The Day The Students Met President Kennedy

Fifty-three years ago this week, 117 Interlochen Summer Arts Camp students spent a day with U.S. President John F. Kennedy at the White House.

Though it’s been more than five decades, Ken Fischer, now 70, says he remembers details of the experience vividly.

Fischer was seventeen and a recent high school graduate who returned to Interlochen to play French horn one last summer “because there was no way I was going to miss out” on the opportunity.

1961 Interlochen campers had been notified that those who returned in 1962 and played well enough would be invited to perform at the White House for the President and Mrs. Kennedy.

“He was such a popular president and an arts loving guy. He was a special president, and we knew that. I was determined to come back.”

So that early August, Interlochen Founder Joseph Maddy gathered the 103-student orchestra and fourteen ballet dancers and headed southeast. The first stop was for a warm-up performance of sorts in Dearborn at the Henry Ford Estate. The following day the group arrived in the nation’s capital, spending the night in bunks at the Fort Belvoir U.S. Army base in Virginia.

The next very hot August day, the student artists were assembled on the White House lawn, ready to perform a program Maddy had conceived that would include selections from composers from around the world. Fischer sets the stage.

“The helicopter came in from Hyannis and landed there on the lawn. He got out, walked over to the stage, and without a single note went on to give a remarkable four-minute speech to us about why symphony orchestras were important.”

He recalls that the President also apologized for not being able to stay for the entire performance because he had been away all weekend and had work to do, but that he intended to “open every door and window in the Oval Office” so he could hear the performance.

Once the concert concluded, the students were invited to the Rose Garden, where Kennedy again joined them and invited them to stay for lunch.

“’I’d like to invite you to have spaghetti here at the White House,’ the President said,” Fischer explains. “He told us there were some really nice rooms in there, so it would be best if we took our food from the State Dining Room into the East Room and just sat on the floor to eat ‘so nobody will get upset if you spill.’”

(For those who wonder, the First Lady was out of the country with their children.)

Sondra Forsyth, pictured above with her hand outstretched waiting to shake the President’s hand, writes that she still has “this photo framed and hanging on my wall. I kept the glove that shook his hand and never washed it. I also have the pointe shoes I wore that day.”

Fischer adds that the trip held one final gift for him; too tired to go sightseeing, he relaxed in the back of the bus while it was parked at the Jefferson Memorial. Soon Interlochen President Maddy climbed aboard the bus he assumed was empty and sat upfront, talking to himself. Fischer got a front-row seat to the visionary’s brainstorming session.

“I overheard him talk about what a great day it was and what could be next. Of course it was so natural for a visionary like that to immediately think about what was next to expand Interlochen’s reach. It was a special incident for me.”

Today Fischer is President of the University Musical Society at University of Michigan and previously served on the Interlochen Board of Directors. Forsyth went on to found Ballet Ambassadors in New York City.

Click here to see some of President Kennedy’s comments to students and highlights of the performance.