Letters to Jackie (18 page)
Authors: Ellen Fitzpatrick
ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA
MARCH
16, 1964
Dear Mrs. Kennedy,
I feel that I too must join in the chorus of sympathy that has been showered upon you in regards to your husband.
You must not grieve great lady, because that is the job of our country. The world may be divided into vast empires, cities split in half, countries fighting against against themselves, and neighbors killing each other, but all men of every race, color, and creed came to give you something. It may not be a gift that can be seen, but one that you can feel in your heart.
The reason that all men morn the death of your husband is because we feel that we have played a part in his murder. We may not of been there, or even known that you were there but we are all responsible because we did not fight with him in everything he stood for, we just sat back and watched. We have wasted a great man.
We may not realize that fault now, but in time, history will write its own story on blood filled pages.
We all feel the loss of him dear lady and I as one am sorry.
Eileen Harayda
WOODHAVEN, NEW YORK
DECEMBER 4, 1963
My dear Mrs. Kennedy:
Enclosed is a copy of a letter my family recently received from my brother, Lieutenant Thomas A. Michalski.
Perhaps you may never even get to read it, but nevertheless feel that it strongly evidences the thoughts of our family in regard to the assassination of your beloved husband, and our beloved President.
I personally, could not have expressed more sorrow and grief had it been my own dad. My only consolation is that he has met his Heavenly Father and Eternal Reward, and is now being repaid for his goodness during his short, all too short, visit on earth.
My love and fond remembrance in prayers is with you, John-John, and angelic Caroline. Mr. Kennedy will be remembered in my Sunday offerings at Mass forever.
Sincerest condolences,
Lorraine J. Michalski
Dear Mom and Dad, Sis, too
My God! What is happening to America? Just what are things coming to? The barbaric murder of our President is unthinkable, unbelievable! I was at the Rhine-Marn in Germany and a desk clerk said that Kennedy was shot. I didn’t believe it! I thought someone took a pot-shot at him as they did to Truman.
When the report was confirmed I headed for the Officer’s Club. Ladies were coming out in tears and I knew it was fatal. The silence was terrifying—a moment of prayer! I was completely shaken then, quite frankly, and unashamedly in tears as I left the club. It was inconceivable that he was dead. I
couldn’t believe it! I went into Frankfurt. The Germans were completely excited, “ERSCHORZEN! DREI SHUSSEE KENNEDY TOT!”—Three shots, Kennedy dead. I wandered around aimlessly, stunned, and I’m just now coming out of it. I still can’t grasp it, I just can’t. Poor America, whither the Union! My heart was torn with grief.
The human grief expressed over a young man’s death, admiration for the magnificent heroism of the First Lady was evident. The Requiem In Aeternam just cut into the chambers of your heart.
Government moves forward, but the breakdown of the Constitutional System, bombings, riots, assassination, has me very concerned for America, despite my optimism for her.
Kennedy was in a very real sense, though a pragmatic politician, urging a very real war for the American dreams and their fulfillment. In this he was alone, vertically alone, trying to balance out the forces of extremes. The north, south, whites, blacks, hate, violence, stubbornness, and he did it in an artful, open and cheerfully confident manner. There was a sense of shame we must all bear in this. It is not to say he was always correct. We are all fallible in that we supported him in all things, or did not have certain misgivings on certain policies. This, too, is altogether human and American, but God! not by the bullet through the head. Not by riots and bombings.
They killed a man, but also an image. For above all Kennedy was the American success story—this boy who made, President, the young, vigorous, leader who embodied to the world, and this was so evident in Europe, the best features of America.
It seems as if this has been more than an offer; one’s life snuufed out. It is the fact that all the evil in America, life, race, class, sectionalism, radicalism of the left and right joined in destroying the good. Evil has triumphed. God grant it is a
momentary thing, a passing triumph. That is what cut my soul so deeply.
Kennedy the person was the son of the immigrant, the catholic, the former officer, the well classically educated northeasterner, the humoristic, the young man, the man under whose call I received my commission during Berlin, the man under whom I served during Cuba and that lonely hill in Germany, where we were literally one step from hell on earth.
I hope the ghost of this man haunts us for many years to come, even as that brooding statue of Lincoln does. I hope this crime chills the very marrow of the American body politic. Not since Lincoln’s death has there been a crime of its kind, so heinous, so completely revolting to human sensibility, so tragically devoid of reason.
The handling of Oswald was stupid; it can’t help but give rise to every sort of doubt and suspicion. I wonder if we shall ever know the truth.
The great idealism of the Kennedy Administration must not die—the odd effect of marriage of the idealistic, young, educated, positively prognostic was a tremendous achievement. I hope Johnson keeps the core, if not the accents of the old administration.
The whole nightmare is something out of Macbeth or a Greek tragedy. Kennedy has stood before the judgment of God. America and her place in history are yet to be finally judged.
Requiem in aeternam, JOHN FITZGERAL[D] KENNEDY. God Bless America. It seems from here we need it.
As ever with love, your son,
Tom
WOODHAVEN, NEW YORK
MR. & MRS. TEMPEST C. ZINN
STEWARTSVILLE, NEW JERSEY
Number one.
- Your husband helped the colored people for which I was glad and thankful for.
_____________________________________________________ - Your husband was a good man.
_____________________________________________________ - and trash came along and shot him.
_____________________________________________________ - We are white people.
_____________________________________________________ - We are formerly from Pennsylvania. our homes section is over on the other side of Harrisburg, P.A.
That is the way we go to it from here. We moved to New Jersey.
Spring of the year 1953. from and Signed
Mrs. Tempest C. Zinn
Stewartsville, New Jersey
_____________________________________________________
extra
Abraham Lincoln helped the colored people to. and trash came along and shot him to.
_____________________________________________________
I know what mean people are like. we live right beside mean people. it is our Boss and his wife. and they don’t associate with colored people either. What is color? No black ever rubbed off on me. God is no respector of persons. and colored people are welcome in my house any day they wish to come.
EVANSVILLE, IND.
NOV. 22ND, 1964
Dear Mrs. Kennedy:
How are you and the children? I hope my Letter will find all of you fine, under the circumstances. I want you to know that you aren’t alone in your SORROW. I, Like Millions, of others are sharing it with you. The death of your dearly beloved husband and our dearly Loved President, is a Loss, that can never be restored. I Am a Negro and I just Loved President Kennedy. He did so much for my Race. There’s Lots of Negroes that wouldn’t have the Nice jobs they have if it hadn’t been for your husband. He Proved that he beLieved that all men should have equal opportunities Regardless of their Creed, or Race, by the good he did for all manKind. His being Assassinated is something I’ll NEVER get over as Long as I Live. Our American officials are always trying to tell other countries how to Live and yet in this modern age and day, an American citizen Kills the President of the United States. It is the terriblest thing that could have ever happened to us. I for one hang my head in Shame. After our President was Killed in cold blood, a citizen was able just walk up and kill his ASSASSIN, as far as I;m concerned no-one was on the jobs those heartbreaking days Last November. Everytime you Look around you see Resturants, or Filling Stations being built, those aren’t the things they should be building. What we need is hospitaLs. The world is just full of Oswalds Running A-Round. When doctors and officials discover that a person is suffering from insanity, they keep them in confinement awhile and then turn them A-Loose on Society. The problem is that we just don’t have the hospitaLs to hold all the sick people. In my opinion this is one of our worst problems, because it’s not saFe to put your children outside to play, a woman can’t walk down the street alone, and a man isn’t safe either. So until something is dont about the mentally ill People all our Lives shall be in Constant danger. I had always wished for our first family of Our Country to be younger people. I got my wish. Mrs. Kennedy you and
the President were just wonderful, and your two Little Children are as sweet as they can be. I pray that God will give you the strength and courage that it takes to Raise children trying to be both mother and father to them. May God bless and Keep you.
Sincerely Yours
Mrs. Wilma Brooks
EXMORE VA
NOV 24, 1963
Dear Mrs. Kennedy,
I can’t express my sympathy in words nor speech but in my heart you have it all. I have been hurt from the Assassination of our Dearest and best President of the United States but he has gone to rest on a pillow of Gods Abreast, and he will never be forgotten for the good things he has done for us all especially the colored race in which I am.
Grace your self you have something too be proud of a hero man that wasn’t afraid of the world the only man that could conquer the whole Soviet Union and keep peace within the whole United States. God has his reward more than we could ever give. I know the hurt you have because it not only hurt you but the whole United Nations, but you just keep smiling. We loved him, but God loved him best and gave him a home of eternal rest. May God ever bless you and your children and may they grow up in years to come to see that they had a father to be proud of. I am poor with a family of 10 but I knew if President Kennedy had of live I would of been rich not in money but in spirit. He was a good man an well loved by the Colored race we all are hurt. If it wasn’t for “hate” he would have been living today. “Hate” is the meaning of all of the world brutaly slaying of nothing but innocent people that love to [do] good. So let us that love love one another no matter what color the skin is we still love you because from hate we have lost a Dear member that seemed as if one of our family. I didn’t have a TV but I watched a neighbors’ and seen the funeral. I gave
you credit for being a loving, sweet, and brave woman of a wonderful lover. We were crying just as hard as you were. My children asked me, why did it had to be President Kennedy. I am a woman poor and I know what hurt is. So in my last message I said it to you in his own words, “Lets not forget the pride and the Joy of our Fellow man” and in my words is God shall wipe away all tears. From a colored family that Love your husband from the depth of our heart. He shall never be forgotten.
Mrs. Doris E. Baines
E
ven as they recounted their sense of loss, Americans of all ages discussed the lasting impact that President Kennedy had on their views of American politics and on their own goals as citizens. In so doing, some expressed their views on what they considered to be the pettiness of politics, lauding Kennedy as a leader who rose above the ordinary. Immigrants who wrote condolence letters seemed especially drawn to Kennedy for exemplifying the freshness, hope, and possibility they sought and felt they had found in coming to America. Refugees who fled from fascism wrote of their belief in the President’s capacities for world leadership. Other immigrants expressed appreciation of JFK’s public support for an end to restrictive immigration quotas based on national origin. In July 1963 Kennedy had proposed to Congress legislation that would end the national origins quota system that had been in place since 1924.
Just three and a half months before his death, Kennedy published an essay on immigration reform in the
New York Times Magazine
. The August article drew upon a 1958 pamphlet he had written as a Senator, which was published by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith. Noting Emma Lazarus’s famous words on the Statue of Liberty—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free”—he observed: “Under present law it is suggested that there should be added: ‘as long as they come from Northern Europe, are not too tired or too poor or slightly ill, never stole a loaf of bread, never joined any questionable organization, and can document their activi
ties for the past two years.’” Current immigration law, he argued, erred not in restricting immigration—he did not favor open immigration—but because “many of its restrictions are based on false or unjust premises,” Kennedy insisted that American immigration policy “should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible. With such a policy we could turn to the world with clean hands and a clear conscience.” After Kennedy’s death, his earlier writing on immigration appeared as a book titled
A Nation of Immigrants
(1964). President Johnson steered to passage in 1965 an immigration reform bill that incorporated Kennedy’s proposal.
DECEMBER 4, 1963
NEW YORK, N.Y.
Dear Mrs. Kennedy,
The public ceremonies are over and life goes on inexorably. Only the dull pain remains in my heart and will not go away.
Fully aware that you have received hundreds of thousands of written expressions of condolence, many of which from the most prominent people of the world, I am confident that in your graciousness you will bear with me for giving in to the impulse of adding my modest words.
I came to America after enduring persecution under Mussolini’s regime, witnessing the horrors of the war and having my mother snatched from me by Hitler’s gas chambers when I was only slightly older than your Caroline. When I arrived here I was without a country and my only wealth consisted of hope and dreams of a better future. Five years later at least one of my dreams came tru. I became a citizen of the United States and for the first time in my life I had a country which I could proudly call my own, a country where I had been able to make a good life for myself.
I volunteered my services enthusiastically during the 1960 campaign to elect Mr. Kennedy to the Presidency, regretting only that the demands of my job did not permit me to do more. I rejoiced with millions of others upon his victory and for the following three years his integrity, his brilliant leadership, his vigorous determination to fulfill
the promises he had made to the people and his immense courage to the bitter end inspired me to become a better American, while your impeccable behavior as a wife, mother and charming hostess and as an ambassador of good will through the world inspired me to become a better woman.
It is as a woman that I am now tempted to beg your forgiveness for having helped, even though in the smallest of measures, to place your husband in the position which led him to his cruel death. As an American I ask only that you accept my everlasting gratitude for having allowed me, the Nation and indeed the whole world to share this great man with you for a little while.
I pray that the supreme sacrifice of John Fitzgerald Kennedy will remain an indelible memory in the mind of every man, woman and child everywhere on earth, serving as a bright guiding light to a better world.
I can only hope that you and all the Kennedy family may find some measure of comfort in the sure knowledge that all humanity weeps with you in this dark hour.
God bless you and your precious children.
Respectfully yours,
Judy Sheldon
Dear Jackie,
I wrote this a month ago but hesitate to send it. I felt you might not like to be reminded but now I force myself to send it this time as it is 6 months now since Mr. Kennedy died & it is a remembrance of him. So excuse me if I have trespassed my boundary but I want you to know that I care too & Remember.
New York, N.Y.
April 4, 1964
Dear Jacqueline,
Day after day I have the intention to write to you. This is “at the back of my mind” constantly. Today is Saturday and I
thought of reviewing all the magazines and newspapers piled up in my apartment. You, see, eversince the President’s passing away, I have saved every newspaper and magazine that contains the slightest reference to him or his family. Today as I pore through these papers I felt that I must take up my pen
now
and write to you.
I bought a Kennedy scrapbook from the five and ten and I will paste the photographs and important articles about the President and about you and your children and about the Attorney General.
I just want you to know that we think you and your family are precious to us.
We are Chinese. We feel that President Kennedy is the only President who takes an interest in immigrants. I have read excerpts from “A Nation of Immigrants’.
John F. Kennedy is truly a great young man afire with love and service to his country and to the world—to humanity. He can truly, in his own words, “turn to the world with clean hands and a clear conscience.”
Consider the words Emma Lazarus wrote on the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.” We are the tired, we are the poor, we are the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and John F. Kennedy had tried in vain to help us. And now even he has left us—the flotsam of society. But we, the flotsam of society, take much courage from him. I want you to know that because of your dearly beloved husband, we are
better
people today. Take me, for one example. Eversince the President left us, I have undertaken tasks which I have not done before, to better conditions at home, in the office and in my Catholic Church parish. I said to myself, “if John F. Kennedy did so much with such tireless energy the least I can do
is to try my best in everything I do.” And that is the first step toward building a better America.
Now I am beginning to think of myself not as a Chinese but as an American. I realize that this is my country. We are fellow immigrants. We are gathered here in the great American Experiment and it is up to us to make it a success.
I am preparing myself now. I shall study further about American history & civics so that when they call me to take up my American citizenship papers I can truly say in my heart that like John F. Kennedy I love my country.
My friends say I am silly to write to you, that you will never read my letter, that your long line of secretaries will read this & just throw it away and send back a mimeographed form letter with a stamp of your signature. They are of little faith. Faith is tremendous, for faith can move mountains and if Mohammed will not go to the mountains, the mountains will come to Mohammed! God bless you.
Love,
Mary Quan
P.S. My sister Dorothy has her first daughter named “Jacqueline” & we call her Jackie, after you. My sister lives in…Gardena, California.P.S. To take one day out of our lives—& to tell you about it.—Take the one month anniversary of your husband’s death. During Sunday Mass I prayed for you & your family & for the President. I remember the Chinese family seated one pew in front. The little kid brother was opening his teen-age sister’s prayer book & many religious cards (Estampitas) fell from the prayer book. Then I noticed that the “In Memoriam” card with President Kennedy’s picture also fell off from her prayer book. I also have a prayer card with the President’s picture on it and a prayer for the repose of his soul.
Also I want you to know that many women did not feel like dressing up in Easter finery this year because they said that since the President’s passing, they lost interest in foolish spending for vanity. There are many
other tales I want to tell you for you to take a little consolation & comfort that we also care for you & feel for you in your hours of Be sure to phone us in advance if you intend to visit China town!…We like to treat you to a Chinese dinner! My Husband is Frank Quan. To the Chinese Rathskeller Restaurant where my husband Frank is working as head waiter. You will see that Chinatown is a happy busy town with Chinese & Italians living in Peace together.