Letters to Jackie . . . I wish I had written this book….seriously. Never mind that I am a Republican. Never mind that I am not all that crazy about John Kennedy. Never mind that I am not all that crazy about Jackie Kennedy. I still wish I had written this book.
Why? Well, my dream would sound something like this (substitute me for author Ellen Fitzpatrick): Some time ago, Fitzpatrick was at the Kennedy library researching a different book about JFK when she asked to see some of the condolence letters from Kennedy’s death in hopes of getting a sense of how he was perceived by Americans in his own time. She remembered back to when she was a young girl and saw Mrs. Kennedy on television thanking Americans for sending letters of condolence. Ms. Fitzpatrick found the letters and started culling through them.
“It was like the roof came off the building, the walls dropped away, the floor came out from under me. I was absolutely floored by what I’d begun to read,” she said Friday. “I have been teaching American history for 30 years, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a collection as powerful and that represented so many ordinary people speaking from the heart about their views about American society, and politics, and the president.” (Ellen Fitzpatrick)
Jackie received more than 800,000 condolence letters immediately after Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. By 1965, she’d received more than 1.5 million. The White House received 45,000 on the Monday following his death on Friday! I mean, think about that for a minute….what in the world would you do with that much stuff??!! The White House created a special team of volunteers who responded not only to each letter but also to requests for photos etc. The sheer numbers of boxes were destroyed leaving a “representative sample” that numbered 200,000 pages. These were categorized but despite all of this care, no historian had ever read through the entire collection in the forty six years since JFK’s assassination. That is until Ellen Fitzpatrick. That’s the part that is my dream! Being a history nut, I can’t think of anything much more exciting than coming across boxes and boxes of unseen archival ‘anythings’ that I could bring to life!!!! I would have sat in that library and cried over every one of the 200,000 pages of notes!
Some examples:
“I’m just an average American – average mentality, average housewife, average housing, average size family, a year younger than you and perhaps a little more sensitive than some, but I will always have a warm spot in my heart for both of you as long as I live.”
This was written by Marilyn Davenport of New York, who included her phone number “if you ever want to talk.”
“Mrs. John Kennedy
I extend to you and your family my sincerest condolence on the tragic death of your husband. I know words can be of little comfort now for I lost my husband on June 12th in the same way. The entire world shares your great loss and sorrow.
Mrs. Medgar Evers”
The note below was from Mrs. J.D. Tippitt of Dallas whose husband was the police officer murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald forty-five minutes after the Kennedy shooting. He spotted Oswald on the street and confronted him. Oswald pulled a gun and shot him four times at point blank range.
“May I add my sympathy to that of people all over the world? My personal loss in this great tragedy prepares me to sympathize more deeply with you.”
This tragedy was so much more than merely an assassination. It was the killing of a new attitude; a new start, a new dream of a better world for everyone. For our nation, hope really did die that day.
And finally Mrs. George Sherman:
“…how do you end a letter to a ‘First Lady’? I don’t know…I just want to thank you for a job well done. The country will miss you.”
-Norma
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