The Day Kennedy Was Shot Read Online Free PDF

cream in a pattern which is peculiarly the shaver’s own.
    It gives a man freedom to dwell on other matters—the day’s schedule; the minutiae of business; the problems, if any; the triumphs—if any. Mr. Kennedy had a sturdy, almost youthful, body with patches of hair on the chest, and legs a bit slender for the bulk of the torso. It never got a good grade from the President.
    His back was in pain constantly. Long years ago, in a football scrimmage at Harvard, the spine and adjacent musculature had twisted, and it was beyond repair. A delicate and protracted operation did not help. Massages and medication made him feelbetter, but, as he sometimes said, the pain was never eliminated. It was lessened. It became bearable.
    He combed his thick brown hair and moved to his right to the vanity set. There he donned his underwear and a surgical corset. The President had them in different sizes. He put on a large one and yanked the laces tightly. The vanity chair had a concave seat and the President sat to pull a long elastic bandage over his feet. He twisted it so that it formed a figure eight, then slipped it up over both legs. When it was adjusted over the hips, the Ace Bandage supported the bottom of the torso, as the back brace held the lower spine rigid. The figure eight constricted the natural long stride, but today was going to be a “backbreaker”—sitting, standing, walking, making speeches, handshaking, and spine-creaking climbs up airplane ramps.
    He accepted help from George Thomas in slipping on a white shirt with a blue pinstripe, a plain blue silk tie, and a gray-blue suit with a half inch of kerchief showing in the breast pocket. Mr. Kennedy nodded toward the window. “How does it look, George?” George Thomas was picking up night gear from the bed, preparing to pack. “It’s raining out,” he said. The President said, “That’s too bad” and left the bedroom for the large sitting room.
    The elegant little family dining room on the second floor of the White House was never brighter than when it was filled with the morning chatter of Caroline and John. She would be six next week, and already she was accustomed to the serious business of being a lady. She knew how to keep a pretty frock tidy and unwrinkled in the back, how to wear white gloves and keep them white, how to flick the well-brushed brown hair back off her shoulders, how to apply herself to study.
    John would be three years old in a few days, part baby, part boy. He enjoyed running through the White House corridors, hitching a skip in his stride and he could make it at top speed tohis father, falling against the parental knees, and wrapping both arms around the tall legs. He understood little about his father’s work, but he was willing to extend his complete confidence to the many strangers he saw in his home, men and women who stooped to hug him or to say hello.
    The children spent ten minutes with their father shortly after 7 A.M. When he was eating from a tray in his bedroom, he could hear the typewriter speed of the little feet coming down the corridor from their bedroom, and the President of the United States grasped both sides of the tray and held on, bracing against the assault of morning kisses and hugs.
    The routine of conversation seldom varied. The President asked his daughter for a report on her current schoolwork. Shyly she would hold out a sheet of paper on which the alphabet had been printed in large block letters. Mr. Kennedy would study it and fall back against his chair in mock surprise. “Caroline,” he would say, “did you do this? All by yourself?” The child was girlishly embarrassed by lavish praise and often hung her head and twisted her laced fingers.
    Then, noting that John was waiting, Mr. Kennedy would crook his finger at his son and say: “John-John, tell me a secret.” This too was a morning ritual and, even before the familiar routine began,