When Barack Obama speaks to the country next Thursday from Denver’s Invesco Field, he won’t be the first major party candidate to accept his party’s nomination in a football stadium.

But there is a pretty good chance the event will be better organized than the last time this occurred. Invesco Field was first mentioned as a possible site for the Dem candidate’s speech in March 2006 – eight months before Obama publicly declared his interest in the position.

The last time it happened, things weren’t as well organized.

In 1960, Roz Wyman, a 30-year old pepperpot who was a Los Angeles city councilwoman, had an idea that she was sure would be a big hit. Instead of having Sen. John Kennedy deliver his acceptance speech at the Los Angeles Sports Arena (where the convention was being held), she thought it would be a great idea to have the event held at the nearly 100,000 seat Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, at the time the home field of baseball’s Dodgers and a well-known site for football games.

She went to Bobby Kennedy, his brother’s main advisor with the plan. "If we take it outside, Bobby, more people can come," Wyman said, noting the convention site was very limiting. “And I said, ‘We open it up to the public.’ He's an exciting candidate, and you know it would be so great."

Bobby Kennedy was a bit skeptical. "Where are we going to get a hundred thousand people?" he asked.

Wyman had a quick answer for that – you don’t need that many people. It’s a big stadium – we’ll simply block half of it off.

Bobby Kennedy still wasn’t convinced but Wyman, whose persistence helped bring the Dodgers to town two years before, wore him down and he agreed to have his brother move his speech, saying, "Wyman, you're young, and you might have a career, a long career in politics, but if this is wrong, this is the end of your career."

One problem: After Bobby Kennedy agreed, Wyman had just 48 hours to pull this off.

You see, the conversation noted above took place on Tuesday and John Kennedy was scheduled to give his acceptance speech two nights later.

(As it turned out, this wasn’t totally being done on the cuff. Wyman had reserved the date at the Coliseum “just in case” this idea worked out. The Dodgers were playing in an Francisco that night. Imagine trying that today.)

But we digress.  Wyman went to work immediately. “I remember getting on the phone with every labor union I ever knew in the state of California, every Democratic Women's club, and using the old thing, "You get 10, and you get 10," she said.  “The old... what did we used to call that? A pyramid type of thing.”

Just about every bus, limo and taxi in town was put to use as the 16,000 conventioneers and the various pols on hand at the Sports Arena were shuttled to the Coliseum. Tickets were printed overnight (a very unusual thing at the time) and distributed the next day to various Democratic clubs in the southern California area. Wyman also sent word north: anyone who wants to come can. Simply tell us how many tickets you need.

That solved the ticket problem and it was estimated 80-90,000 people attended Kennedy’s speech. 

As for the program, Wyman made a few more phone calls. In Hollywood, when the word spreads you might get on live national TV, it is amazing how quickly folks’ plans can change. So it was that a two-hour “pre-game” show was quickly put together. Kennedy’s speech came after a lengthy series of entertainments that ranged from Mort Sahl, a well-known, sharp-tongues comedian to the Maryknoll Japanese drum corps. Celebs on hand included Frank Sinatra and Vincent Price.

VP nominee Lyndon Johnson's wife, sister and daughters circled the Coliseum track, waving from a white convertible like homecoming princesses, and JFK's mother and sisters followed in a red ragtop. Thwere’s no biz like it, is there?

By all reports, the Coliseum crowd lapped the evening up. At the time, television – via the three major networks – covered the conventions for several hours in prime time. In her excitement, Wyman hadn’t bothered to ask ABC, CBS and NBC if they would be able to move enough equipment to the Coliseum to televise any or all of the event. And she probably hadn’t thought much what the newspaper types would need to do.

But in a rare show of unanimity, the networks quickly agreed to pool camera resources. The Coliseum press box had plenty of space (more, actually than the cramped Sports Arena) and the network anchors got their own booths. But there wasn’t time to set up enough teleprinter stations for the newspapers. So, telegraph editors had to resort to methods that hadn’t been used for years, including using the old Morse code method of dots and dashes to get stories filed.

Somehow, it all fell together and Wyman looked like a hero to the Kennedys. Since this was only the second time the political conventions had been televised in any detail, the rest of the country didn’t know the difference.

Next Thursday night will, of course, be different. Plans for the event have been kept in as tight of a wrap as, say, the pick for a vice-presidential running mate. The networks have been consulted in advance this time and everybody from Al Jazeera to the Yuma Pioneer newspaper (a weekly that has been publishing for 122 years) knows right where they will sit when Sen. Obama makes his speech.

The party bigwigs undoubtedly are jockeying for position to make eye contact with the candidate and (perhaps) be seen on television. (In 1960, Johnson and other key Dems sat in the front row of the stands. They were visible on TV but Kennedy could not see them.) As is often the case in today’s political climate, this will be a marketing event as much as it will be a political speech.

Roz Wyman, a super-delegate to this year’s convention, will be in that crowd at Invesco. One hopes she gets a primo seat and perhaps an introduction to the crowd. It will be a slightly different event than the one she pulled off 48 years ago. We’ll leave it to the public to decide which event worked out better.

To see a partial video of Kennedy’s speech, click here.

(Dave Wright is a senior editor at August Publications)