TIME'S annual choice of Man of the Year is generally kept a secret, even around the office, until the very last. But the man himself was told early in December. With the usual cheerful self-confidence of the Kennedy White House circle, almost the first response heard was: "Has anyone ever made it eight years in a row?" (The answer, of course, is no. Franklin D. Roosevelt made it three times; Churchill, Truman, Eisenhower, George C. Marshall and Stalin twice.) TIME'S criterion for its choice is the man who "dominated the news of that year and left an indelible mark--for good or ill--on history." As usual, our readers were invited to make their own nominations. Everybody from Dr. Dooley to Chubby Checker was nominated, but most frequently suggested were Dag Hammarskjold, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and either the U.S. or the Russian spacemen. Hammarskjold finished ahead in the popular vote with Kennedy second.

The President, anxious to see a thorough job of reporting done on his first year in office, talked things over with White House Correspondent Hugh Sidey, who has been covering him since the wintry campaigning days.

TIME'S choice to paint the President on his own seventh appearance on TIME'S cover, was Italy's famous portrait painter, Pietro Annigoni, 51, who made headlines in years past with his paintings of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip and Princess Margaret. A vivacious and expansive fellow who lives in a kind of chaotic simplicity in Florence, surrounded like a Renaissance master with admiring students who call him Maestro, mix his paints, and fill in the backgrounds of his frescoes, Annigoni at first did not understand the need of secrecy, and soon the Italian press and radio were blaring out the news that he was White Housebound. Luckily nobody connected his assignment with TIME'S Man of the Year.

For three days in mid-December, Annigoni sketched and painted in the President's oval office, for about seven hours each day. Between appointments, Kennedy would chat with Annigoni; at other times, with important visitors present, "they thought of me as a chair, a piece of furniture." Once the President wryly suggested his disapproval of a bold charcoal line representing his chin. The President showed Annigoni a small painting by another artist. "She'd be angry," he said, "if she knew I was showing it to you." Before long, Annigoni met the other artist, and they got along so well that an enchanted Annigoni sent Jackie a book of his paintings.

The President struck Annigoni as a man "who is always asking and always listening." Sometimes to his advisers, he would demand, "Say that again: What does it mean?" If an adviser strayed from the discussion at hand, the President would cut in, politely but crisply, "That's not the problem at the moment." Annigoni's judgment: "He seemed very calm: sober but not at all pessimistic. A realist, I think--a man who sees things as they are." It was this Kennedy, alert, responsive and concerned, not the grinning campaigner, that Annigoni tried to catch. "He didn't smile very much while I was there," said Annigoni.

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