Past alive at JFK Library

BOSTON — More than a monument to the man, the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library is a tour of yesteryear, a living reference to one of the country’s most electrifying eras.

Like most modern presidential pantheons, the JFK Museum and Library is a large, complex structure, filled with mementos for the gazing, films for the studying, and souvenirs for the buying. Regardless of political persuasion, a visitor should find the museum a fascinating return to the 1960s and the period’s trials of man and government.

The scheduled tour begins with a 17-minute overview of JFK, narrated by the president and produced by Peter Davis of Castine, and ends with his selection as the Democratic nominee in the summer of 1960. From there follows a Disneyesque video voyage of Kennedy’s ascension from political nominee to president to martyr, with a continuous array of films highlighting each stop.

There is a brief section of a Main Street, U.S.A., if you will, from 30 years ago, replete with storefronts filled with everything from cheap razors to Frank Sinatra records.

If there’s plenty of space devoted to what some might call the Kennedy myth, there’s also an ample measure dedicated to the administration’s accomplishments and challenges: The space program, Peace Corps, and arms control are there as well.

The tour moves along JFK’s route to the White House, with mockups of a campaign office, the set of the Kennedy-Nixon debates, a CBS newsroom with election results, and the inaugural setting at the Capitol that reflect the long journey of reaching presidential power.

From there, visitors travel through a White House corridor with rooms devoted to the Cabinet, international affairs, the Peace Corps, the Cuban missile crisis, and the office of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, among others. Near the end of the tour is the assassination hall, a dark corridor with videos playing news films from Kennedy’s funeral.

Throughout the museum, some of the 20 video presentations there bring the 1960s to life, an important addition for the thousands of patrons who were not yet born during the Kennedy years. One recent addition is a video of President Clinton recalling his own Rose Garden meeting with JFK as a young delegate to Boys Nation.

Among the icons preserved behind glass and ropes are some of the simple items associated with the Kennedy legend: the coconut on which JFK wrote an SOS message after his PT-109 was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer during World War II, the family Bible on which he took the oath of office, a handful of his favorite books, and, of course, the rocking chair. Another new exhibit is a small section devoted to the Profile in Courage Award — named after Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

Each year, about 200,000 people visit the museum, which takes particular care in attending to the needs of students.

The renovated library, which was designed by I.M. Pei and opened last October, cuts an imposing figure on Columbia Point, overlooking Boston Harbor. It is here that more than 30 million documents, including some of the papers of Ernest Hemingway, are stored and are generally open to the public.

JFK Library hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. Admission is $6 for adults. For more information, call (617) 929-4523.