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friend, advisor, and personal “fixer”. Kenneth O’Donnell, top aide to both JFK and Lyndon Johnson, once remarked “Outside of Bobby, President Kennedy had one really close friend and that was Dave Powers” (cited in “Dave Powers”, JFK Library, accessible online). Following Kennedy’s assassination (during which Powers was riding in the following car), Powers remained in the White House until January 1965, when he resigned to assume the post of curator for the planned John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, a position he maintained until 1994. The material in this collection does not, perforce, include anything of significance dating after Kennedy’s inauguration. Prior to the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, presidential papers and effects were understood to be the private property of the president. The Presidential Libraries Act of 1955 encouraged future presidents to donate their historical materials to the government. This was made mandatory by the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which established that records that document
the constitutional, statutory, and ceremonial duties of the president are the property of the United States Government, but Kennedy had already acted in the spirit of the 1955 Act by choosing a plot of land in Boston to house the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Powers honoured that commitment by keeping back for his own collection only material predating the presidency, and depositing the rest in the Kennedy Library. The collection was purchased in the 1990s from David Powers by the rare book dealer Maury A. Bromsen (1919–2005). Bromsen sold the archive to a private collector in around 2003. A full list and description is available on request. Together 73 items, autograph and manuscript material. ¶ Robert Dallek, Kennedy: an Unfinished Life , 2003. £375,000 [120955]
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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