TBT: A note from Jackie Kennedy
“She wrote of being in love, falling out of love, fearing a marriage to a skirt-chaser and then loving that marriage, and believing in God to hold on to the hope of reuniting with her assassinated husband.” – CNN in Letters reveal private thoughts of young Jackie Kennedy
With my love of history, I’m sure that many of the biographies I’ve read have been based partially on letters that were once private and that were never intended to become public.
However, as I read the news story Jacqueline Kennedy’s letters to Irish priest to be auctioned off next month, my natural inclination to err on the side of privacy trumped any opposing ideas that a lover of history in the future will benefit from the sale and publication of this material. But then, nobody asked me to be the world’s conscience.
Which brings me to the already-public response of Jacqueline Kennedy to those of us who sent her our condolences when the President was assassinated in Dallas. I seldom write public figures. But there was something different about the moments after Dallas that led me to write. Her face–shown so often in those days–was the face of a new generation’s loss of innocence.
Even though I knew she would never see my letter, I nonetheless wanted to add my voice to the chorus offering her our support. Her office sent a response and I was grateful for it even though it was formal and official.
My wife found her response and the mailing envelope and scanned them in in the midst of our huge down-size-all-the-files project. Seeing the note that surprised me as a young college student when it came in the mail reminded me this week just how stunned the nation was in 1963.
