The Archbishop Wore Combat Boots. Nancy A. Collins
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Sixteen days after the interment of her children, I received this letter from Jackie, dated December 20, 1963 (original punctuation).
Dear Bishop Hannan,
I have meant to write to you for so long — to thank you for the most moving way only you could have read those words at the funeral, to thank you for the book and cloth from the children’s burial — for asking me to the December 22 Mass — for your help always to my husband in seeing the world the way he did.
If only I could believe that he could look down and see how he is missed and how nobody will ever be the same without him. But I haven’t believed in the child’s vision of heaven for a long time. There is no way now to commune with him. It will be so long before I am dead and even then I don’t know if I will be reunited with him. Even if I am I don’t think you could ever convince me that it will be the way it was while we were married here. Please forgive all this — and please don’t try to convince me just yet — I shouldn’t be writing this way.
With my deep appreciation.
Respectfully,
Jacqueline Kennedy
One of the greatest regrets of my priesthood is that, in the immediate months following the President’s assassination, I did not make even more of an effort to sit down and encourage Jackie to talk about her feelings. Given her condition, it should have been a priority. Of course, as the Auxiliary Bishop of Washington, assistant to Archbishop O’Boyle, pastor of St. Patrick’s, and editor of the archdiocesan newspaper, responsible for the weekly editorials — not to mention fielding endless phone calls about Mrs. Kennedy — my hands were incredibly full. In retrospect, however, hiring someone competent to answer those calls, I should have put those hours, instead, into listening and hearing the woman who elicited them. To my eternal regret, I neither had, nor made, enough time to provide Jackie with the spiritual direction that she needed before moving to New York.
Two weeks after the assassination, the former First Lady and her children moved out of the White House into Averell Harriman’s house on N Street in Georgetown where it became rapidly apparent that any hope of privacy for the three would be impossible. The minute the family took up residence, their home turned into a tourist attraction — buses clogging the street, cameras aimed at every window — hoping to catch a glimpse of Jackie or the children. (The only safe route, as a result, was the back door leading to the alley.) Finally, fed up with this wretched existence, Jackie decided to move to New York, where she found an apartment on 5th Avenue not far from the Convent of the Sacred Heart, where Caroline would attend school.
Very important letter from Jacqueline Kennedy expressing grief over her husband’s death
The typed note she sent, in reply to mine, describing the reasons for her move, was both poignant and sad:
July 27, 1964
Dear Bishop Hannan:
I do want to thank you for your kind letter and the knowledge that I am in your prayers is a great source of comfort to me.
The decision to leave Washington was not easy, however, I do feel it the wisest one for both my children and myself at this time.
I shall never forget all you did to help me through those first tragic days and hope I will see you again before too long.
Respectfully,
Jacqueline Kennedy
After a natural paralysis, following the death of the President, all kinds of projects were proposed to commemorate JFK. In the end, Jackie and the Kennedy family finally approved two: the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Kennedy Library at Harvard University in Boston. On both projects, I was asked to be a member and, though honored, knew it impossible to be an active member on more than one. At the insistence of Polly Wiesner, a great friend of Jackie and her mother, Janet Auchincloss, I ultimately chose the Kennedy Center. Eventually, however, Polly — confiding that Jackie favored the Kennedy Library as having more educational value and staying power — asked that I try to convince her differently, as I did whenever we saw each other at meetings for the Center. (Her love for her husband compelled the former First Lady to, at least, be involved in the planning of something celebrating his accomplishments and vision.) At one such gathering, Jackie’s own sketches and watercolors of angels (demonstrating undeniable talent) were shown. Subsequently, I suggested that she design the cover for the proposed Register containing the Center’s donor names. Jackie loved the idea, promising to follow up since, as she put it, “a simple cover didn’t need a designing genius.” However, due to her other demands, Jackie’s “Memory Book” never came to fruition.
As President Kennedy’s May 29 birthday approached, Jackie decided it would be appropriate to pray for the repose of his soul at a Mass — including friends and cabinet members — at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. When she asked that I give the homily as well as celebrate the Mass, I decided on the same one I gave at the Funeral Mass on November 25, 1963. (The Knights of Columbus, meanwhile, having organized their own Memorial Mass for Jack on the same day at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, were hurt that no one from the Kennedy family would be present. So, at the behest of Archbishop O’Boyle, I rounded up Sarge and Eunice Shriver who showed up to save the day — and feelings — of all concerned.)
During the Cathedral Mass, Jackie was extremely emotional and teary-eyed. In fact, she was so choked up that, when I approached her to exchange the peace of Christ, she could neither speak nor shake hands. Later, in a handwritten note, she explained that being back in St. Matthew’s had simply been overwhelming.
June 1, 1964 (original punctuation):
Dear Bishop Hannan:
I do wish to thank you for the Birthday Mass — for making it so beautiful and so moving — For what you said about President Kennedy.
I am afraid that that — then hearing the Star Spangled Banner sung by the choir — were more than I could bear — and I felt as if time had rolled back 6 months — and I was in the same place in the same church I had been in in November — and all the efforts one had made since then — to climb a little bit of the way up the hill, had been for nothing — and I had rolled right back down to the bottom of the hill again.
Letter from Jacqueline Kennedy that describes her state of mind after the assassination of her husband
That is why I could not bear to look at you when you came to speak to me — as I did not think I could control my tears — but I wanted you to know that was the reason.
You must know how grateful I am to you every day — for believing in and being a friend of John Kennedy when he was alive — and for bringing meaning out of the despair at his funeral and birthday Masses — and for the night in Arlington with our two children — and for your work now at the Center. You will always be working for all the things he believes in — and I will always know that and be comforted.
I will try so hard to recover a little bit more myself — so that I can be of more use to my children — and just for the years that are left to me — though I hope they won’t be too many — And maybe one day soon I will feel strong enough to come and talk to you — With my deepest appreciation.
Respectfully,
Jacqueline Kennedy
In the years following, other than periodic Kennedy Center board meetings — I didn’t see Jackie that much which, of course, was my loss. In 1965 when the ground was finally broken for the Kennedy Center — attended by President Johnson — Bobby and Jean Kennedy Smith asked that I give the invocation. (The site, a former public golf course where my brothers and I, using tees fashioned from a handful of sand in a nearby bucket, each played for five cents, carried its own memories for me.) When the ceremony was finished, an enterprising cameraman snapped a photo of our collective profiles — Johnson, Bobby, Jean, and me — dubbing it