sunny, crisp and cold

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in his journal on November 25, 1963,

-------- The agony continues, and one can still only intermittently believe it.  I keep supposing that tomorrow morning, I will come down to the White House, Evelyn will be in her office and Kenny in his, and in a few minutes the President will be along, with some jokes about the morning papers.  The thought that we will never see him again is intolerable and unacceptable and unendurable.  But we never will, and nothing will ever be the same again.

Newt Minow told me this afternoon that Pat Moynihan had been asked on television whether we would ever laugh again.  He replied:  "Yes, we will laugh again.  But we will never be young again."  Later he said, "We Irish always expect our hearts to be broken, so we are not surprised.  But we thought we had a little more time."

Yesterday afternoon, I did a piece on the President at Stewart Alsop's request for the Saturday Evening Post.  Late in the afternoon and again in the early evening I went up to the Mansion.  The family was there, quiet and composed.  Dave Powers was marching Caroline, John and Sidney Lawford up and down the central hall, making them count out and execute right turns.  Ethel and Lem Billings were in the Lincoln bedroom watching the murder of Oswald on television.  Ken O'Donnell and Larry O'Brien were drinking quietly in the Oval Room.  Jackie was in her parlor behind shut doors.

As I was leaving, Teddy, Eunice and Mrs. Kennedy [Rose] arrived from Hyannis Port.  I asked Mrs. Kennedy about the Ambassador.  She said, "We have told him, but we don't think that he understands it."  [JFK's father had suffered a stroke at an earlier time.]  Apparently the news produced no visible reaction.  Someone told me later that it had been decided to tell him on Saturday morning rather than on Friday evening -- I suppose so that he would face a day rather than a night.

I came back around 8 o'clock.  Jackie came out, looking very pale but most composed.  She said, "Susan Mary Alsop called me to say how wonderful I have been.  How did she expect me to behave?"...Then she talked about Evelyn Lincoln and Dave Powers.  "At least, I have my children.  They have nothing, nothing at all."  She had in mind using them in the Kennedy Library, which of course would be fine.  We chatted for a few moments.  Then Bobby appeared to take her to the Rotunda.  The rest of the family went downstairs for dinner, except for Sarge Shriver.  He and I ate sandwiches and drank bourbon upstairs for another half hour.  He reminisced about the past with sad cheerfulness.

Today was the funeral.  The service at St. Matthews was incomprehensible to me; but the ceremony at Arlington, against a background of wildly twittering birds, was solemn and heartrending.  De Gaulle was there, and Eisenhower, and Truman, looking shattered.  Evelyn Lincoln said to me, "The thing he hated most of all was fanatics."  The day was sunny, crisp and cold.  I have never felt so depressed.

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{Journals, 1952 - 2000.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
The Penguin Press, New York, 2007.}

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