Jackie Onassis received 1.5million condolence letters after the assassination of her then husband President John F Kennedy, it was revealed yesterday.
The extraordinary mountain of mail sent to the First Lady included tear-stained letters, personal words of comfort and sometimes grudging sympathy.
A selection of the correspondence has been published for the first time.
Almost half of the letters were sent to the White House in the first few weeks after Kennedy’s death – with 45,000 arriving on one day alone.
Among the envelopes were two dozen from Jane Dryden, an 11-year-old who churned out one a week for six months after the president was shot dead in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.
‘I know that you hate the whole state of Texas. I do too,’ she wrote from the state’s capital Austin. ‘I wish I lived in Washington, D.C. I would feel safer there.’
One sympathiser wrote in shaky script: ‘Please pardon this awful writing. I can’ t see very well. I feel our dear good smiling sweet face, our President, is up in Heaven. Oh why, Dear God, oh why?’
Secretaries struggled to respond to the deluge but many writers did receive a thank-you card.
Much of the correspondence was destroyed but 200,000 pages were sent to the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston where they lay largely forgotten until historian Ellen Fitzpatrick put a selection in her book Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving Nation.
In another letter, Staff Sgt William Watson enclosed the first photograph of his baby twins, named Jacqueline Lee and John Fitzgerald after the former First Couple.
Given the overwhelming volume of post – 800,000 letters in the first seven weeks – most condolence letters were eventually destroyed.
Some 200,000 pages went to the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, however, where they filled 170ft of shelves.
Prof Fitzpatrick needed to get permission from each writer but was able to include 220 of her favourites. Only five people she tracked down declined.
‘I have been teaching American history for 30 years, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a collection as powerful and that represented so many ordinary people speaking from the heart about their views about American society, and politics, and the president,’ said Prof Fitzpatrick, of the University of New Hampshire.
More samples include:
* ‘I’m just an old 73-year-old man who lost my wife and I can feel the sorrow you are going thru. My wife died in my arms as your husband died in your arms and when I watched you on television as you walked behind that flag-draped coffin I cried my eyes out,’ wrote R Louk from Oklahoma City.
* ‘I am a Florida Dairy Farmer who has been a lifelong Republican. I am a Protestant and have been anti-Kennedy since 1960. However I feel a desperate urge to extend my deepest sympathy to your children and to you,’ read another.
* One woman, inviting the President’s widow to visit her at home in Pennsylvania, explained: ‘I am coloured and poor but clean.’
Tags: Jackie Onassis
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