It was on a Friday the 13th, 60 years ago, that John F. Kennedy arrived at the Quonset Point National Guard Air Station on Narragansett Bay and boarded the presidential yacht Honey Fitz for a weekend cruise. The president was joined by his wife, Jacqueline, and their good friends Benjamin and Antoinette Bradlee, as well as Rhode Island senator Claiborne Pell and his wife, Nuala.
Thomas M. Atkins and Robert L. Knudsen also came aboard. They were navy photographers, and, using rare color film, they vividly caught the president as young and trim and, in the Ray-Ban sunglasses and leather jacket he’d later wear, movie-star handsome. When he stared into the camera, it brought to mind what Gene Tierney, an unparalleled Hollywood beauty, wrote about their first meeting: “Literally, my heart skipped.” In 10 weeks, he would be dead.
