Harold and Janice Adams
Helping President Kennedy and, later, his widow: At StoryCorps, Harold Adams talks with his wife Janice about working for an architectural firm that designed President Kennedy's library and gravesite. The couple also recalls how an Aggie sticker on a car led to their 54-year-marriage.
- [Harold] We got a call from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, said that the president was going to host the Harvard Board of Overseers at the White House in May of 1963. He wanted to look at potential sites for his presidential library. Gave us about a week and a half to do the analysis of the various sites, and prepare a presentation. And he said to me in the meeting that, "Whatever you need from the government, use it." So I worked the people at General Services Administration two nights, all night long, and at seven in the morning on May 10, 1963, we met at the White House. The president came in, greeted everyone. And Mr. Warnecke said, "Mr. President, I want you to meet my office assistant, Harold Adams." And the president says, "Oh, I know all about Mr. Adams. Mr. Adams is the only person since Dean Atchison that's been able to get government employees to work all night. So, he had been told that by someone at GSA. We had a great meeting, which lead to the final selection of the site for his presidential library. Later that month, I was out on a Saturday with my roommate, who was also a graduate of Texas A&M. We were out for a drive, and we had this car pull alongside with three girls in it yelling, "Gig 'em Aggies."
- [Janice] Well, we weren't all yelling that was just Lela. Friend Lela's father had been the Dean of Agriculture at A&M. And Lela had spotted this Aggie sticker on the car. She said, "Pull this car over. The only guys that ever leave Texas are rich. We oughta meet these rich Aggies." And that's why she leaned out the window, made the gig 'em gesture, which I was appalled at, because I thought it was sort of obscene. But, at any rate, we were all pulled over and that's how we met.
- [Harold] We married three months later and have been married what?
- [Janice] 54 years.
- [Harold] 54 years.
- [Janice] I was not introduced to Aggieland until that Thanksgiving when we came to Texas to meet all of the family. I was in awe of the Texas A&M campus, which was huge. It had a golf course, and an airport. It was just so beyond anything I could ever imagine in a university.
- [Harold] Shortly before Thanksgiving and before we came down, President Kennedy was shot and killed. And it was the day after Thanksgiving that I got a call back from the office saying, "Please come back to Washington as soon as you can. Mrs. Kennedy's announced that she wants us to design the grave site for President Kennedy." So we went on back, and I spent a year totally immersed in being the project manager for President Kennedy's grave site. Mrs. Kennedy had the idea of the eternal flame on his grave. We discovered that when you have something that is burning all the time, all metals will burn up in time. But we ended up working with Corning Glass to develop a glass orifice for the flame. And it, indeed, has lasted.