Born the day a president died

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John Fitzgerald Kennedy Baxter of Eastport has no memory of where he was when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated 40 years ago today.

But his mother does.

Geraldine Baxter has told her second son the story of Nov. 22, 1963 – when he was taking his first breaths at the very moments bullets were being fired at the nation’s 35th president.

“He was born the same time Kennedy was assassinated,” said Geraldine Baxter, also of Eastport, in an interview this week. “I think of him every time my son’s birthday comes up, the twenty-second, the day he was assassinated.”

Nov. 22 has become a national reference point, a date that jogs the memory whenever it’s mentioned.

Yet John F.K. Baxter says he isn’t the type of person who believes he should feel some cosmic connection with President Kennedy just because, by sheer coincidence, one life began at the moment another life was being taken away.

“It was just a freak thing,” he said this week.

But he is fascinated by the fact that the same date is on both his birth certificate and Kennedy’s death certificate.

“I think about it all the time, the way it all happened,” Baxter said. “It’s kind of eerie.”

While Nov. 22, 1963, marks the murder of a president, it also marks the day that 51 people were born in Maine. As John F.K. Baxter was beginning life in Eastport, Kyle Robbins was beginning his life in Ellsworth.

Robbins admits that his curiosity about the coincidence extends beyond questions to a feeling that gives him inner peace.

“I sometimes wonder if part of him is in me, yeah, a cycle of life kind of thing,” Robbins said.

Baxter and Robbins are a lot alike, though they don’t know each other.

Baxter, who now works in construction, once was a clam digger and a commercial fisherman, while Robbins, who lives in Windsor, is a clam digger out of Brooklin.

Both men believe they carry a few personality characteristics similar to Kennedy’s – Baxter says he’s bull-headed and strong, while Robbins says he’s compassionate and helpful.

They both believe John F. Kennedy was a strong leader, a role model.

“He was an excellent president, as far as what I’ve read up on him,” John F.K. Baxter said. “Back in that time, I would have voted for him.”

In the days leading up to their birthdays, both men are spending time at their TVs to watch every program they can pertaining to Kennedy’s assassination. They, too, wonder how and why it happened.

“You don’t know who to believe, who really did it,” Robbins said.

Geraldine Baxter was in the final stage of labor – the pushing part – in the early afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963, at Eastport Memorial Hospital, while her husband, Lawrence, was sitting in another room listening to the radio.

Lawrence heard that Kennedy had been shot, then that Kennedy had died.

Then he was told he had a son.

Geraldine Baxter was recovering from delivery when her husband came into her hospital room and told her that the president was dead.

“I just went to pieces,” Geraldine recalled. “I just loved him as a president. As a matter of fact, I voted him in.”

Moments later, hospital staff brought a TV into the room so the couple could watch as the events unfolded.

John F.K. Baxter doesn’t know exactly how or when his family decided to name him after Kennedy.

He said his father, who now lives in Kittery, told him that almost immediately after his birth, the couple knew they were going to give him the same name as the president’s. His mother said she remembers that her son was named the day after he was born when her cousin, Patricia Bishop, suggested it.

Regardless, “it was a very easy decision to make,” Geraldine said.

“We nicknamed him John-John,” she said, referring to Kennedy’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr., who had that nickname.

On Nov. 26, 1963, Lawrence and Geraldine Baxter announced their son’s birth in the Bangor Daily News.

Growing up, John F.K. Baxter didn’t particularly care one way or the other what his name was, Geraldine said. As a boy, he never asked his mother, “Why did you name me after him?” and he never really comprehended his connection to history.

He was a child, and as a child, he was worried that his name had too many letters. “He said, ‘It’s quite a long name, Mom,'” Geraldine recalled.

Other people, however, were fascinated. The questions usually came whenever he filled out forms.

“Everyone, wherever I’d go, they’d say, ‘John Fitzgerald Kennedy Baxter? You can’t have two middle names like that! You can’t have two initials,'” he said.

Then people would match up the name with the birth date, Baxter said, and they’d say, “‘Oh, wow. That’s kind of cool! How did it happen?'”

And he’d tell them, “I was being born, and at that time it was coming over the radio that [Kennedy] was assassinated.”

John F.K. Baxter already was a few hours old when Kyle Robbins was born at Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth. His adventure in the world began the night before, when his mother, Shirley Robbins, then of North Brooklin, began having labor pains with her seventh child in seven years.

Her labor continued throughout the night, and on the morning of Nov. 22, they had disappeared.

Shirley Robbins said she and other pregnant women were watching TV in a room at the hospital that afternoon when the news broke that President Kennedy had been shot and killed.

Kyle said that when he was older, someone told him that while his mother was in that room, another woman began celebrating Kennedy’s death after it was announced.

“The woman thought he got what was coming to him,” Kyle said. “My mother got up and slapped her. My mother said he was the best president we ever had, probably ever will be. I thought it was kind of neat.”

Around 4 p.m., labor gripped Shirley Robbins with such ferocity that she “hit the brick wall” at the moment when dilation turns to a strong desire to push. Kyle was born blue, the umbilical cord wrapped so tightly around his neck that his body was limp. A nurse delivered him, cut the cord and sucked the mucus out of his nose and mouth.

“They got him breathing, and he’s been active ever since,” Shirley said.

Life wasn’t easy for the Robbins family, both Shirley and Kyle said. Their home didn’t have any running water, and Shirley, who eventually had 12 children in 13 or 14 years, had to fetch water from a well and wash clothes on a board. They moved several times.

“It was a hard situation then,” Shirley said. “I try to block it out. That’s the only way I could survive. I did the best I could with what I could do it with.”

In a way, the Robbins family, Shirley especially, put faith in John F. Kennedy.

“He was out for the poor people,” said Kyle, noting that Kennedy inspired him to be attentive to his family. He has been married 15 years and has a daughter and a stepdaughter.

“I’d help anybody if I can, especially my brothers and sisters because I love them so much,” he said. “I close my eyes sometimes and see them all at home.”

Over the last 40 years, said both John Baxter and Kyle Robbins, not much attention was given to their birthdays. Television networks every year would broadcast reports to commemorate the anniversary of Kennedy’s death, and the two men would watch them.

“I’d go to school, and they’d talk about [Kennedy],” Robbins said. “The teacher would say that it was my birthday, and the people, they’d always clap and wish me a happy birthday. Then I’d go home and it was just another day and I’d watch it on TV.”

Both sons always speak with their mothers on Nov. 22.

“My mother, she calls me in the morning,” Robbins said. “It lasts about 20 seconds. She’ll say, ‘Happy Birthday, son,’ and I’ll tell her I love her.”

“I’ll make sure I call him,” Shirley Robbins said.

Kyle Robbins has a ritual he performs on his birthday. Even though Kennedy died on Nov. 22, 1963, “I more or less wish him a happy birthday. It was a sad day. I was born. He was gone.”

This year, now that he knows of John F.K. Baxter, Robbins said, “If I could see him, I’d wish him a happy birthday.”

“Same here,” Baxter replied.