JFK in West Conshohocken

This is an excerpt from the book Remembering Conshohocken and West Conshohocken by Jack Coll

Governor John F. Kennedy Misses Conshohocken

On a cold, rainy Saturday in October 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy was visiting the nearby Bala Cynwyd community. On the campaign trail for the presidency of the United States, Kennedy’s motorcade was supposed to travel on Ridge Avenue in Roxborough, through Whitemarsh Township, on to Butler Pike and into Conshohocken. There was a ribbon-cutting ceremony scheduled at the borough line located at Thirteenth Avenue, with brief remarks from Kennedy and Conshohocken burgess James “Pat” Mellon. For unexplained reasons, the motorcade route was changed at the last minute, and Kennedy traveled the expressway and exited at West Conshohocken, missing Conshohocken. Senator Kennedy stopped at the War Memorial in West Conshohocken, spoke to the crowd in the rain for ten minutes and was on his way to Roosevelt Field in Norristown, with stops in Swedesburg and Bridgeport. As history now tells it, Senator John Kennedy was elected the thirty-fifth president of the United States just thirteen days after visiting West Conshohocken-thirteen days after missing his visit to Conshohocken.

To read more, stop by Coll’s Custom Framing and pick up the book. While there, you can see a rare photo of JFK in West Conshohocken.

If anyone has a special JFK memory please feel free to comment on our Facebook page. If you have a memory of him in West Conshohocken we would really love to hear that. You never know, maybe it can make it into the next book.