a Christian couldn't think that

Looking at a book of collected letters, memos, and other writing by Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1951 - 2002), read "Memorandum dictated to himself, describing his chaotic, terrible day after news of the assassination reached Washington.  William Walton was an artist and Kennedy family friend.  Charles Horsky was a prominent lawyer and White House adviser on national capital affairs."

NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Bill Walton, Charlie Horsky and I were just finishing lunch at Walton's house -- in the grandest good mood with Walton leaving for the Russian tour that afternoon -- I was talking about Brasilia and the phone rang.  Oh no!  Killed!  No!.  Horsky's office had phoned for him to return.  We rushed upstairs.  Television had some of it but the commercials continued.  Bill began sobbing.  Out of control.  Horsky in a rage.  Clint (?) Jackie's agent had said the President is dead.  Walton knew this meant it was so....We went directly to the White House from Georgetown.  On the way the radio reported that Albert Thomas had said he might be living.

We went directly to the President's office which was torn apart with new carpets being put down in his office and the cabinet room.  As if a New President were to take office.  No one about save Chuck Daly.  McGeorge Bundy appeared.  Icy.  Ralph Dungan came in smoking a pipe, quizzical, as if unconcerned.  Then Sorensen.  The three together in the door of the hallway that leads to the Cabinet room area.  Dead silent.  Someone said "It's over."  Bundy called for Secretary McNamara.

We still did not entirely believe it, with television not sure.  But quickly enough one report added to another and the President was dead, as we watched in Dungan's office.  Silence.  Humphrey arrived.  Dungan had by this point called Mary and laid his head on his desk for a bit.  Humphrey and Dungan went to the adjoining room.  Bill said he thought he would go home.  I went with him.  As we left the entrance to the West Wing the Flag was just being lowered.

The photographers would not let us go alone as we hiked the long distance to the gate.  Midway Walton straightened up and said let's walk out the way he would have expected us to, but he could not quite manage.

I put Walton in a taxi and went back to see Holborn if he were there.  A guard asked for my identification but I asked him what difference it made.

And the thing is, Dungan had said, they will blame it on that 25 year old boy.

~~

Memorandum for himself, recording that Mrs. Kennedy wanted a renewal of the drab and unsightly Pennsylvania Avenue to be carried out as a legacy of the Kennedy administration.  He was to keep Mrs. Kennedy abreast of the progress for twenty-five years.

NOVEMBER 29, 1963

FOR THE RECORD:
Bill Walton called this morning, before leaving for his scheduled trip to Russia, to say he had spoken to Mrs. Kennedy about the Pennsylvania Avenue plans.  She is completely behind them and will, he feels, be the greatest source of strength in years to come.  She has given President Johnson a list of those projects left undone and which she feels were of great interest to President Kennedy.  Pennsylvania Avenue is on this list.  She feels that the National Cultural Center, the Stadium, and even LaFayette Square, had their origins in the Eisenhower Administration, but Pennsylvania Avenue is one of the Kennedy Administration entirely.

On Wednesday Walton showed the plans for Pennsylvania Avenue to the Kennedy family....

~~

Following the assassination, a radio reporter from WTOP in Washington interviewed Moynihan.  Mary McGrory also wrote about their conversation in the Washington Star.  Moynihan obtained a transcript of the radio interview for his records, realizing its importance.

DECEMBER 5, 1963  [DATE OF TRANSCRIPT]

...WALKER:  "Is there any meaning you can find in what has happened?"
MOYNIHAN:  "I suppose the point that cuts deepest is the thought that there may not be....You know the French author, Camus, when he came out at the end of his life, he said the world was absurd.  A Christian couldn't think that, but the utter senselessness, the meaninglessness....

We all of us know down here that politics is a tough game.  And I don't think there's any point in being Irish if you don't know that the world is going to break your heart eventually.  I guess we thought that we had a little more time.  So did he.

This nation will never be the same after he has been President.  We are a bigger, a stronger, a better nation.  I think we know more about what it is we have to be.  I think we know somewhat more about how to be it.  It....For some of us you'll say it won't be the same in other ways.  Mary McGrory said to me that we'll never laugh again.  And I said, 'Heavens.  We'll laugh again.  It's just that we'll never be young again.'"

WALKER:  "Is the New Frontier leaderless?"
MOYNIHAN:  "No sir!  We have a leader.  He is the President.  If we learned anything from John F. Kennedy, we learned to serve the President.  I think that the single, one thing that some of us are holding to, to keep our minds together, is that we will do exactly as the President wishes us to do in exactly what capacity he indicates."

WALKER:  "Do you think the Johnson administration will continue the programs of the Kennedy administration?"
MOYNIHAN:  "Well, I certainly believe with the deepest part of me that President Johnson will work for these programs with the fullest of his great ability.  He helped formulate them.  Here in the Department of Labor, I suppose we have worked with the President about as closely as any executive department.  He's the Chairman of the President's Commission on Equal Employment Opportunities.  We've had two years of working day and night with him and he's done a magnificent job.  And I can't imagine his wanting to....These are his policies as much as the administration's -- as much as the former President's.  And he has a reputation for accomplishment.  That's why he's the leader of our party and why he's our President today."

WALKER:  "Will the New Frontier still be able to realize its dreams?"
MOYNIHAN:  "Oh, we're no good at answering questions like that today.  You say dream.  I think of the lines from The Tempest:  'We are such stuff as dreams are made of....'  Well, you know that passage begins, 'Our revels now are ended.'"

-----------------------------------------
{Daniel Patrick Moynihan: 
A Portrait In Letters Of An American Visionary,
edited by Steven R. Weisman.  Copyright
2010, Public Affairs, New York.}