Say what you want about John F. Kennedy, but he was a man of his word. At least that’s how lifelong New Yorker Ray Hoey remembers him.
He recalled a day on the campaign trail in fall of 1960 when Bobby Kennedy tried to quash a scheduled appearance by his busy presidential-hopeful brother at Hoey’s local Democratic club in upper Manhattan.
And how JFK just as quickly went against his “disagreeable’’ sibling and showed up.
“Our congressman at the time was William Fitts Ryan,” recalled Hoey, 82, a member of the Riverside Democratic Club. “[JFK] had a speech earlier that day at the Coliseum, down at 59th Street. So Ryan goes to the Coliseum and waits for John Kennedy to finish that speech and then says, ‘You promised you’d be at 96th Street.’ And Kennedy said, ‘If I promised, I will be there.’
“And he was. He spoke for a good 10 minutes. He held the audience in the palm of his hand. He was talking about the Republicans — and it was nothing complimentary!” Hoey joked.
“If you could imagine, he stood right there, on the back of a flatbed, talking into a microphone,’’ Hoey said, pointing to the corner of 96th Street and Broadway on a recent afternoon.
“The crowd stretched up and down the streets — I don’t know how many thousands of people came to see him.
“Only one thought crossed my mind: He kept his word. He said he’d come, and he did.”
Hoey said he and his wife, Patricia — high-school sweethearts from then-rough-and-tumble Hell’s Kitchen — first met JFK in the lobby of The Carlyle hotel on the Upper East Side, where Kennedy was staying after a debate against Richard Nixon in October 1960.
“Kennedy cleaned Nixon’s clock,” Hoey said. “So my wife and I go over there, and Kennedy said, ‘Oh, thank you for coming. Thanks for your support.’ He made you comfortable. When he addressed you, he would look you in the eye.
“As we were leaving, my wife said, ‘Good night, Mr. President,’ and, oh, he turned around on that one,” Hoey recalled, chuckling. “He was still a senator!’’
On Nov. 8, 1960, Hoey said, he and his wife “stayed up all night’’ watching the election returns.
“Was it close!” he said of Kennedy’s historically narrow win. “Presidents are elected, and there is fanfare,” Hoey said. “But there was something special about that election. Kennedy gave a sign of real hope.”
Invited to the 1961 inaugural ball as diehard Democratic supporters, Hoey, his wife and two friends drove through a blizzard to DC to attend. But “this was the main ball, at the armory. All the dignitaries were there. Kennedy and Jackie were up there where people could see them, and he would wave down.”
“I danced with Lena Horne,” Hoey added, his eyes twinkling. “Just a few steps.”
Hoey, a retired electrical engineer, was at work in November 1963 when word came that Kennedy had been assassinated. “It was so hard to believe. Not in this country,” Hoey said, his voice becoming quiet.
Decades later, in the 1990s, Hoey was enjoying a dry Manhattan in the Tap Room at the New York Athletic Club when the bartender introduced him to the only other guy in the joint, sitting reading a book.
“The bartender says, ‘Mr. Kennedy, I’d like to introduce Mr. Hoey. He went to your father’s inaugural ball.’ ”
JFK Jr., Hoey said, “puts down the book, puts down the beer and comes over to talk to me. We chatted for about 15 minutes. I told him how I worked on his father’s campaign, the Democratic club.”
“I remember that kid on television, saluting at his father’s funeral. And then I meet him in the Athletic Club bar,” he said. “Life goes on.”