Dear Jackie: letters from the hearts of a nation
Source: Agencies |
March 9, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AMONG the 1.5 million condolence letters sent to US President John F. Kennedy's widow after his assassination in 1963 were more than two dozen from Jane Dryden, a dogged and dramatic 11-year-old who churned out a letter a week for six months straight.
"I know that you hate the whole state of Texas. I do to," she wrote to Jacqueline Kennedy from Austin in January 1964.
"I wish I lived in Washington, D.C. where maybe I could maybe see you standing on your porch. I am determined to move there as soon as I can. I would feel safer there."
Given the overwhelming volume of mail - 800,000 letters in the first seven weeks alone - most of condolence letters were destroyed. But at least one of Dryden's notes ended up among the 200,000 pages that were sent to the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, where they sat largely ignored until historian Ellen Fitzpatrick decided to write "Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving Nation."
The book, released last week by HarperCollins, includes more than 200 never-before-published letters divided into three categories: vivid recollections of the day Kennedy was killed; letters that express views on society, politics and the presidency; and personal experiences of grief and loss.
Eighth-grader Mary South described learning that the president had been shot just as she sat down to play the church organ at her Catholic school in Santa Clara, California.
"I tried to tell myself he would be all right but somehow I knew he wouldn't. The tears wouldn't stop. The slightly damp keys were hard to play but I offered it up that the President might live," she wrote.
In return for her letter, she received a small card printed with the words "Mrs Kennedy is deeply appreciative of your sympathy and grateful for your thoughtfulness."
"Getting that back felt like: She saw this. Jackie saw this," South, whose married name is Mary Certa, said. "I felt good that I had done something. I just wanted her to know how upset we were and how helpless we felt."
When one of Fitzpatrick's researchers called and read her letter, "I started to cry all over again," said Certa, 60. "It was like I was right back there in 1963."
Fitzpatrick was at the Kennedy library researching a different book when she asked to see some of the condolence letters in hopes of getting a sense of how Kennedy was perceived by Americans in his own time. As soon as she started reading, she was hooked.
"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.
"I know that you hate the whole state of Texas. I do to," she wrote to Jacqueline Kennedy from Austin in January 1964.
"I wish I lived in Washington, D.C. where maybe I could maybe see you standing on your porch. I am determined to move there as soon as I can. I would feel safer there."
Given the overwhelming volume of mail - 800,000 letters in the first seven weeks alone - most of condolence letters were destroyed. But at least one of Dryden's notes ended up among the 200,000 pages that were sent to the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, where they sat largely ignored until historian Ellen Fitzpatrick decided to write "Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving Nation."
The book, released last week by HarperCollins, includes more than 200 never-before-published letters divided into three categories: vivid recollections of the day Kennedy was killed; letters that express views on society, politics and the presidency; and personal experiences of grief and loss.
Eighth-grader Mary South described learning that the president had been shot just as she sat down to play the church organ at her Catholic school in Santa Clara, California.
"I tried to tell myself he would be all right but somehow I knew he wouldn't. The tears wouldn't stop. The slightly damp keys were hard to play but I offered it up that the President might live," she wrote.
In return for her letter, she received a small card printed with the words "Mrs Kennedy is deeply appreciative of your sympathy and grateful for your thoughtfulness."
"Getting that back felt like: She saw this. Jackie saw this," South, whose married name is Mary Certa, said. "I felt good that I had done something. I just wanted her to know how upset we were and how helpless we felt."
When one of Fitzpatrick's researchers called and read her letter, "I started to cry all over again," said Certa, 60. "It was like I was right back there in 1963."
Fitzpatrick was at the Kennedy library researching a different book when she asked to see some of the condolence letters in hopes of getting a sense of how Kennedy was perceived by Americans in his own time. As soon as she started reading, she was hooked.
"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.
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