Theodore Sorensen, Who Helped Craft JFK's Inaugurual Address, Dies at 82

YouTube - Ted Sorensen On Working with JFK

(USA Today) President Kennedy's aide and speechwriter, Theodore Sorensen, a symbol of hope and liberal governance, died Sunday October 31, 2010.  Sorensen's passing Sunday came as supporters of his friend and boss prepared to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the election of Kennedy as president.  The inaugural speech remains the greatest collaboration between Sorensen and Kennedy and a standard for modern oratory.  With its call for self-sacrifice and civic engagement--"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country"--and its promise to spare no cost in defending the country's interests worldwide, the address is an uplifting reminder of national purpose and confidence. 

Sorensen, 82 died at noon at Manhattan's New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center from complications of a stroke, his widow, Gillian, said.  Sorensen has been in poor health in recent years, and a stroke in 2001 left him with such poor eyesight that he was unable to write his memoir "Counselor", published in 2008.  Instead, he had to dictate it to an assistant.  President Obama issued a statement after learning of Sorensen's death.  "I know his legacy will live on in the words he wrote, the causes he advanced and the hearts of anyone who is inspired by the promise of a new frontier," Obama said.  Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, JFK's daughter, called Sorensen a wonderful friend and counselor.  "His partnership with President Kennedy helped bring justice to our country and peace to our world.  I am grateful for his guidance, his generosity of spirit and the special time he took to teach my children about their grandfather," she said in a statement. 

Hours after Sorensen's death, Gillian Sorensen said that although the stroke nine years ago robbed him of much of his sight, "he managed to get back up and going."  She said he continued to give speeches, and two weeks ago he collaborated on the lyrics to music to be performed in January at the Kennedy Center in Washington--a symphony commemorating a half-century since Kennedy took office.  She said her husband was hospitalized October 22 after a second stroke that turned out to be devastating.

Some of Kennedy's most memorable speeches, from his inaugural address to his vow to place a man on the moon, resulted from close collaborations with Sorensen.  He had long been suspected as the real writer of the future president's Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage, an allegation Sorensen and the Kennedy's emphatically denied.