Documents Offer Glimpse of Rose Kennedy
By KEN MAGUIRE, AP
(Sept. 28) - Rose Kennedy, for one brief shining moment the most powerful
mother in America, went over John F. Kennedy's head in 1962 to write directly to
Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev. For that, she got a playful scolding from
her son.
She spunkily wrote a letter asking the Russian leader to autograph pictures
of his meeting with her son, and Khrushchev complied.
"Would you be sure to let me know in the future any contacts you have with
heads of state ..." John Kennedy wrote to his mother on White House stationery
on Nov. 3, 1962, just days after the Cuban missile crisis ended. "Requests of
this nature are subject to interpretations and therefore I would like to
have you clear them before they are sent."
Unfazed, Rose Kennedy wrote back: "Dear Jack: I am so glad you warned me
about contacting heads of state as I was just about to write to Castro."
The exchange was contained in Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy's papers -- 250 boxes
of letters, photographs, notes -- that became available to the public for the
first time Thursday at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in
Boston.
The collection sheds light on a woman best known as the daughter of a mayor,
wife of an ambassador, and mother of sons who became president, attorney
general and senator in a family that has known intense grief as well as enormous
success.
"She's a hot ticket," said Megan Desnoyers, archivist for family collections
at the library. "I don't think people know much about Rose Kennedy."
The eldest daughter of Boston Mayor John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, who
also was a congressman, Rose Fitzgerald married Joseph Kennedy. Their 1914
Wedding Log, which is part of the collection, shows that they traveled to
Philadelphia on their honeymoon to watch the Boston Braves play in a World Series
game at Shibe Park.
Desnoyers describes Rose Kennedy as a "note taker and a keeper." She lived
to be 104, dying in 1995.
As a teenager she became comfortable on the campaign trail with her father,
said James Wagner, exhibits specialist at the library. That came in handy
during her son's 1960 presidential campaign, when she visited more than a dozen
states.
A six-page draft of a stump speech she gave in Wisconsin in 1960 includes
her handwritten revisions.
"On the dais up until the last minute, she'd be revamping her speech,"
Wagner said. "She was a very comfortable public speaker. She would write her own
speeches and edit them."
The papers were donated by the Kennedy family two years ago. Buried
somewhere in the 250 boxes, but not yet pulled out for public display, is a letter
she wrote to her son Edward in the early '60s, around the time he was either
running for Senate, or after he was elected. It schools him on the proper
pronunciation of "nuclear."
"She was always correcting their grammar. She definitely was a mother,"
Desnoyers said.
She was a disciplinarian as well.
"When the children needed to be spanked, I often used a ruler -- and
sometimes a coat hanger which was often more convenient because in any room there
would be a closet and the hangers in them would be right at hand," she said in
a letter dictated in 1972.
"Of course," it continued, "the children would sometimes anticipate what was
coming and stuff their trousers with a pillow so I am not sure the spankings
had much lingering effect."
Rose Kennedy's papers include solemn remembrances as well.
"My reaction to grief is a certain kind of nervous action," she wrote in her
diaries shortly after the assassination of John Kennedy. "I just keep
moving, walking, pulling away at things, praying to myself while I move, and making
up my mind that it is not going to get me. I am not going to be licked by
tragedy, as life is a challenge and we must carry on and work for the living as
well as mourn for the dead."
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