I have long known the story of Merle Smith Jr. becoming the first Black cadet to graduate from the Coast Guard Academy in 1966.

It was the beginning of a storied career that made him the first Black commander of patrol boats in combat, during Vietnam, the recipient of a Bronze star and the first Black law professor at the academy.

With his appointment to the academy faculty, Smith settled in eastern Connecticut, where his widow, Lynda Smith, a family therapist, is still active in community affairs, serving on The Day Publishing Co.’s board of directors and as president of the Garde Arts Center Board of Trustees.

Still, it was surprising, when I tuned in recently to a televised interview with Pulitzer Prize winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, to hear her tell the story of how it was President John F. Kennedy who was instrumental in placing Merle Smith Jr. at the Coast Guard Academy.

Goodwin is on a national book tour promoting her new book, “An Unfinished Love Story A Personal History of the 1960s,” and her story about Smith features prominently in many of her interviews in national media.

Goodwin’s book grew out of a collaboration between her and her late husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin, who worked for both JFK and President Lyndon Johnson, the subject of her first book.

Husband and wife together went through hundreds of boxes of letters, diaries and memorabilia from Richard Goodwin’s career that helped tell some of the great stories of the 1960s, including the account of how Smith ended up at the academy.

It turns out, Goodwin writes, that when her husband encountered JFK in the hallway of the White House after his inauguration, the new president was agitated about the fact that there were no Black faces in the Coast Guard’s delegation at the day’s ceremonial parade.

“Of course, he was aware of the political statement a snow-white Coast Guard made to the world,” Goodwin wrote in quoting her husband’s description of the exchange with JFK that day, “but it wasn’t just because it looked bad. On a personal level, he found it objectionable.”

This became Goodwin’s first assignment, his wife wrote, and a flurry of memos from the White House “lit a fire” under the Coast Guard, as a search to find a “barrier breaker” began.

The following year, an appointment was offered to Smith.

Goodwin’s telling of the story adds more detail to a more abbreviated account that appeared in the New York Times at the time.

I caught up with Lynda Smith after hearing Goodwin’s story on television, and she recounted for me the hours she spent interviewing with Goodwin for the book.

She said the two have agreed to visit together the exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, where Smith’s achievements are noted with a display of his dress blue uniform dinner jacket.

“We bonded as two women who had been married to remarkable men and experienced the heartbreak of losing them, being able to experience our loss and move on with our lives in meaningful ways,” Smith told me.

Goodwin, Smith said, was remarkable in their interview.

“She was so down to earth, so warm, so affable, so approachable,” Smith said. “You could just feel her deep interest in you and what you had to say, and her questions were really knowledgeable and insightful.”

I asked Smith if she felt the Coast Guard has made sufficient progress since JFK’s alarm about obvious discrimination at the Coast Guard Academy. She said it has.

“One of the best examples of the Coast Guard’s increased awareness and progress regarding greater minority representation,” she said, “is the appointment last year of Adm. Michael Johnston as the first African American superintendent of the United States Coast Guard Academy.”

That’s a good point. The all-white Coast Guard delegation to JFK’s inaugural parade is one for the history books.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com