I certainly will come back in the springtime

--------------- {excerpts}--------------
 
= = = =
One Secret Service man recalled a time the previous winter when he was on duty outside the Oval Office.  It was a freezing, bitter night.  JFK came to the French doors, opened them, and walked out saying, "I don't want you out here in this terrible cold.  Come in here and get warm."  The Secret Service guard told the president that his post was outside and he could not leave it.  Kennedy returned to his desk and signed some more papers.  About ten minutes later the president reappeared carrying a fleece-lined coat.  "I want you to put his on, you're not warm enough, I can tell."  To appease the president the guard put the coat on.
 
A little while later, the president came back with a cup of hot chocolate for the young man.  Coatless, he came through the French doors, sat down on the icy steps, and the two men drank hot chocolate together.
 
= = = =
Jackie Kennedy's mother, Mrs. Hugh D. Auchincloss, said,

I felt they were closer.  I can't think of two people who had packed more into ten years of marriage than they had.  And I felt that with all their strains and stresses, which any sensitive people have in marriage, had eased to a point where they were terribly close to each other.  I can't think of any other married couple I've ever known that had a greater understanding of each other....  He appreciated her gifts and she worshipped him and appreciated his humor and kindness, and they really had fun together.

 = = = =
June 1963
On his last presidential trip abroad, Kennedy visited Ireland, the land of his ancestors, for a sentimental journey.  There had been rumblings that this trip did not make any sense with a reelection year coming up.  ..."How many votes are we going to get in Ireland?"...
 
...Dave Powers recalls their return to the Kennedy homestead in New Ross, County Wexford.  "We went into this little room, with a fireplace, to see Mrs. Ryan.  I was carrying the gifts Jack was giving them.  He didn't realize he had that many cousins....There was nothing like the days in Ireland."
 
...When it was time to leave, the president said, "Cousin Mary, the next time I come I'll bring Jackie and the children." 
"Are you glad you came?" a friend asked.  He said, "These were the three happiest days I've ever spent in my life."
"He was really very happy -- a little sad leaving, or lonely, I thought.  I think he was very taken by the simple people about him who greeted him everywhere."
 
At a dinner the night before he left, a guest recited a poem for him, "On the River Shannon," by Gerald Griffin.  The president found a piece of paper, asked for a pen, and wrote it down:
 

'Tis it is the Shannon's brightly glancing stream,

Brightly gleaming, silent in the morning beam,

Oh, the sight entrancing,

Thus returns from travels long,

Years of exile, years of pain,

To see old Shannon's face again,

O'er the waters dancing.

 
Before flying from Limerick to London the next day, Kennedy wanted to say a few words to express what these days had meant to him.  Unselfconsciously, he stood in front of the crowd that had come to see him off, and recited the poem about the River Shannon from memory, and added, "This is a land for which I hold the greatest affection, and I certainly will come back in the springtime."  The crowd cheered.  A little shy now, he ducked his head, patted his hair, smiled more broadly, and lifted his hand to wave.

-------------------- {end excerpts}

[Jackie Style, by Pamela Clarke Keogh.  Copyright 2001.  HarperCollins.  New York.]

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