New Documentary Explores JFK’s Unlikely Ties to Moses Lake

A new documentary probes John F. Kennedy's brief but historic layover in Moses Lake.

Kennedy's life story - from his political exploits to his personal foibles - has been told and retold ad infinitum, but people remain captivated by our 35th president. Many readers can probably recite from memory the following date: November 22, 1963. Kennedy was shot and killed that afternoon while cruising through Dallas in an open-air motorcade.

Less well-known is Kennedy's visit two months earlier to Larson Air Force Base (now Grant County International Airport).

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For years now, historian Lee O'Connor has been at work on a book about the Titan 1 missile system, a relic of the Cold War arms race that was last operational in 1965. Larson housed three Titan 1 sites.

According to O'Connor,

I spoke to the daughter of an Air Force helicopter pilot whose job it was to fly from Larson to those three remote missile sites. While we were discussing her father's work, she mentioned her home movie of JFK at Moses Lake.

 

She offered to share the film with me. I realized it was a tremendous opportunity to tell this story and bring it to life based on research I had already done on an adjacent subject.

Kennedy touched down at Larson on 9/26/63. A helicopter bound for Hanford Nuclear Site was waiting to whisk him off; he was due to headline the N Reactor groundbreaking. But the president took a beat, chatting and shaking hands with townsfolk.

Those precious few minutes are immortalized in O'Connor's short documentary, JFK in Moses Lake, vividly rendered through interviews, photos and archival footage. The film is narrated by Shane Humphrey, a friend of O'Connor's since their time together at Evergreen State.

O'Connor jokes that little was left on the cutting room floor - because he had little to work with in the first place. What he lacked in usable material, O'Connor made up for in secondhand knowledge.

He describes being swarmed with remembrances of Kennedy, many unsolicited: "I started researching [the Titan 1 book] in 2003. A lot of people would tell me as an aside, 'Oh, I remember JFK.'" O'Connor suspects that Moses Lake, having experienced Kennedy up close and personal, was particularly hard-hit by his death.

A free screening of the documentary is scheduled for April 17 at the Moses Lake Museum & Art Center (401 S. Balsam St). O'Connor will be around afterward to answer questions.