Distinctly Montana Magazine

58 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 6 felt irked. He asked them where they'd been. Since he'd given them the day off, they had decided to drive to Great Falls. "We'd have made it," they told him, "but we ran into cows at Wolf Creek Canyon." A crowd had assembled to see him off, and Kennedy was tired but gracious. As he took a phone call he offered to let folks look through his plane. He finally took off at 9:20, nearly three hours late. Kennedy won the presidency of the United States in the election of 1960, even though he lost Montana. The final tally was 141,841 for Nixon to 134,891 for Kennedy—a margin of nearly 7,000 votes. It was the first time since 1900 that Montana had backed the los- ing candidate in a presidential election. Even so, Montana had a float in the inauguration parade, on which waved costumed cow- boys and Indians. Marie Merrill, the Reber family, and the Mar- shall family all attended, and when Kennedy noticed Joe Reber Jr. in the crowd, he singled him out with a friendly "Hi, Joe." Mansfield, Montana's senior Senator, who had supported Lyn- don Johnson over Kennedy in 1960, became one of the Presi- dent's closest advisors. They met weekly. Kennedy didn't neglect the Indians who had greeted him so warmly on his first visit to Montana. In March 1963, members of the National Conference of American Indians met with Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden. Walter Wetzel, a Blackfeet from Browning and president of the NCAI, presented Kennedy with a hand-carved gavel inscribed with another honorary Indi- an name: "Chief High Eagle." "Are there any Crows in the crowd?" Kennedy asked. "I'm a Crow. Come on up front." Edison Real Bird, a Crow from Bill- ings, presented him with a peace pipe. Later, Jackie would give Real Bird and John Cummins, another Montana Crow, a tour of the White House nursery school. The Crow men told traditional stories and played a drum for the chil- dren. Real Bird and Cummins would check the mail sometime later to find that the First Family had sent them photos of the Crow men in the White House. In September 1963, Kennedy returned to Montana as part of an 11-state conservation tour. His plane set down at the airfield in Billings at 3:19 p.m. to find 2,500 people waiting for him. From there he took a motorcade to Midland Empire Fairgrounds. He gave a speech there to a crowd of 17,500 people. He spent 15 minutes shaking hands with people over a fence, including one awestruck 12-year-old girl who kept trying to take her picture without realizing that the camera was still in its case. Kennedy Voted Best Custom Furniture iconbunks.com

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