What did I find so fetching about that photo? His eyebrows and his smile; his whimsey. During my undergraduate years at Amherst College (1960-1964) and later when I was a member of the Amherst faculty, Frost often came to read to a gathering in Johnson Chapel. Those were memorable experiences. I was so glad that JFK asked him to read at his inauguration on January 20, 1961. I recall, as Frost began to read a new poem he had written for the occasion, a special moment later captured so well by Life Magazine:
"Perhaps the most heartfelt words uttered that day came not from JFK, but from the 87-year-old poet Robert Frost. A four-time Pulitzer Prize winner and the quintessential New England bard, Frost penned a new poem for the inauguration, but the intense glare of the January sun made it impossible for him to read his own manuscript. After struggling for a bit, and after Lyndon Johnson stood and tried to help (using his own top hat to shield the page), Frost abandoned the effort and instead recited, from memory, a famous earlier poem: 'The Gift Outright,' written nearly 20 years before, which reads in part, 'we gave ourselves outright … To the land vaguely realizing westward.'"
"It seemed then, and still feels, an appropriately optimistic sentiment in the early days of the 1960s."