JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

John F. Kennedy was an inspiring and widely loved president, but he did a terrible and lasting disservice to public health and welfare when he was inaugurated.

It was cold on Jan. 20, 1961, and Kennedy had announced beforehand he was going to wear a top hat, returning to a long tradition that his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had broken.

But by the time the inaugural address rolled around, the hat was gone. So was the topcoat he had worn in the inaugural parade. When he stepped up to the microphone, with the temperature at 22 degrees, his only real protection from the elements was a “morning coat.”

Ever since then, men have, in the main, eschewed hats, exposing their heads to frigid conditions and increasing their chances of coming down with colds, or worse.

Women, on the other hand, seem to demonstrate better judgment when it comes to head protection (and just about everything else, for that matter). They understand not only the utilitarian advantages of hats but their power to rivet people’s attention…If you need an example, just go to a Kentucky Derby (left) and see firsthand.

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I’ve been thinking about hats a lot lately, with our own single-digit temperatures here in the Midwest. As many of you know, I’m seldom without one, regardless of the season. I wear them for both warmth (in the winter) and as a fashion statement (regardless of temperature). I tell you, watching people running around without hats in conditions like we’ve been experiencing just makes me shake my smooth, warm head.

For all the virility and stupidity Kennedy demonstrated on his inauguration day, you would think that public awareness of what befell President William Henry Harrison 120 years earlier would serve as an enduring lesson in the importance of the hat.

Although his inauguration was held in early March, it too was a bitterly cold day. Demonstrating his manliness — I suppose — he declined to wear a jacket or hat, made a two-hour speech and afterward developed pneumonia. He died 31 days later. In his case, the operative mathematical equation was: cold + no hat + long speech = death.

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Another example of men feeling they had to appear macho in the face of freezing weather was the duo of Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper Sunday night on CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live show. With temperatures dipping to 9 degrees, Cohen and Cooper had on bulky coats and thick gloves but were bare headed. Cooper seemed almost incapacitated at times. I don’t know whether it was the cold or his personality or a combination of the two, but he looked stiff and frozen.

Smarter were those in the crowd, most of whom arrived hours before the annual ball drop. It seemed like a much higher proportion was wearing hats this year than in many previous years.

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My father, the late Robert J. Fitzpatrick, was a hat wearer and hat collector. He had a hall tree full of hats — mostly for show — including a pith hat, an authentic sombrero and an Irish hat he wore the time he was grand marshal of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Louisville.

But, like me, he wore hats mainly to keep the heat in. Here are photos of father and son, then, being practical and displaying the good looks of two Fitzpatrick generations.