Pierre girl who played role in JFK's only South Dakota visit remembers president 60 years after assassination

John F. Kennedy killed just over a year after meeting South Dakota family during Oahe Dam dedication ceremony

Pierre resident Jamie Damon meets with President John F. Kennedy during his visit to Pierre in 1962. (Submitted)

When Dottie Howe and Vern Damon moved with their six children to Pierre in 1955, they would have never anticipated it would be where they’d later visit with the world’s most powerful official.

But that’s what happened seven years later — their family playing a part in South Dakota and U.S. presidential history.

“I wrote a letter to the White House … and asked for a picture of their kids, and I asked him to come and see the dam my dad built,” recalled Jamie Damon, in an interview with The Dakota Scout ahead of the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.

It was a year earlier that the Damon couple, 9-year-old Jamie and her five siblings would meet the 35th president of the United States during a dedication ceremony of the newly-built Oahe Dam, which Vern had worked on as a bulldozer operator.

That letter, sent in January 1962, got a response from the White House and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who sent back a a picture of her kids, only adding to speculation that the president would be coming to Pierre for the dam dedication, to be held on Aug. 17 of that same year. His visit would be confirmed just a few months later, to the surprise of everyone but the girl who had invited him.

It would be Kennedy’s first and only visit to the Mount Rushmore State during his short tenure as president, though he campaigned for the office at the Corn Palace in 1960.

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