60 Years After JFK

Nov. 22 marks the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination ― one of the darkest moments in American history. What made it so dark was not necessarily the assassination, since this country has endured three other assassinations of U.S. Presidents before Kennedy. The moment was dark because of the brightness of the promise the Kennedy presidency represented. 

This past weekend, the S.S. Lane Victory in collaboration with the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Foundation staged an exhibition with original ephemera and period artifacts from the life and times of President John F. Kennedy, particularly in relation to the 1960 election in which Kennedy outshined Nixon during a televised debate and went onto win the election. 

In an interview, archivist Barrie Getz, curator of the exhibit on the Merchant Marine vessel, told Random Lengths News that exhibition attendees will see a lot of memorabilia from JFK’s election to the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the presidency. 

There are also items from the space race that touched off after John Glenn orbited the earth; memorabilia from the civil rights movement; the Cuban missile crisis as well as things from Kennedy’s assassination.

Getz, the archivist for the S.S. Lane Victory for a little less than a year, came by way of Titanic Artefacts and Images in Long Beach where she served as a marketing executive for North America.  

“I came here from a museum background after having dealt with the Titanic for a couple different companies and working with huge collections and working with artifacts over the years as a historian,” Getz explained. “I’ve handled a lot of things and I’ve worked with a lot of stuff and I just was drawn naturally to seeing a museum full of stuff that needed someone to go through it and understand it and study it.”  

Getz said the majority of the materials came from private collections, while some of the images and harder to find things came from the Nixon presidential library. Together, the idea was to give exhibition attendees the best possible well-rounded experience.

Kennedy was a Navy veteran who served in World War II. His father, Joe Kennedy, was one of the founders of the Merchant Marines in 1936. 

“So right before WWII, right as it was starting to heat up, his father was part of Roosevelt’s cabinet joint mission to create the Merchant Marines. That’s huge for us,” Getz said. “That’s a direct link to the Kennedys for our sake because the Lane Victory is a Merchant Marine ship from WWII.” 

Indeed, policies enacted during his administration, we are still seeing their reverberations, whether it’s Israel’s war on Gaza and the United States steadfast support of the Jewish state; affirmative action in regards to government contracts ensuring that applicants and employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin; or the space race in which mineral resources and civilian flights into space are being staked and hawked.

Getz’s favorite part of the exhibit happens to be the election related items. 

“I love the election stuff that gave him the presidency. He went to the House of Representatives in 1947 [1947-53. Then he was elected senator of Massachusetts in 1953, where he served until 1960]. 

“The 1960 election is my personal favorite because he goes up against Nixon who later became president. Nixon at that point was [an incumbent] vice president. So he’s literally going up against someone who’s been in the office and knows what’s going on immediately with the affairs of the world,” Getz said. 

“We have clips of it that we show, you could see a major, major part of his speech at the exhibit and I have some great, great stuff on display from that,” Getz explained. 

The clips are on a DVD that will be played on a large LCD flat screen television. 

“I wanted to give it its own space so it’s taking up half of the second museum,” Getz explained. “It’s not a huge exhibition, but we like to call it small but mighty. Because it is full of stuff. It is really full of some interesting stuff. There’s lots of information.” 

Getz was invited to join the S.S. Lane Victory about a year ago by her friend and deck boss, Eric Lara. They’ve known each other for years through the ocean liner community. 

“I had already visited before but not with him [Lara]. I was aware of the museum spaces and I kind of knew what they had in their collection. 

“I said, ‘this is really interesting,’ and he said we really need somebody who knows what they’re doing. So he asked me.” 

She said okay after many conversations, and she became the curator. Truth be told, the job was a daunting one. The S.S. Lane Victory has a huge collection with only a third of it on display.

pu“That says a lot when we realize that we have two major museums and only a third of the collection in its entirety is on display. 

“We have stuff in the archives going back to the Civil War and we’re not even sure how it really got there. The ship has nothing to do with the Civil War but somebody donated it and it’s been sitting there.”

Getz has come across a large galley knife with what appears to be an antler-bone-handle. It’s a serious galley knife. 

“We have over 100 uniforms from various branches of service from World War I to Desert Storm. Some stuff may eventually go on loan to other museums as I sort through things, because we have a lot of stuff that we will probably not display intermittently. There are things we are talking about eventually loaning out to other museums. And the Nixon Library and I are having that discussion currently.” 

The S.S. Lane Victory has two onboard museums, while the ship itself is a museum. The ship has all the original linens and all original furnishings. Everything on the ship was original; everything still works from the galley, to the bathrooms, to the engines. The fixtures and the fans in the staterooms, it all works. 

“When you think about the fact that all of this is 1945 technology and 1945 stores of linens that have never been used from the Merchant Marine,” Getz explained. “We have bags of washcloths that still have the USMC seal on them. it’s just, it’s incredible.”

The Lane Victory is working on setting up a museum on the dock, but that will only happen with funding. And they need more funding to make things like this happen, Getz explained. 

“We need to definitely do some fundraisers for that because we would have to acquire the building and then we would have to be able to set it up,” Getz said. “I would like to do that personally because as an active ship, which she is, the [Lane Victory] is considered active because she’s under Coast Guard regulations. 

“The ship is not ADA compliant because she can’t be and is still a functional ship. So I would like to make museums more accessible to everybody. I know how hard it is to get up the gangway. The only way to do that is to raise funding to be able to put a museum on the ground.” 

Getz said that she and the board are in regular discussions about the future regarding raising the funds needed to launch this ambitious educational endeavor; and making everyone a part of the S.S. Lane Victory community, not just people who can walk up the gangway.

The Lane Victory’s Future as Part of West Harbor 
The Los Angeles harbor is home to two World War II era ships that share many of the same volunteers. Getz explained that there have been conversations about collaborating on a joint museum, but as of now, there’s no timeline on it, particularly given the Lane Victory’s renovation schedule and the U.S.S. Iowa’s schedule. 

Getz made it a point to emphasize that the floating museums are friends rather than competitors for resources. But the question remains, especially as the Waterfront development continues to move forward, what can we do to build a San Pedro military museum that would allow both ships to occupy the same general space? 

The Lane Victory archivist said she heard through the grapevine that there are discussions of moving the Iowa closer to the S.S. Lane Victory, which would open up opportunities for such collaboration. 

The only thing that is clear is that that conversation didn’t seem to be happening in the waterfront connectivity plan’s public workshops this past year. They weren’t mentioned at all in June, and were a strange add-on to the U.S.S. Iowa but no actual discussion about the Merchant Marine ship. Odd, considering that San Pedro is home to the first national memorial to merchant seamen in the United States, but those monuments and the S.S. Lane Victory is a mile apart.  

Getz noted that given where the Lane Victory is currently situated, which is near the terminus of Miner Street, San Pedro’s other floating museum is very far away from the memorial (the American Merchant Marine Veterans of World War II Memorial located in front of the LA Maritime Museum). Getz said those monuments were designed to be in close proximity to the WWII Merchant Marine ship.

“We’re supposed to be with that memorial, and we’re nowhere near it,” Getz said. “We would like to be closer, but we know that’s probably not going to happen and that makes it hard for us because when people come out to honor those veterans, we are the furthest thing from them.”

Getz said the state of affairs in regards to the Lane Victory’s location, it’s really tough for them. Merchant Marine veterans saved the Lane Victory and brought her to San Pedro to be near their monument. 

“We are so far removed right now from all of that, from the community, from the city and from the veterans and the whole scene down by the U.S.S. Iowa. It makes it really complicated for us,” Getz said. “I would love to see us either closer, or bring more of that towards us, because we’re trying to expand our horizons and become more involved in the community.” 

JFK —Sixty Years On
Open Wednesday and Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday by appointment online. Runs From Nov. 11 to Jan. 6
Details: www.lanevictory.org
Location: S.S. Lane Victory, 2400 S. Miner St., Berth 52, San Pedro