Utah’s Chautauqua Venue, Center for the Arts at Kayenta presents Living History with Bobby Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, The 1962 Missile Crisis.

This Chautauqua about the 1962 Missile Crisis is performed by Jeremy Meier as Bobby Kennedy & Douglas A Mishler as Nikita Khrushchev.

The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis of 1962 was a 35-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, which escalated into an international crisis when American deployments of missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of similar ballistic missiles in Cuba. Despite the short time frame, the Cuban Missile Crisis remains a defining moment in US national security and nuclear war preparation. The confrontation is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war.

After several days of tense negotiations, an agreement was reached between Kennedy and Khrushchev: publicly, the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement to not invade Cuba again.

During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby Kennedy helped develop the Kennedy administration’s strategy to blockade Cuba instead of taking military action that could have led to nuclear war. He then negotiated with the Soviet Union on the removal of the weapons. JFK’s younger brother played in resolving the Cold War’s most dangerous moments.

Robert F. Kennedy, JFK’s younger brother, was 36 years old at the time. One of the youngest attorneys general ever appointed, RFK was also the president’s de facto chief of staff and most trusted advisor.