What's on Your Desk? The Stories from President Kennedy May Surprise You

Presidents’ Day fell on my birthday this year, a date I also share with a personal hero,?Profile in Courage Award?recipient Congressman John Lewis.?I’ve thought even more recently about courage, commitment, and civic responsibility—and how the legacies we carry can help us rise to today’s challenges, professionally and personally.? Through Black History Month, I loved learning from LinkedIn connections about the people who you carry, who provide courage and pride, and who also motivate you to continue their spirit in your own lives and spheres of influence.

Earlier this year, one of our JFK Library members mailed me a 1961 Inaugural Edition of?Profiles in Courage about eight United States Senators exhibiting political courage. Historian Allan Nevins’ introduction resonates in 2022. It reminds me the past has never been perfect and our individual responsibilities remain great:?

“Before there can be much character and courage in Congress,” Nevins writes, “there must be a great deal of it in the American people. We shall look in vain for these treasures in Washington if they are not scattered widely everywhere from Boston to San Diego.”?

I keep the book and a “We choose to go to the moon” JFK Library coaster visible at my desk as reminders of the work we do now to help people answer the call to serve.?On my office wall, for Zoom meetings, I also have a photograph of the "I AM A MAN" Memphis sanitation strikers and Norman Rockwell's painting "The Problems We All Live With" of Ruby Bridges walking to school in New Orleans with U. S. Marshalls. President Kennedy filled the Oval Office with symbolic items that influenced his attitude to challenges.

The PT-109 and coconut story remind me how past experiences of courage inspire us to do more than we may believe possible—even President Kennedy.?As Dr. Barbara A. Perry reminds readers in?“Have You Heard About the Coconut That Saved the President?”?in?The Hill, John F. Kennedy kept his?coconut?visible on the?Resolute, his Oval Office desk.?When the?Amagari?sank the PT-109 in 1943, Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, two indigenous Solomon Island scouts, carried a rescue message carved into the coconut husk.?

What did this coconut mean to John F. Kennedy while writing?Profiles in Courage, revising the “ask not” lines of his inaugural address, seeking a peaceful solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis, advancing civil rights legislation, and calling racial justice a moral crisis??

Young children and students who tour the JFK Library remember the coconut—a seed to hold the intangibles of courage, service, and sacrifice—as so many Museum visitors carry away, too. This past week 117,000 teachers and educators, representing every state, received our monthly Teaching and Learning Tuesday email with ready resources to engage students across K-12 education.?

Imagine what a teacher can do with a coconut—the conversation starter for voting rights and civic responsibility; diplomacy, war, and the fighting in Ukraine; Supreme Court nominations and trailblazing women; or media propaganda, from the Cold War to Putin, and the Kennedys’ efforts to show our democratic values and commitment to peace and freedom around the world.?

The JFK Library's new?eMuseum offers access to the coconut and hundreds of other artifacts.??Mrs. Kennedy’s dresses and White House restoration items, Rose Kennedy’s recipe box for keeping the children’s medical records, President Kennedy’s Oval Office furnishings, and more give viewers around the world intimate, storied items that show us who they were—how they carried themselves and what they treasured.

More importantly, these items can speak to us about who we are and what we value.??They spark us and sustain us to act more courageously in our everyday lives.?They connect us in a divided, destabilized digital world around historical markers and people who share our values and aspirations to make a difference.

Following Presidents’ Day and Black History Month, I hope to read your thoughts below for what matters most to you for remembering and activating courage today.?

In 2021, the JFK Library had more members at the?Contributor level and above?than any year, while our entry-level memberships are still down because of the pandemic.?People commit to this mission, in every state and around the world, to “light our country and all who serve it,” as President Kennedy asked Americans to do in his Inaugural Address.

We can choose, these members show me, to invest in small acts of courage, commitment, and service.

If a coconut shaped the New Frontier and continues to inspire younger generations through the JFK Library today, I hope it is also a welcomed gift to share President Kennedy’s coconut and your own stories of courage.?Our country and our world can use both.

Check out President Kennedy's Oval Office and share what's on your desk below. Keep a physical object visible for the month to see what it inspires in you. Discover more for #motivation #workingathome #future @ JFKLibrary.org.