicians to consult intellectuals, Kennedy said, "to prevent us from becoming imprisoned by our own slogans" and "to bathe us in the cooling waters of the scholastic pool." But politics cannot easily be aligned with the intellectual goals of "the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth," Kennedy argued, "Our political parties, our politicians are interested, of necessity, in winning popular support--a majority; and Harvard--less important than the needs of gaining and maintaining power.