In nineteen sixty-three, while still in high school, Bill Clinton went to Washington as a delegate to a Boys Nation program for young leaders. There, he got to meet President John F. Kennedy.

Years later, Richard Stratton, who was president of Boys Nation in nineteen sixty-three, remembered that meeting.

RICHARD STRATTON: “It was a beautiful bright summer day. It was July twenty-fourth, nineteen sixty-three, and we were all assembled in the Rose Garden at the White House as a group, waiting for the president to come out. We all sat there, riveted in attention.”

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: “I want to welcome you to the White House, particularly because this belongs to all of you and because it’s so intimately connected with the best in American history.”

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: “I was about the third or fourth person in, and he [JFK] started here and I sort of muscled my way up and made sure I got to shake hands with the president. He was quite generous. He went down the line and shook hands with a pretty good number of us who were there that day.

“It had a very profound impact on me. I think that it’s something that I carried with me always. And I was very fortunate that someone took a picture of it and gave it to me, so I was always able to remember it.”

RICHARD STRATTON: “Right after that frame -- that famous frame of him shaking hands with JFK – there’s another picture from the same film, showing President Kennedy shaking hands with Jeff Keyes, another one of our boys in from Florida, and Bill Clinton looking down at his hand with this wonderful look, like I’ll never wash it again.”