President John F. Kennedy arrives at Fliegerhorst Kasern in Hanau, Germany, on June 25, 1963. Army veteran Robert Deliget, of Merrillville, Ind., photographed the commander-in-chief during the visit, which came one day before his “Berliner” speech. (Ted Rode/Stars and Stripes)
(Tribune News Service) — Merrillville, Ind., resident Robert Deliget was serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army in Germany when he got a chance to see President John F. Kennedy just before he gave one of his most famous speeches.
Sunday marked the 60th anniversary of when Deliget photographed JFK at a military base in Hanau, Germany, just a day before he delivered his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.
“I was lucky I was there to see something like that,” Deliget said. “Everybody liked Kennedy. He was our president. He was 6 or 7 feet away.”
The Northwest Indiana native who grew up in East Chicago and Griffith enlisted in the Army with a few friends during the peak of the Cold War.
“We went in right after high school,” Deliget said. “There still was the draft. The Korean War was over but they kept the draft. A lot of guys went in after high school.”
He was dispatched to Germany, where he was stationed between December 1960 through June 1963.
“It was nice being in Germany,” Deliget said. “It was beautiful. We’d get on a bus on Sundays and visit different towns. We went to England, Denmark and Paris.”
Deliget served as a light vehicle driver in the country after it was rebuilt following the devastation of World War II. He had to drive officers around to different posts and go out on maneuvers when they would camp out in the field for a few days while training as a unit.
“We had the weekends off,” he said. “I had heard Germany was the best place to be in the service. It has the castle on the river, beer gardens, bratwurst, the fairy castle and small villages. It was all beautiful.”
While he enjoyed his downtime, the mood was often tense.
“We had alerts to get ready,” he said. “There would be war maneuvers and stuff like that. Everybody was afraid of another war with Russia. We were on the border and didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Deliget learned long in advance Kennedy would be visiting the base.
“We spent weeks getting ready,” he said. “Everything had to be spit and polish. We had to get the vehicles clean and everything ready to go for the parade. It was a big deal. He was the president of the United States. He was the commander-in-chief. We were excited he was coming there.
Soldiers and military brass congregated as Kennedy passed by in a procession June 25, 1963. He visited the post for a few hours, meeting with generals before moving on to Berlin.
“There was a lot of Army personnel there,” Deliget said.
The next day, Kennedy gave a speech to an estimated crowd of about 120,000 on the steps of Rathaus Schöneberg, proclaiming that “all free men, whoever they may live, are citizens of Berlin.” His address rallied West Berliners 22 months after the Berlin Wall was erected and took a hardline stance against the Soviet Union at a time when it was seeking to expand its sphere of influence and engaged in a nuclear arms race with the United States.
“It was broadcast all over,” Deliget said. “It was good to see him there. This was after the Berlin Crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
Not even five months later, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy, the first Catholic president and youngest president ever elected.
Deliget was discharged from the Army when his enlistment ended and returned home to Northwest Indiana.
He recalled later when he was living in Griffith he had the undeveloped film in an Army footlocker. He was not sure what to expect but was pleased with how the film turned out.
It showed Kennedy riding in the same car he did when he was killed in Dallas.
“It was the same Continental limousine he was assassinated in,” Deliget said. “He rode in there with two generals for the parade.”
Deliget knew the parade route. He was lined up on it and ready to shoot the passing president with a black-and-white Kodak camera.
“It was just nice seeing the president,” he said.
After he was discharged shortly after the experience, Deliget was back home working for Inland Steel in East Chicago’s Indiana Harbor neighborhood when Kennedy was killed.
“The news came out the president was shot,” he said. “I felt bad. I didn’t get the film developed until later. It’s history. I knew I’d never see anything like that again.”
Deliget, who went on to become a bailiff for the Lake County courts, said he can not believe 60 years have passed since his close brush with a president.
“Time goes by so fast,” he said. “It’s history that I remember and got to see first-hand.”
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