Letters to Jackie (28 page)

PORTLAND, OREGON
NOVEMBER 25, 1963

Dear Mrs. Kennedy:

I feel the country was lucky to have had your husband at all. It might never have been. I too, was brushed by death many years ago in the South Pacific War. Ever since, I have felt the years to be bonus years…good years that might never have been. Years that have produced a fine wife and three lovely children.

I suspect the late President, a combat veteran, might have had moments of like reflection when you chanced by or as he watched the children at play.

If that destroyer of long ago had veered a fraction from its ultimate course, the world would have never had John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Maybe the years since that night have been his bonus years…his years of grace.

I know they certainly have been for the peoples of the world.

Sincerely yours,
Austin R. Matteson and Family

DRAPER E. WHITT

RICHMOND, VA

To A Dear Beloved First Lady:

It was with grief anger and disbelief that I heard of the death of our beloved President. You have my very deepest Sympathy.

I have a letter from the president, I will cherish it as long as I live. When the president received the nomination for president I got a badge from Senator Yarborough’s office.

I am a Methodist and worked in Cradle Democrat. When I visited my home in Chatham County North Carolina Congressman Harold D. Cooley’s district Friends of mine republican and Democrat, asked me was I going to Vote for a Catholic. I said no I was Voting for a man I felt to be best qualified for president.

Then I thought back to the 1928 election between Hoover and AL Smith. My late Granfather pin Al Smith badge on my left breast I have long realized the injustice done to Gov. Smith.

So on my return to my home here in Richmond, Va. I wrote editorial to my paper. In Siler City, N.C. Express my opinion on the political issue. I asked this one specific question.

Did any one question the loyalty of a Catholitic during war as we served together. Shed our blood together. Shared hospital rooms together. That I felt one should not be denied to right to be president if he was cabible. Regardless of his religion.

I had many friends who were Catholic. When we were preparing to
sail for France on the invasion of Normandy they went with me to Holy Communion service. I with them to mass.

I to was shot as was the president. In the head by a sniper in left temple bullet coming out back of my neck. I was temporally blind and partially parlized. I am much better But total disabled.

I don’t think we have ever had a president as courageous and has tried so hard to help the down hearted and depressed people.

I feel he has all in his power to full fill his campaign pledges to the people. Not only has America lost a great leader and Champion of the people. But the entire World has lost a great leader.

I am sure he will go down in history as one of the greatest leaders in our time. But above all he has done I have been more impressed by his attending Church on Sunday regardless of where he was.

As I have told my wife and two sons I believe he is the most devoted Christian presidents we have ever had. The president and I were about the same age each being born in 1917.

It is a sad day in our nation. There is little one can say. Except you have my sympathy. I know having lost most of my people Time alone can heal a broken heart.

You and yours have our very deepest and heart felt sympathy. May God in his wisdom and divine love comfort you and yours. Give you strength and courage to bear this horrible burden. Some day in another world we will all be reunited with our master Catholic, Jew Protesant and all other. Colored and white.

May God bless and keep you all
Draper, Lucille, Nelson & Steve Whitt

INGLEWOOD CALIF

Mrs. John F. Kennedy:

I have never written to a public figure in my life, but over the events that have happened I feel compelled to write to you. I know that what I
can say can have very little recompense for you but I thought you might like to know the feelings of one person among the many who love our Country. I joined the Marines in August 1942 and spent 31 months in the Pacific with the First Marine Division. I never met your husband but I have always felt a deep bond of friendship and brotherhood toward him because we served in the same theater of war. I have never had the good fortune to visit our Nation’s Capital but I have always been proud of the reminders there our past history and great heritage. No one could have been prouder than I when your husband was elected President. I said at last in my generation I have seen a man elected who will stand up and say we are Americans and we are here to stay. I watched his Inagural Address and when he said: “The Torch has Been Passed” I had tears in my eyes. I have had tears in my eyes for the past five days and hope some of them can in part pay for your own. My sorrow is deep for I spent most of my life in the South and in Chicago. I have seen hatreds of all three kinds: Racial, Religious, and Color. Since your husbands funereal I have heard people here talk against him because he was Cathalic. I stayed home Monday and watched the sad ordeal you had to go through. Your courage and dignity will never be forgotten by me. I hope you will pray for the same dignity to be bestowed on the rest of our nation. This nation of ours was founded by people of Europe who were seeking freedom of Religion and the right to Worship God in the manner of their choice. Even though this great movement took place three hundred years ago and even though our country has bled through many wars to achieve and protect this Right and Liberty we are still in the midst of prejudice and bigotry and misunderstanding. I am only an average American as far as education is concerned but I am an American who believes in the dignity of man. I was born in Tennessee and have lived in Kentucky, Illinois, and California. I put my life on the line to fight for the American way of life and at the age of 48 I am ready to do it again. Your husband did and I could do no less and call myself a man. I am proud to have been privileged by God’s Grace to have lived in the same generation as you and your husband. What a precious heritage your children have to look forward to just to walk in your footsteps. I would
like to borrow a line from Christine Rossetti and add a few of my own in memory of a friend and a warrior.

“Sing no sad songs for me

But sing one for us all

If hate and prejudice

Against our Fellow Man

Is Now beyond Recall.”

In Loving Memory
Harry T. Emery

MATTOON ILL.

Dear Mrs. Kennedy:

I hardly know how to start this letter as I know you have received thousands of letters from people all over the World offering sympathy and condolence to you over the loss of your Husband & my President & the friend to all the World.

One incident is sharp in my mind. I have 4 girls and one boy; he is nine years old. The Girls are all Older.

About a week ago I went into my son’s bedroom after the Family had retired for the day. my son had Pres. Kennedy’s inauguration speech record on the record player and a picture of Pres Kennedy on the Pillow beside him and a picture of “John” John crawling through the door in his fathers Desk.

There were tears flowing from his eyes and he was sobbing as if his heart would break[.] I asked Purwin what was wrong. His answer was what will Pres. Kennedy’s Family do. His answer did something to me. To think that a nine year old boy’s first thought would be of others in a crises like this. It made me feel extra proud of him.

I feel a little closer to Pres. Kennedy than many perhaps.

I was in the South pacific at the same time he was. I was on a torpedoed LST…we were sunk one day after his Torpedo boat was rammed
only 100 miles away I was on Rendova right next to his base and I fought through all the Solomon islands from Guadalcanal to Rabaul on through New Guinea and the Phillipines and was Wounded above the city of Manila. Although I was in the army I would have been proud to have Pres. Kennedy as my commanding officer. I know I have said very little to help or encourage you. But I know this: you are one of the most courageous persons I have ever known and a fitting memorial of Pres. Kennedy one of the greatest men this World has ever known

God bless you and your family

Donald W. Sanders
Mattoon Ill,
Democrat
Prec. Commit.

N.Y., N.Y.
[JULY 30, 1964, POSTMARK]

Welcome to you, Mrs. Kennedy I hope you like your New York home. The City at present has a rather bad reputation. It has earned it, I suppose. But there’s a lot of good here, too. In time things will even out.

I’m an old infantry ex-tst Sergeant from the same war your husband fought. I cried too when the thing happened. No soldier should go that way. It’s disgraceful. A soldier also has done his duty and fought a war honorably, and lived through it still, has the right above all others to collect his Social Security and live out his life in peace. For if he
wasn’t
there
who
would collect their Social Security?

I know how you must have loved him (I lost someone that I loved very much, too) He was a giant. A man like Saul—head and shoulders above the crowd. I saw you on television, how you looked at him. And he earned it, too.

It’s an awful spot for you. So young and so beautiful, you are. But where will you ever find another John Kennedy? It is such a terrible waste of natural resources, your youth and your beauty.

Your children are adorable. That photograph of young John John saluting his father should become a part of our history. Or does it hurt too much? Caroline. Anybody who doesn’t love Caroline is a nut.

I live over on the East River, but sometimes I walk over to Central Park. And I’m an agnostic. But when I pass your house I will say a prayer to your god that you may find some happiness, or at least some peace of mind.

Bless you,
*
Mrs President
Grady McNeil

L
ess than twenty-five years separated World War II and the Kennedy assassination. For many letter writers, losses sustained during the war hung in the backdrop of the condolence messages they sent to Mrs. Kennedy. Some who had witnessed atrocities found the pain of those experiences revisited upon them. This was especially true of Holocaust survivors, many of whom made reference to their experience in consoling the President’s widow. Others recalled the anguish of losing their sons, brothers, and fathers in battle. Grief persisted, they reminded the President’s widow, and continued to challenge them many years later. Their sorrow was not only revisited but augmented by the violent death of the President.

COMMERCE, TEXAS

DECEMBER 1963

Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy and children,

Dear Mrs. Kennedy,

With others, we want to express our words of deep sympathy, with you and yours, In the Loss of your Loved one, the President of our United States. We feel we to have shared part of your great loss, in
the loss of our only Son Staff Sgt Robert Wayne Hammonds we lost in World War Two, on Anzio Beach head in Italy. We had his body brought home for reburial, and I relived it again with you, when they tenderly handed you The Flag. only those that have suffered this sorrow can feel the emptiness and Loneliness it leaves. But our Dear Son will never leave us alone if we trust Him, and Dear, you and your Loved one, knew so much of Happiness, and Had your cup of Joy, and Sweet Memories are one
Great Gift of God
, that death can not Destroy.

May God Bless you and Your Family.

From Gold Star Parents.
Mr. and Mrs. R. T. Hammonds.

FAIR LAWN, N.J.
NOVEMBER 29, 1963

Dear Mrs. Kennedy,

This letter is to express our heartfelt sympathy at your and our country’s tragic loss. Your husband was a great President and a great leader and his loss will be felt by everybody. May the fact that he arose the nation and the fact that his policies may be carried out be a small consolation to you.

As one who has lived thorough a Nazi concentration camp and saw deaths daily from hanging, shooting, starvation, yet at no time did I feel such grief as at the passing away of our great President.

May the Allmighty bless you and protect you and your children and keep sorrow away from your door. May the soul of your beloved husband, father of your children and our great leader, rest in peace.

With deep Sympathy
Morris Starr

VINELAND, N.J.

1/21/64

Dear Mrs. J. F. Kennedy

With the best regard to you, and your loved ones permit me to express our depest Sympathy in your berivement, as we that is Me and my Vife have goon thrugh it 10 years ago, so we know how much you went thrugh, but much more. We lost our Son June the 2nd 1944 he was 21 years of age he was a Pilot in U.S. Air force, and also lost 2 Brothers in Europe fighting the Nazist, so that is why we know how big is your sorrow, we are just plain people living on our Social Security, when that tragic day came, for 4 days we could not control are tears, and again January 19th we saw the Celebrated Mass on Television. I could not stoped the tears, because we Love your Family so much, and you Mrs Kennedy you done so much for the White House in restoring the Originals in such a short time, our only wish is that we will be able to visit the Arlington Cemetery this sumer and pray there, forgive me for my English, I had no schooling in this Country I was 22 years of age when I came here 1913.

With Love to you and your children

We Remain Respectfully yours,
Adolph and Mary Macho Sr.
Vineland, N.J.

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, OHIO
JANUARY 16, 1964

My Dear Mrs Kennedy and children,

There are no words available to us in our great English language, to express to you and your family, even after some time has lapsed, how we feel of your great loss. All we can offer to you is prayer, and may the bleeding heart of Christ give you strength to carry your cross.

You see, we too, are trying to carry a cross. On Memorial Day of 1963, our beloved nephew the only son and grandson of 5 children, accidentally took his own life. Many correlaries are manifested in his death and that of our Dear President Kennedy. The weapon—a gun. A gun which was a toy—a war souvenir of Okinawa. Rusted, and with no working trigger, this child, (11 yrs old) obtained a bullet, and with determination would make this gun fire. He was sighting the gun—looking through the barrel, totally fearless, and kept striking the hammer of the gun. It is said to be a 1000 to 1 chance, but it was a greater hand than his, that proved the fact.

The suddenness of death, the fearlessness, and determination can be correlaries. You wonder where you get the strength to carry on. But you do go on, perhaps because of their prayers.

Our beloved president will be remembered the world over until eternity for the man that he was. Oh, How proud you must be! And rightfully so. And we, your people, are so proud of you.

I am enclosing a picture of our Dear President Kennedy. Perhaps you have received many, many of them. This picture was presented to us at Mass, last Sunday, January 12th, at our church of the Gesu. President Kennedy, raised the Catholic religion as the Supreme Religion.

May that ray of sunlight which presented itself upon his grave the day of his funeral, shine forever, and grant you and your family peace and strength.

God Bless you.

Fondly,
The Dominic A. Tomaro Family