Handsome set of three vintage neckties presented by Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy to his former press secretary, Robert Thompson, each approximately 53.5″ in length, made by Wembley, A. Sulka & Company, and Central Cottage Industries Emporium. Included with the ties is one of JFK’s personal United States Senate business cards, 3.5 x 1.75, with a golden embossed seal and printed text, “John Fitzgerald Kennedy, United States Senate, Massachusetts,” annotated in a secretarial hand, “With all best wishes for a Merry Christmas.” In overall fine condition. Accompanied by a 1957 Christmas card from Robert and Ethel Kennedy, with its original mailing envelope.
From the personal collection of Robert E. Thompson (1921-2003), a top political writer and Washington journalist who worked as John F. Kennedy's press secretary in the late 1950s, quitting just prior to the then-Senator's presidential campaign. The men met through Robert F. Kennedy, who had befriended Thompson during the McClellan Committee hearings into labor racketeering. It was at a party in 1958 at RFK’s Hickory Hill estate that JFK asked Thompson to become his press secretary. One of Thompson’s major contributions to his new boss’s 1958 senatorial reelection campaign was a movie he put together entitled ‘The U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy Story,’ which was broadcast on Massachusetts television. Kennedy later remarked that ‘it was the best thing (he) had in the campaign.’ Thompson left Kennedy’s staff in 1959 and joined the Washington Bureau of the New York Daily News, where he eventually became their White House correspondent and was assigned to cover the new American President: John F. Kennedy.
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