Ted Sorenson with John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office in 1961

Theodore C. “Ted” Sorenson, one of the last surviving members of John F. Kennedy‘s inner circle and one of the greatest political speech writers, phrasemakers, and propaganda writers of the twentieth century, died from a stroke yesterday in Manhattan. As Tim Weiner notes in a New York Times obituary,

He was best known for working with Kennedy on passages of soaring rhetoric, including the 1961 inaugural address proclaiming that “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans” and challenging citizens: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Mr. Sorensen drew on the Bible, the Gettysburg Address and the words of Thomas Jefferson and Winston Churchill as he helped hone and polish that speech.

First hired as a researcher by Kennedy, a newly elected senator from Massachusetts who took office in 1953, Mr. Sorensen collaborated closely–more closely than most knew–on “Profiles in Courage.” the 1956 book that won Kennedy a Pulitzer Prize and a national audience.

Although he went on to write several books of his own — including a bestseller about his time with JFK, called simply Kennedy — and to a notable career as an attorney and political advisor to historic figures such as Anwar Sadat and Nelson Mandela, he would forever be linked to Kennedy.

And it was there, according to the Times, that he wrote his greatest work, under unimagineable pressure:

Mr. Sorensen was proudest of a work written in haste, under crushing pressure. In October 1962, when he was 34 years old, he drafted a letter from Kennedy to the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, which helped end the Cuban missile crisis. After the Kennedy administration’s failed coup against Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs, the Soviets had sent nuclear weapons to Cuba. They were capable of striking most American cities, including New York and Washington.

“Time was short,” Mr. Sorensen remembered in an interview with The New York Times that was videotaped to accompany this obituary. “The hawks were rising. Kennedy could keep control of his own government, but one never knew whether the advocates of bombing and invasion might somehow gain the upper hand.”

Mr. Sorensen said, “I knew that any mistakes in my letter–anything that angered or soured Khrushchev–could result in the end of America, maybe the end of the world.

The letter pressed for a peaceful solution. The Soviets withdrew the missiles. The world went on.

Ted Sorenson was 82 at the time of his death.