JFK Speechwriter Theodore Sorensen Dies
Posted:
10/31/10
Theodore Sorensen, best known as the chief speechwriter for former President John F. Kennedy, died Sunday from complications stemming from a stroke he suffered a week ago, according to his widow, Gillian Sorensen.
Sorensen, 82, was not only Kennedy's speechwriter but one of his most trusted advisers. While Kennedy is remembered for the 1961 inaugural address in which he declared, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," Sorensen became known, too, for his part in drafting the speech.
Sorensen's title in the White House was "special counsel," but the New York Times said that Washington reporters of the era labeled him the president's "intellectual alter ago" and "a lobe of Kennedy's mind."
He went to work for Kennedy after his election to the Senate from Massachusetts and collaborated with him on the 1956 book "Profiles in Courage." Kennedy won a Pulitzer Prize for the book, which helped make him nationally known despite his status as a first-term senator.
Sorensen was also given credit for drafting a letter for Kennedy to then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis which helped avert a confrontation with the Soviets that could have led to war.
Sorensen once told an interviewer, "That's what I'm proudest of. Never had this country, this world, faced such great danger. You and I wouldn't be sitting here today if that had gone badly."
Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Sorensen worked as an international lawyer.
He had suffered a previous stroke in 2001, which cost him much of his eyesight.
Sorensen, 82, was not only Kennedy's speechwriter but one of his most trusted advisers. While Kennedy is remembered for the 1961 inaugural address in which he declared, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," Sorensen became known, too, for his part in drafting the speech.
Sorensen's title in the White House was "special counsel," but the New York Times said that Washington reporters of the era labeled him the president's "intellectual alter ago" and "a lobe of Kennedy's mind."
He went to work for Kennedy after his election to the Senate from Massachusetts and collaborated with him on the 1956 book "Profiles in Courage." Kennedy won a Pulitzer Prize for the book, which helped make him nationally known despite his status as a first-term senator.Sorensen was also given credit for drafting a letter for Kennedy to then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis which helped avert a confrontation with the Soviets that could have led to war.
Sorensen once told an interviewer, "That's what I'm proudest of. Never had this country, this world, faced such great danger. You and I wouldn't be sitting here today if that had gone badly."
Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Sorensen worked as an international lawyer.
He had suffered a previous stroke in 2001, which cost him much of his eyesight.