Big Boston, little Everett. A privileged son of wealth, an industrious son of work. Both Democrats, each a heavyweight in Congress for more than 40 years.
Their U.S. Senate careers coincided for more than two decades. Both rose to seats of power, as Senate Democrats representing people from our nation’s opposite coasts.
After Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy died last week, I settled in for a night of televised remembrance and history — although no one my age needs any reminding. For many baby boomers, childhood was punctuated by news, often tragic and shocking, of the Kennedy family.
After watching coverage of the life and death of Ted Kennedy, on Thursday night I popped in a DVD called “One of Ours: Young Scoop Jackson.”
It’s an oral history, a collection of memories from childhood friends, former teachers and others who knew Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson during his childhood, college years at the University of Washington, and early career in Everett. It’s also an eye-opening look at long-ago Everett, a rough-and-tumble town wide open to gambling, drinking and prostitution.
Produced by Thomas Gaskin, an Everett Community College history instructor, the 38-minute documentary came out on videotape in 1989. Through a grant from the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, the film is now on DVD. A production of the Everett Community College Institute for Media and Creative Arts, it’s available online through the college bookstore.
As tributes to Kennedy continue, let us not forget a somber anniversary this week in Snohomish County. Jackson died in Everett on Sept. 1, 1983, 26 years ago Tuesday.
I will never forget it. My late husband was then a young Herald reporter. That night, he rushed to what’s now Providence Regional Medical Center Everett. His story appeared in the next morning’s Herald, with this headline: “Medics worked intensely to save a big man.”
In the extraordinary days that followed, before Jackson’s funeral drew Sen. Kennedy and dozens of other national figures to Everett’s First Presbyterian Church, the people of Snohomish County paid homage to their senator from here.
Recent images of thousands of mourners paying respects to the Massachusetts senator at Boston’s John F. Kennedy Library and Museum brought back memories of a similar scene on an Everett scale. The weekend before Jackson’s funeral, crowds of people stood quietly in line outside the Solie Funeral Home on Colby Avenue. They came — neighbors, voters, ordinary working people — to say goodbye to the man they knew simply as “Scoop.”
In the documentary “One of Ours,” Jackson’s early life is explained by the voices of ordinary working people. That, I realized while watching the film, is the remarkable piece of the Scoop Jackson story.
Watching recaps of the circumstances that brought Sen. Ted Kennedy to power, it seemed inevitable that the youngest sibling of the slain president would be nationally prominent all his life. With a famous name, an ambassador father and great wealth, he was fated to play a role in a powerful dynasty.
Then there were Henry Jackson’s parents, Peter and Maureen, people without a powerful past. They were immigrants from Norway. They made their way in working-class Everett.
Yet, by the time he was 28 years old, Scoop Jackson had gotten himself elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Think of it — 28.
Gaskin, who made the film, said Friday that after Jackson died, it was important to study his early life. “He lived right here in town. Many of the people with memories of Jackson were getting on in years,” said Gaskin, who has taught at EvCC for 32 years.
Although Jackson threw his name in the presidential ring in the 1970s, Gaskin said the closest Jackson came to the White House may have been in 1960.
At the 1960 Democratic convention in Los Angeles, Gaskin said, John F. Kennedy had Jackson on a short list of running-mate contenders. Instead, Lyndon Johnson accepted the vice presidential nomination.
“If it had happened, he would have been president. We would have had a western White House on Grand Avenue,” Gaskin said.
A senator whose achievements covered human rights, foreign policy and environmentalism, Jackson was a giant — as was Sen. Kennedy. Two giants, they came to the Senate from vastly different worlds.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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