Letters to Jackie Read Online Free PDF

his hand as if to smooth back a lock of his hair. She leaned toward him, now only six inches away, when another crack of the rifle pierced the air. The third shot delivered a lethal wound to the President’s head, showering Mrs. Kennedy, a motorcyclist nearby, and the limousine with gore. Kennedy slumped toward his wife, the backseat now “full of blood and red roses,” she would later recall. Two blossoms, lodged inside the President’s shirt, would be given back to her later that night when his body was returned to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington.
    Spectators reacted immediately to the sound of gunfire, many runningaway from the street or throwing themselves to the ground. Several of those closest to the Presidential car turned toward the Book Depository when they heard gunfire. Among them was Bob Jackson, a photographer for the Dallas Times Herald , who was seated in an open car reserved for cameramen toward the rear of the motorcade. He looked up in time to see a rifle being pulled back from a sixth-floor window in the Depository. Tom Dillard of the Dallas Morning News , also in this convertible, quickly snapped a photograph of the sniper’s perch.
    Before the Presidential limousine even reached Parkland Hospital, a distance of less than four miles that nonetheless felt like an “eternity” to Jacqueline Kennedy, news of the assassination attempt began to break. Merriman Smith, the White House Correspondent for UPI, was riding in the press pool car just in front of the photographers when he heard the gunfire. He grabbed the radiophone and called his Dallas bureau, shouting: “Three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas.” The bulletin came off the UPI teletype at 12:34, setting in motion a cascade of breaking news stories. At 12:36—just as the President’s car reached Parkland Hospital—ABC radio interrupted its programming to read the UPI flash. At 12:40 CBS broke into its popular soap opera As the World Turns with a special bulletin read by Walter Cronkite: “In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.” Updates by wire report, radio, and television rapidly tumbled in. By 1:00 p.m., when doctors at Parkland pronounced the President dead, it’s been estimated that nearly 70 percent of adults in the United States already knew of the assassination attempt. At 1:35 another UPI bulletin came across the wire: “President Kennedy dead.”
     
    As these events unfolded, word of them reached Americans who were going about their day only to be stopped short. Their subsequent letters of sympathy to Mrs. Kennedy reveal how the drama of November 22 collided with the lives of individual Americans, both on the scene in Dallas and far removed from Texas. Some began their letters as they sat watching news ofthe assassination break on television. There are no letters from eyewitnesses in the condolence letters, but there are many from bystanders who saw the President and Mrs. Kennedy only minutes before the assassination. Others wrote weeks, months, and even a year later, but described with extraordinary clarity precisely what happened in their own lives on November 22. The first letters below are arranged chronologically, based not upon the date of their letter, but of the day’s events. They are followed by messages that depict the way the news reverberated around the country.

    Photograph of envelope, Condolence Mail, John F. Kennedy Library.
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    VALLEY CENTER, CALIF.
    NOVEMBER 22, 1963
    Dear Mrs. Kennedy,
    Nothing has been confirmed as yet. Either way it turns out you have my deepest sympathy.
    Don’t neglect the healing affect of quiet time alone with a quiet horse or dog.
    Oh my dear, it has been pretty well confirmed that we have lost him. Our prayers are with you.
    Love,
Nancy, Kenneth,
Rick, Brandon
& Perry Glimpse
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    UPPER