Word: sorensens
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...recorded that "Christian Sorensen often took his son Ted to meetings on public utilities, and he sometimes had the child address the audience with a 'few words' from the platform." The story may be apocryphal. But while Jack grew up listening to powerful politicians talk conservative politics around Ambassador Kennedy's table, Ted grew up in a household of liberal books and magazines. The Sorensen home was a gathering place for progressive Nebraskans who debated the issues of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal...
...about the time his future chief was serving in the Pacific, Sorensen graduated from Lincoln High School and entered the University of Nebraska on a Regents scholarship to take the pre-law curriculum. He chaired the mock United Nations convention, the campus constitutional convention, and the University YMCA, while continuing to follow high school interest in debating, drama, and the band. In 1949 he entered the University's law school, edited the Nebraska Law Review, and lobbied during spare time in the state legislature for a Fair Employment Practices Committee. He still managed to spend enough time studying to graduate...
...story of Sorensen's career with the then newly-elected Senator from Massachusetts is too complicated to tell in detail. Sorensen was recommended to Kennedy in 1953 by Sen. Paul Douglas of Illinois. Kennedy hired him to work on problems of New England -- "I wasn't prejudiced," Sorensen adds, "because I had never been there." In 1954 Sorensen drafted speeches for Kennedy; in '55 he researched Profiles in Courage; and in '56 he urged Kennedy to try for the Vice-Presidential nomination. In 1960, Kennedy said: "I want to keep Ted with me wherever I go in this campaign...
...Sorensen was trusted implicitly in the White House, too, and with the exception of Robert F. Kennedy he was the President's closest adviser. He had a scrap with Barry Goldwater in the fall of 1961, when the Arizona conservative read into the Congressional Record a story for the Chicago Tribune which stated that "the man behind President Kennedy's rocking chair in a world with war tensions, escaped military service as a conscientious objector and Korean War service as a father." For the rest, he remained in the background: what he contributed to the fabric of Kennedy statements...
That leaves a great deal unsaid about Sorensen's influence on Kennedy. He joined Kennedy as a militant A.D.A. liberal when the junior senator was conservative enough to avoid the censure vote on Sen. McCarthy. Eight years later President Kennedy was proposing the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress. Something very basic had changed in Kennedy's thought during those eight years. Certainly Sorensen was in part responsible. Twelve years after graduating from law school, Sorensen is back on a campus again. He smiles when asked what he plans to do. "I guess I'll be interested...