The JFK Painting
February 19 2011
Story told by Winston F Roy

This event took place back in 1963 as the world became a little bit colder.
Bill Devine is an all round good guy that I worked with on my first job at Capital Stamp and Stationary, Bill was a typesetter by trade.

Bill was enamoured by the life and times and the politics of an Irish man by the name of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Bill told me that it was hard for him to believe that an Irish catholic became President of the United States of America.

JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963 as he rode in an open motorcade in that city.

To this day I’m not sure just why I felt so compelled to do this painting, other than the fact of feeling so overwhelmed at the time by such a loss to the free world and to those who might aspirer to be free.

In the week after the assassination
I was on our front porch working on the painting of JFK and a few people stopped by to watch me paint. One person from the US asked if it was for sale, I said, “It will be when it’s finished.”

I really did not want to sell this painting to anyone, my first thought was to keep it as part of my collection and hang it on the wall of our apartment when Linda and I get married.
It was about two weeks after the assignation and I had just completed the painting of JFK, and I brought it to work to show Bill.

In the early days when I first started to paint, I would do about ten paintings in a row then I would take a break before painting any more.

Bill always supported my art and that was encouraging me to paint more often. When Bill saw the painting of JFK he liked it, he asked if he could buy it for a dollar down and a dollar a week. In those days I sold most of the paintings for a pittance, a small amount between eighteen or twenty dollars.

I told Bill that I would like to charge more for this painting; it is my best work to date. Bill asked, "How much do you want for the painting? I have to buy this one; it has something special about it, not to mention just how much I thought about and loved JFK “And then bill said, "Even John likes it!"

John Thompson was our boss and he was nothing special to me, most just viewed John as an all round pain in the workers ass!

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The JFK Painting

I told Bill the price would be no less than fifty dollars. He agreed that it was worth that and more, but things are a bit tight right now and asked if I could hold on to it for him. I gave him my word that I would hold the painting for him and it would be his when ever he wanted it!

After working five years, I left Capital Stamp to look for a better job with a future. For a while we kept in touch but with time Bill and I drifted apart.
About Twenty years had gone by when out of the blue in the summer of 1983
I got a call from Bill.

He asked, “Do you still have my painting of JFK?” I broke out in laughter, and asked, “When would you like to pick it up?” Bill replied, “I could drop by tonight,
I’ll have a lady friend come with me if that is all right with you?”

I joked with Bill once again and told him not to forget to bring a pile of money with him and said, “We are now living in the eighties, I don’t sell my work for eighteen or twenty dollars like I did back in the old days, those days are gone.

That night we sat at the table and haggled about the price, on the table one bottle of Scotch and two glasses, Bill at one end and I at the other.

Linda and Bill’s lady friend chatted in the living room as not to interrupt such an important event that was twenty years in the making.

First Bill asked, “When did you take up drinking Father Winston? When we worked at the stamp company, you were always preaching the evils of booze!”

I answered, “I have learned not to preach about something that I know little about.” I then poured out two large shots of Scotch and the haggling began.

By the time the bottle was empty we had set a price on the JFK painting.

Bill asked, “Will you take my personal cheque, I promise its good!” Then he offered his hand and the deal was done. I won’t say how much was agreed on as far as the price goes, but the painting of JFK to this day at long last belongs to Bill.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility - I welcome it.
~John F. Kennedy