Leo F. Haley remembers looking forward to a visit by President John F. Kennedy to Pottsville one Saturday in October 1962 when he heard some unexpected news.
"We received a communication on Friday evening indicating that he had developed the flu and his physician would not allow him to travel," Haley, Pottsville, said recently.
However, Haley said he then saw the news and realized the real reason that Kennedy, who was supposed to have given a speech on behalf of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richardson Dilworth, would not be traveling to Pottsville: The Cuban missile crisis.
Regarded by many people as the closest the Cold War came to being a hot war, the crisis lasted 13 days, starting 50 years ago today when the United States learned the Soviet Union was planning to install nuclear missiles in Cuba.
It ended with the Soviet Union dismantling the missiles in Cuba, then the only Communist country in the Western Hemisphere, and the United States agreeing not to support any future invasions of the island nation 90 miles from Florida and - although this would not be made public for many years - withdrawing missiles from Turkey and Italy.
"I think the Cuban missile crisis was actually the turning point in the Cold War," said Ralph Peters, 60, of Warrenton, Va., a Schuylkill Haven native, writer, analyst and retired Army officer,
While each side gave some ground, Peters said the result was a decisive American triumph.
"The Soviets were shocked when JFK stood up to them," Peters said. "In fact, the Russians just plain backed down. We won the Cuban missile crisis."
Retired Gen. George A. Joulwan, 72, of Arlington, Va., who grew up in Pottsville, was a second lieutenant during the crisis, serving as an Army platoon leader in Schweinfurt in what was then West Germany. However, his being thousands of miles from the shores of Cuba did little to lessen the impact of the crisis on him.
"I was in a foxhole up in Germany. We all were aware of what was happening off the coast of Cuba," Joulwan said. "It was a very tense period for all of us. We were following it very closely."
It was not until many years later, when he was a four-star general and Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, that Joulwan learned from former Soviet, now Russian, military men how close he and his fellow U.S. soldiers had come to fighting.
"They had offensive plans," Joulwan said of the Soviets.
Although he was not yet old enough to be in the military, Peters remembered thinking about the crisis while a sixth-grader at the East Ward School in Schuylkill Haven.
"I fully remember walking home ... wondering if there would be a great war," he said. "I distinctly remember walking down the hill ... not panicked at all. There wasn't anything I could do about it."
Joulwan and Peters agreed that Kennedy handled the crisis well.
"It was very skillfully done. He prevailed," Joulwan said of Kennedy. "I really thought he did an excellent job."
Even though the U.S. also withdrew missiles under the terms of the agreement that ended the crisis, that is secondary in Joulwan's mind to what occurred off Cuba and merely gave the Soviets a chance to avoid humiliation.
"He gave them an out," Joulwan said of Kennedy's actions.
Peters also said that Kennedy served his country well.
"The proof is in the pudding. Their ships turned around," Peters said of the Soviets. "They showed that they were bluffing. They weren't going to risk a war over Cuba."
Peters said that although the Cold War lasted almost 30 more years, the crisis started the Soviet Union's decline.
"That was the apogee, the zenith of Soviet military ambitions," he said. "After that, the Soviet Union never tried seriously to extend its empire into the Western Hemisphere."
Joulwan said it also served as a reminder of the importance of being ready for anything, a concept he said the President Reagan used to help end the Cold War by making military improvements the Soviets could not match.
"It is better to deter a war than to fight one," he said. "We kept that edge. By being combat-ready, you deter war."