By Paul Mills
In the aftermath of an outpouring of anecdotal reminiscences on the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination a feature now worth assessing is something a bit less personal: the impact of JFK’s death on White House policies toward Maine. For this, there is no greater living authority than Don Nicoll, the chief administrative assistant to Maine Democratic Senator Edmund Muskie during both the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies.
According to Nicoll, with whom this columnist spoke just a few days ago, at the top of Maine’s Congressional delegation priorities during the Kennedy administration was the dream of securing federal support for public power projects. Chief among them was one in the Upper St. John River in Aroostook County, known as Dickey-Lincoln. The challenge in JFK’s time was to make the Dickey project compatible with a National Park Service plan to create a national waterway on the Allagash. The delegation also had to confront anti-public power lobbying influences who were opposing creation of what would amount to a Tennessee Valley Authority of the north.
A breakthrough occurred a few months before JFK’s death when engineers were able to design a proposal that made generation of power on the St. John River possible without flooding the Allagash. Federally-supported cheaper power could then coexist with a national waterway. President Kennedy, flanked by Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, who Nicoll credits with also being a key figure, and Senator Muskie, then made a joint public appearance in which JFK announced his support.
Kennedy’s death did not occasion a blow to these proposals, however. According to Nicoll, “The Johnson Administration picked up both the Dickey Lincoln and then the Allagash proposals without missing a beat.” This Nicoll credits in part to Johnson retaining Udall as his Interior Secretary. (In this, LBJ’s policy of retaining not only Udall but also all his predecessor’s other cabinet members stands in significant contrast to the previous instance of a vice president taking the helms upon a president’s death: Truman’s accession to the White House in 1945. Then, the Missouri Democrat and the entire FDR cabinet parted company a little over a year after Roosevelt’s departure.)
Environmental concerns coupled with continuing resistance from private power lobbyists persisted, however, and the Dickey project, recalled Nicoll, “failed essentially in the House,” during LBJ’s time despite the support of both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Dickey would still remain a major priority for most members of Maine’s Congressional delegation for another 15-years after JFK’s death, however. Nor did the Allagash Waterway become part of the national park system, though a state waterway with significant federal funding was created and there continues today to be discussion of a possible national park in northern Maine. On this score it appears that Kennedy’s death would not seem to have been a major player in the outcome of these proposal, all prominent aspirations for most of Maine’s congressional delegation in the Kennedy era.
Though neither the Dickey-Lincoln nor any other major public power projects would ever become a reality in Maine – the repudiation by Maine voters in a 1973 referendum of a state run public power program entombing the fate of a state administered system – Johnson’s support for the federal proposals illustrated the connection the new administration maintained with JFK policies as they affected Maine.
“You think of the Kennedy-Johnson administration as one continuous unit,” recalled Nicoll in my interview with him earlier this month.
To be sure, other issues unique to Maine concerned the state’s members of Congress at the time of the transition from JFK to Johnson. Among them: support for such military base installations as the Portsmouth-Kittery Shipyard, Brunswick, Loring and Dow Air Stations. Though most of Dow near the end of the Johnson administration was sold to the City of Bangor and became its international airport, the others remained opened during both administrations. Even with Dow, however, Nicoll does not believe that “the decision on Dow would have been any different had Kennedy lived,” and that it was not in any event a “personal presidential decision.”
Policies that related to such economic bulwarks as textile, shoe, pulp and paper, ship building and agriculture were also largely unaffected. Nicoll notes that Kennedy himself was “generally supportive” of the state’s interests in these areas, concerns that were logically sustained by LBJ’s policy of continuing the practices of his tragically slain predecessor.
Invocation of the names of these military facilities and the economic mainstays of a 1960’s Maine, however, do remind us that however similar Kennedy and Johnson in these respects may have been to each other, they both had a very different world view of Maine than the prism through which our own state is seen today. Gone are the bases at Brunswick and Loring. Shoes and poultry have also virtually vanished from the state’s landscape. Textile, pulp and paper, potato and dairy sectors play a diminished role. In their place have emerged global retailing giants led by Hannaford’s, Wal-Mart and LL Bean along with an expanded financial services sector typified by TD Bank and Unum.
Another reminder of how different the JFK-LBJ era was from our own is the growth of Maine’s medical institutions. Four of the state’s 10 largest private employers today are hospitals. Not so in 1963.
One sector is a constant throughout both their time and ours: ship building. Bath Iron Works is still near the top of the list of the state’s largest employers. It also remains a high priority for those we elect as our emissaries from Maine to the nation’s capital.
There is, of course, much more to the bond that existed between our state and Kennedy than his public policies toward Maine. I’ll personally remember sharing the anticipation of the thousands gathered at City Park in Lewiston that Sunday night before his election awaiting the arrival of the future president but being disappointed that my childhood bedtime curfew prevented me from remaining long enough to see him speak. The policy imperatives that linked Maine with Kennedy, however, are ones that are also in this time of remembrance worth observing.
Paul H. Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of public affairs in Maine. He can be reached by e-mail: pmills@myfairpoint.net.
