Ted Sorensen spent 11 years as an aide, counselor and (especially) speechwriter to John F. Kennedy, starting in 1953 when Kennedy was a newly-elected U.S. Senator, and ending with Kennedy’s assassination as president in 1963. He wrote one of the early definitive books about the Kennedy administration — Kennedy, in 1965 — and also helped Kennedy write his Pulitzer Prize-winning political biography Profiles in Courage in 1955.
Sorensen will always be remembered best for writing JFK’s stirring campaign and presidential speeches. The 1961 inaugural — with its soaring phrases like “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans” and “now the trumpet summons us again” — is well worth a read right now if you have a moment.
Its idealism is astonishing today.
Ted Sorensen is one of the very last members of the John Kennedy old guard to go. (In fact, I can’t think of another off the top of my head. Is McGeorge Bundy still alive?) He’ll always be remembered for the stirring speeches, but he was also a key policy advisor, sounding board, and flat-out workhorse for Kennedy. An important career.
His 2008 memoir Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History was reviewed with exasperation by Who2 in 2008.
(Photo credit: Abbie Rowe, National Park Service, courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.)