Kennedy survivors mark anniversary of death
The sole surviving member of President John F. Kennedy’s immediate family, daughter Caroline Kennedy, who this month became the U.S. ambassador to Japan, commemorated the anniversary of her father’s death privately, the U.S. Embassy press office said. It offered no further details.
Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline, died in 1994; son John Jr. died in 1999; an infant son, Patrick, died two days after his birth in 1963; and a daughter, Arabella, was stillborn in 1956.
In Arlington, Va., the only surviving sibling of the late president, 85-year-old Jean Kennedy Smith, laid a wreath at her brother’s grave. She was accompanied by 10 Kennedy family members, who then prayed and left roses on the grave before leaving quietly.
Green Beret recalls, honors Kennedy
Visiting Arlington National Cemetery is not an easy task for Wallace Johnson, 74, of Dumfries, Va. So many of the Special Forces veteran’s comrades are buried here. So is his wife, who died in 2009. On Friday, though, he joined two other members of the Special Forces Association to pay their respects at Kennedy’s grave.
Wallace said Kennedy holds a special place in the hearts of Special Forces members, noting that the president gave his instant approval to the group’s iconic green beret on a 1961 visit to Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
Wallace was a young lieutenant at Georgia’s Fort Benning when Kennedy died. On Friday, he and his Special Forces comrades left a Green Beret at Kennedy’s grave and walked away.
Irish fiddler’s tribute cut short by emotion
Fiddler Frankie Gavin was just 6 years old when he performed with his musical family for President John F. Kennedy as the visiting president’s motorcade passed though Galway, Ireland, on June 29, 1963.
“I never got quite close enough to shake his hand. I really regret that,” Gavin recalled Friday at the U.S. Embassy in Dublin, where he performed a lament and a jig to celebrate the Irish-descended JFK’s memory in front of an audience that included diplomats, Irish army officers and the Vatican’s envoy to Ireland.
Gavin, who is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s fastest fiddler, played only one verse of the lament because he said, he could feel himself tearing up.
“There’s a sense of his (JFK’s) presence here today. … The moment was getting to me.”
Doctor recalls first lady’s roses in hospital waste basket
Dr. James “Red” Duke Jr. said the seriousness of the moment at Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital 50 years ago Friday began to sink in for him when he saw the first lady sitting beside the door of Trauma Room 1, her pink suit stained with blood. Summoned to help treat the dying president, he said, he entered the room to see what other surgeons already had concluded were Kennedy’s unsurvivable wounds.
Called to another treatment room across the hall to help stabilize Texas Gov. John Connally, also wounded in the shooting, Duke tossed his surgical gloves in a medical waste bucket, where they landed on a bundle of roses that had belonged to the first lady. The image has stayed crisp for him.
”It’s a picture I’ve just got in my mind,” said Duke, now 85. “I wish I could paint it.”
Governor recalls watching Kennedy’s funeral
In Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick recalled being a 7-year-old on Chicago’s South Side when he learned in school that Kennedy had been shot.
Some of his memories are mixed with his later understanding of the events, he said, but one is clear: Watching the funeral on television at his grandparents’ house.
“It was the first time I ever saw my grandfather cry,” he said.
— From news services
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