Read Online Letters to Jackie by Ellen Fitzpatrick - Free Book Online
Authors: Ellen Fitzpatrick
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forget. I am dismissed from school at quarter to five and get home at around 5:30 p.m. One day, it was one of these lovely days. I was walking home from school towards River Side Drive where the HudsonRiver is located. It happened to be snowing and it was beautiful. Suddenly, I stopped by a car. I looked around taking in the scene. Twilight. Sunset. the sun streaked with pink and violet. Tall street lamps intensifying the beautiful, white snowflakes against the darkness of this twilight. The snow was falling softly, frosting everything with an icing of white. The car I stopped by was covered with a thick blanket of this lustrous white. I acted on impulse. With my hand, I carved a little square and next to it a flicker of snow shaped like a flame. On the square I wrote J.F.K. and cleared the snow from around it. When you write about it, it is nothing. When you do it, it is something. I wrote mainly to say I love John F. Kennedy and when I stop to think, I find that I mourn for him more as a father of two lovely children and a husband of a charming woman more than as the President of the United States….
Next time you visit The Grave please give the President my regards. Thank you. I can’t wait to go to Washington being in the 8th grade. I often dream of being there and suddenly seeing you with Careline and John Jr. But it is a foolish dream. Yet still I dream. Every night before falling asleep I picture Careline and John Jr. sleeping peacefully. Then I picture my President lying, and a split second latler his grave with the eternal flame burning brightly. Then, I picture you Mrs. Kennedy, dressed in black with red, swollen eyes and I throw a kiss, and whisper “bon soir.”
Yes, John Fitzgerald Kennedy is dead. But his memory is not and will live throughout history, forever.
Yours very affectionately,
Elisabeth Zimmerman
P.S. If you don’t wish me to continue writing, please let me know.
----
A s November 22 unfolded, Americans learned of the President’s assassination in a myriad of settings. The circumstances in which they heard the news loomed very large in the minds of many from the start. In public places, walls between strangers tumbled down as reports of the President’s death spread. On busy city sidewalks, in buses, taxicabs, department stores, and hospitals, citizens tried to absorb facts that seemed truly unfathomable. Patients in hospitals described receiving the news as they lay in their sick beds. “I don’t know how to begin to tell you how I felt when one of the Nurse’s Aide’s came into our room and said have you heard?” wrote one hospitalized woman who was awaiting surgery. “The President has been shot! What startling words!!!!! Oh! God! no, I uttered…. We were sick in the hospital but we felt much worse with the President’s passing.” One man dying of cancer in a Veteran’s hospital turned to his daughter and asked, “Why couldn’t it have been me? He was so young.” At college football practices, in small Alaskan Indian villages, in post offices, and along mail delivery routes, word of the President’s death reached around the country, instantly halting the daily activities of millions.
BELLE HARBOR, L I.
N.Y.
NOV. 25TH 1963
Dear Mrs. Kennedy,
May God bless you today and always. My family joins me in a prayer for your well being at this sad time. I feel compelled to write to you and try to express my sorrow at the incalculable loss suffered by us all. Life’s tragedies leave their ineffable marks on every human being, but the loss of our beloved President brought such deep, profound sorrow, we shall never forget. Words cannot express my emotions. I am frustrated and at a loss to convey to you the depths of my feelings.
The news came blasting at me from a woman with a transistor radio clutched to her ear, while shopping at Bloomingdales in New York City. Suddenly, strangers were strangers no longer. We turned to one another unbelieving and shocked. We shook our heads—this
Next time you visit The Grave please give the President my regards. Thank you. I can’t wait to go to Washington being in the 8th grade. I often dream of being there and suddenly seeing you with Careline and John Jr. But it is a foolish dream. Yet still I dream. Every night before falling asleep I picture Careline and John Jr. sleeping peacefully. Then I picture my President lying, and a split second latler his grave with the eternal flame burning brightly. Then, I picture you Mrs. Kennedy, dressed in black with red, swollen eyes and I throw a kiss, and whisper “bon soir.”
Yes, John Fitzgerald Kennedy is dead. But his memory is not and will live throughout history, forever.
Yours very affectionately,
Elisabeth Zimmerman
P.S. If you don’t wish me to continue writing, please let me know.
----
A s November 22 unfolded, Americans learned of the President’s assassination in a myriad of settings. The circumstances in which they heard the news loomed very large in the minds of many from the start. In public places, walls between strangers tumbled down as reports of the President’s death spread. On busy city sidewalks, in buses, taxicabs, department stores, and hospitals, citizens tried to absorb facts that seemed truly unfathomable. Patients in hospitals described receiving the news as they lay in their sick beds. “I don’t know how to begin to tell you how I felt when one of the Nurse’s Aide’s came into our room and said have you heard?” wrote one hospitalized woman who was awaiting surgery. “The President has been shot! What startling words!!!!! Oh! God! no, I uttered…. We were sick in the hospital but we felt much worse with the President’s passing.” One man dying of cancer in a Veteran’s hospital turned to his daughter and asked, “Why couldn’t it have been me? He was so young.” At college football practices, in small Alaskan Indian villages, in post offices, and along mail delivery routes, word of the President’s death reached around the country, instantly halting the daily activities of millions.
BELLE HARBOR, L I.
N.Y.
NOV. 25TH 1963
Dear Mrs. Kennedy,
May God bless you today and always. My family joins me in a prayer for your well being at this sad time. I feel compelled to write to you and try to express my sorrow at the incalculable loss suffered by us all. Life’s tragedies leave their ineffable marks on every human being, but the loss of our beloved President brought such deep, profound sorrow, we shall never forget. Words cannot express my emotions. I am frustrated and at a loss to convey to you the depths of my feelings.
The news came blasting at me from a woman with a transistor radio clutched to her ear, while shopping at Bloomingdales in New York City. Suddenly, strangers were strangers no longer. We turned to one another unbelieving and shocked. We shook our heads—this
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