Published: August 29, 2009 09:26 pm      

Former Daily Telegraph photographer recalls 1960 Kennedy visit

MONTCALM — In the spring of 1960, Vernon Fields got wind of a bit of news that a national political candidate was planning to visit a small Mercer County town. Fields and his wife, Helen, were living in downtown Montcalm at the time, and he decided to leave for work a little early on April 26, 1960, and take a picture of the politician.

Fields, 81, served in the Korean War, but lost his leg when he stepped on a land mine. He went to a photography school in Georgia, and came back to Mercer County when his dad got sick. V.L. “Stubby” Currence was managing editor of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph at the time, and he recognized an experienced man when he saw him.

Soon after he joined the Daily Telegraph staff, Fields was taking the same kind of gritty crime scene, fatal fire or sensational accident photographs that were the industry norm of the late 1950s and early ’60s. He didn’t think much about photographing a political person.

“When I was coming to work, there he was in the middle of downtown Montcalm, introducing himself and talking to people,” Fields said of the late U.S. Senator Edward M. “Teddy” Kennedy, D-Mass., who was buried at Arlington National Cemetery Saturday.

“I stopped the car and went over to him to ask if I could get a picture,” Fields said. “The only thing I remember about the actual photo is that when I pulled my camera up to take the shot, all of the people who were talking to him looked at me. I had to tell them to look at him.”

After he got the shot, Fields visited with Kennedy for a few minutes. “He said that he came over to Montcalm to get some support for his brother Jack who was running for president,” Fields said. “We didn’t use the picture. I just put it in one of my stacks of pictures.”

Later in the day after he arrived at work in Bluefield, Fields followed (then) U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy around, taking additional photos at each stop — all of which went straight to file. Newspaper editors would sort through Fields’ file photos in November 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated. They looked again in June of 1968 after Ted Kennedy’s other brother, Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy — himself a Democratic candidate for president — was assassinated. During the 1968 campaign, Robert retraced his brother’s campaign trail through southern West Virginia.

“After Bobby was killed, that was when I wrote Teddy Kennedy’s name and the year, ‘1968,’ on the back of the picture, but I took it when Teddy was here in 1960,” Fields said. “That’s when Helen and I were living in downtown Montcalm, and that’s when I stopped in town to take the picture.”

All three Kennedy brothers made a lasting impression on southern West Virginia since the time of their very first visit to the Mountain State. Television sets through the coalfields were tuned to the live broadcasts of Teddy Kennedy’s funeral on Saturday.

— Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com