Distinctly Montana Magazine

60 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 reached over and patted her on the head, undid the lens cap, and posed for the picture. Someone came up and handed him a photograph to sign. Inspecting it, he was confound- ed for a moment when he realized that it wasn't a picture of him. Then he smiled and signed it when he recognized it as a portrait of Edison Real Bird, the Crow peace officer who had gifted him a peace pipe. By 4:40 p.m. he was already back in the sky and on the way to Jackson Hole. He was back at Billings the next day to change planes. Another 2,000 people awaited him, hoping for a chance at a handshake. One of them was 17-year-old Judy Webb, a student of Central High who was confined to a wheelchair. Kennedy saw her and leaned over the fence to talk just to her. He asked her age and whether she was a student and Judy, tongue-tied, couldn't re- member. Christopherson wrote that "Mayor Fraser had sent Billings' four meter maids, Lois Bonawitz, Marjie Frank, Ann Smart, and Jerry Scovil to the airport, and JFK asked them about their uniforms. One of them remembers a Secret Service man going over, picking up a telephone, putting a finger in his opposite ear, and saying, 'No, there isn't any trouble. He's just shaking hands.'" Then he boarded Air Force One and took off for Great Falls. He arrived about forty minutes later to find another 2,500 people waiting, including Dick Spanish and Earl Old Per- son, two Blackfoot natives dressed in their traditional garb. Again he shook hundreds of hands before entering the mo- torcade and proceeding along the route to his speaking en- gagement at Great Falls Memorial Stadium. People lined the street the whole way—"1,000 per block the entire route," Christopherson writes. Though Kennedy had only about two hours for the entire Great Falls visit, he made one unscheduled stop: at the south side bungalow of the parents of Montana's Mike Mansfield. There, in the modest home of Patrick and Josephine Mansfield, wherein were proudly displayed copies of Kennedy's Profiles in Courage and PT-109, Kennedy asked Patrick, 86, what part of Ireland he was from. Christopherson captures the moment that Kennedy "grinned when the elder Mansfield answered, 'Kilkenny—I left there in 1896, when I was 19.'" To the elder Mansfield, Kennedy was, he would later say, "wonderful, just wonderful." Mike Mansfield admitted it was "a perfect tribute," but opined that he "was worried something would go wrong, there were too many chances. I never would have approved it." Even so, "the South Side will never be the same." At the stadium, Kennedy spoke to a crowd of 20,000, many times more than the 6,500 the venue was intended for. It was 2026 o f BEST M O N TA N A A S V O T E D B Y R E A D E R S O F B est C h i c k e n W i n g s B est C ow b oy Ba r a n d G r i l l B est Ba rt e n d e r : Taw n y Ba x l e y B est C o u n t ry W est e r n Ba r B est B u rg e r B est P i z z a B ESt Ba rt e n d e r : K r i st e n Pa rt r i d g e T H E B est i n M O n ta n a . 2026 o f BEST M O N TA N A A S V O T E D B Y R E A D E R S O F T O P T H R E E E L I T E C ow b oy T roy ' s . c o m 4 0 6 . 6 4 2 . 3 3 8 0 T U E S D AY - S AT U R D AY 1 1A M L I V E M U S I C E V E R Y F R I D AY 2 3 5 9 U S H I G H WAY 9 3 N O R T H V I C T O R , M O N TA N A

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