July 18, 1963 - President Kennedy was mobbed today at the White House by more than 2,500 foreign students who converged on him in the hope of a handshake or an autograph. Secret Service agents and White House policemen had to use elbows and shoulders in a not-too-gentle struggle to keep the youthful crowd from knocking the President down. The incident erupted on the South Lawn after Mr. Kennedy had addressed the students, who soon will return to their homelands after spending a year in American high schools under an American Field Service exchange program. After Mr. Kennedy finished his remarks, he walked along a barrier that had been erected to prevent the kind of melee that soon occurred. As he shook hands and signed autographs, students at one end of the fence swarmed over and under it and came at the President. Emory Roberts, a Secret Service agent who stood at Mr. Kennedy’s back as the President was propelled through the crowd, lost a shoe in the scuffle. As Mr. Kennedy approached his office, the young people trampled the boxwood hedges surrounding the Rose Garden and swarmed onto the porch just outside the office door. One girl came out of the crowd near Mr. Kennedy shouting, “I’ve got his handkerchief!” “I’ve got his tie clasp!” a boy yelled. Mr. Kennedy kept smiling and shaking hands throughout the episode. When he got into his office, a policeman shut the door with a slam. Mr. Kennedy turned, inside the glass portal, to grin back at the milling students.
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