Published January 18, 2011

R. Sargent Shriver, who founded the Peace Corps during the Kennedy administration and launched an ill-fated campaign for vice president, has died. He was 95.

Shriver’s family said he died Tuesday in Bethesda, Md., where he had been hospitalized for several days.

President Obama called Shriver one of the “brightest lights of the greatest generation,” a World War II veteran who embodied the idea of public service during his long and distinguished career.

Shriver announced in 2003 he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. His daughter, former California First Lady Maria Shriver, became a champion of the cause.

“He lived to make the world a more joyful, faithful, and compassionate place,” the Shriver family said in a written statement. “He worked on stages both large and small but in the end, he will be best known for his love of others.”

Shriver co-founded the Special Olympics with his late wife, Eunice Kennedy Shriver. She died in August 2009, just weeks before the death of her brother, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

In 1961, after President John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps by executive order, Shriver served as the first director. The government agency celebrates its 50th anniversary in March.

Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams said Sargent was a “distinguished public servant and a visionary leader.” Williams said the Peace Corps has deployed more than 200,000 volunteers to 139 countries.

Former NPR president and Peace Corps official Frank Mankiewicz, who worked closely with Shriver, paid tribute to his friend in an interview Tuesday with All Things Considered.

“I’ll be surprised if there’s anyone who served as a Peace Corps volunteer or a staff member, either, for that matter from … 1961 to 1965 who isn’t grieving today and who didn’t see Sarge as a kind of an embodiment of the idealism that created the Peace Corps,” Mankiewicz said.

Shriver led President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” later in the 1960s. He served as U.S. ambassador to France between 1968 and 1970.

Shriver would go on to become Democratic Sen. George McGovern’s running mate in a doomed 1972 presidential campaign, after vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton abruptly withdrew from the race. Massachusetts was the only state to vote for the McGovern-Shriver ticket.

Four years later, Shriver sought the Democratic nomination for president but dropped out after a disappointing showing in the New Hampshire primary.

In 1994, Shriver was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

“Sarge was a crusader for social justice and racial equality, a vice-presidential nominee who fought for peace, and a father who instilled a deep sense of duty in all of his children,” said Sen. John Kerry in a statement.

Published January 18, 2011

This isn't real, but it might as well be.

I’ll start!

My colleague and neighbor in Harvard Square, WBUR’s Lisa Tobin, was kind of enough to give me a ride this morning. Traffic was moving through the square and on Memorial Drive. Then we arrived at the entrance to the BU Bridge rotary.

After staying in one place for 78 minutes, I reluctantly bailed on my poor driver and walked. I expected carnage at the other side of the bridge, an accident so horrific that the holdup could be forgiven. Nope, just one (1) Boston cop directing traffic.

Another Cambridge colleague, WBUR’s Joe Spurr, said he was not allowed onto the BU Bridge. He was redirected down Mem Drive, where he had to cross the Harvard bridge and then drive back up Comm. Ave.

Lisa finally arrived at work, 110 minutes after she left Cambridge. If hell ever froze over, Boston this morning is what it would look like.

And the Boston Globe reported yesterday that BU Bridge construction won’t be finished till December.

Your turn: Share your best (worst) commute nightmares in the comments. Hey, it’s good to vent.

Bobbie Cartlon (@BobbieC) tweeted:

So frustrated 2 hours in traffic to go 2 miles, gave up,#workingfromhome. Will try again later.

If we get enough good stories, I’ll share them today on Radio Boston.

Published January 17, 2011

Digging into JFK’s academic career inspired us, on this Martin Luther King Day, to look back on MLK’s connections to Boston.

King became “Dr.” King in June 1955, after earning his Ph.D. in systematic theology from Boston University. He studied personalism, the philosophy that man’s consciousness and identity makes him unique in nature. His doctoral dissertation was titled “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.”

King would go on to receive an honorary degree from BU in 1959.

“It was this university that meant so much to me in terms of the formulation of my thinking and the ideas that have guided my life,” King said in an interview recorded in the 1960s.

His BU report card shows King was an A/B student, except for a C in logic. He also took supplemental philosophy classes at Harvard.

In 1964, after he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, King realized he was living history and that he needed to get his personal papers to safety. He donated manuscripts, notebooks, correspondence and even his monogrammed briefcase to BU.

The university produced a video retrospective to show off what would become the Martin Luther King Archive.

Published January 14, 2011

Fenway Park, Boston, April 1946. Ted Williams, Eddie Pellagrini, John F. Kennedy and Hank Greenberg. (Unknown/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library)

On Thursday, after digging up President John F. Kennedy’s application to Harvard, I erroneously said the JFK Library had finished digitizing “most” of its presidential archives.

Not even close.

“This is one half of 1 percent of our collections,” said James Roth, an archivist at the JFK Library who joined in the monumental effort.

“We’re expecting to continue on through the next few decades, and hopefully, as technology increases, we’ll be able to put more and more material up faster.”

Decades! The 200,000 pages of documents now online are a fraction of the 48 million pages in the Kennedy archives. While other presidential libraries feature some materials online, this is by far the most expansive digital collection. Local tech companies such as EMC, Raytheon and Iron Mountain donated the hardware and software.

Roth told me it wasn’t so much the scanning that took time — yes, the archivists place every page onto a flatbed scanner by hand — but the meta-tagging. Every film clip, transcript, phone recording and doodle has to be described and indexed. It is arduous. The first batch took almost four years.

But hugely rewarding. “The beauty of seeing all these different documents is that you get a sense that there is no one moment of ‘That’s when a decision was made’,” Roth said. “It’s the process, the context of the documents, and how individual ideas were formed and how they changed.”

One of his favorite examples is the evolution of Kennedy’s famous inaugural address, which was delivered 50 years ago next week. You can see the late Ted Sorensen’s original draft with JFK’s notes in the margins. The famous “ask not” line began as “Ask not what your country is going to do for you…” Kennedy labored over that sentence and settled on “can.”

Now the born-digital generation, raised in the era of Barack Obama and the Internet presidency, can discover a bit of history they might not otherwise have bothered to find.

Published January 14, 2011

A tale of two front pages

Planning to rob a bank this weekend? Schedule any activity during which you want to avoid crowds for Sunday between 4 and 8 p.m. — that’s when the Patriots face off against the hated New York Jets for a spot in the AFC Championship game.

Any game featuring the Pats and Jets, or Boston and New York, is always filled with drama. Having split the season series at one win apiece, and needing only three more wins to etch their names in the history books, both teams head to Foxboro on Sunday knowing that they can win and move one step closer to the Super Bowl.

How do you know that two teams (and their associated fanbases) hate each other? When they bring their dislike to the media, and local newspapers pile on.

The talk surrounding this game borders on the absurd.

Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie is feuding with hall-of-fame-headed, model-wife-marrying, three-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady (a Sisyphean task if ever there was one.) Headline machine Rex Ryan is hoping to get into Patriots coach Bill Belichick’s head. Perhaps most notably, the media has latched on to a story about Ryan’s wife’s feet, and Patriots wideout Wes Welker used the opportunity to give one of the most hilarious press conferences of all time.

Today’s New York Post graphic pits New York’s Jets against New England’s evil empire, with Belichick playing the role of Darth Vader and Ryan a two-hamburger-a-day Han Solo.

The Boston Metro was only too happy to indulge Pats fans by taking, ahem, a kick at Ryan. (If you don’t understand the Metro’s cover, you can find the “story” here.)

For once, the game of football lives up to its name.

Published January 13, 2011

JFK's Harvard application was, well, ordinary.

It was a lot easier to get into Harvard in 1935. Or maybe it’s because he was a Kennedy.

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library has digitized most some of its massive collection of presidential photographs, telegrams, phone recordings, notes and doodles.

While digging through the digital treasure trove — called the largest project of its kind — I turned up Kennedy’s undergraduate application to Harvard. His grades are mediocre and his penmanship poor.

In his admission essay, dated April 23, 1935, Kennedy writes that he wants to become a “Harvard man,” just like his father, alongside a sparse but faithful self-portrait.

Why do you wish to come to Harvard? (The Committee will expect a careful answer to this question.)

The reasons that I have for wanting to go to Harvard are several. I feel that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university. I have always wanted to go there, as I have felt that it is not just another college, but is a university with something definite to offer. Then too, I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a “Harvard man” is an enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain.

…And that’s it.

Enclosed are Kennedy’s average report cards (he was ranked 65th in a class of 110), a letter of endorsement from his father, Joseph P. Kennedy (then chairman of the just-created Securities and Exchange Commission), his extracurricular activities (zilch) and a hand-written letter requesting permission to delay his enrollment one year so that he may study abroad (permission granted).

Kennedy would attend Harvard, of course, and the School of Government would become named after him.

You can browse Kennedy’s college application materials on Scribd.

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