Fifty years ago this week, President John F. Kennedy took to the
airwaves on Oct. 22 to inform the nation that medium- to
intermediate-range Russian missiles were present and operational
on the island of Cuba, 90 miles off the coast of Florida. It was
a scary time for many Americans, particularly residents of
Connecticut, as the Nutmeg State was well within the range of
the Cuban missiles. Connecticut, as a vital center of the
defense industry and home to our submarine fleet, would almost
certainly have been targeted early on during a nuclear exchange.
Conservative estimates projected deaths exceeding 100,000,000
Americans during a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. That
was well over half the population at the time. In response to
the presence of missiles on Cuba, JFK resisted military pressure
to invade the island. Kennedy, a prolific reader, had recently
read historian and former Greenwich, CT, resident Barbara
Tuchman's Pulitzer Prize-winning World War I book entitled The
Guns Of August, which had be