THE EMPATHY OF MRS. JACQUELINE KENNEDY

The year was 1961 and I was in the 6^th grade. Mr. Ball, our teacher, was apparently more civic-minded than most, with the emphasis on the plural, (civics) as he had brought in a b&w television from home and set it on his desk. At the time there was no such thing as cable, and the only channels available were 8 (NBC), 10 (ABC) and 13 (CBS).

Having set the television down, Mr. Ball proceeded to spread the ‘rabbit ears’ antenna, and clicked the knob. After a few seconds of black and white fuzz a live feed from Washington D.C. lit up the screen. Thousands of people filled up the parade route, and a long, black limousine drove slowly past the site of the film camera. A middle-aged man and younger woman who looked surprisingly like the sitcom characters, Rob and Laura Petrie (Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore) sat in the back seat. Of course, this nation had just elected a new president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and he and Jacqueline were passing by on their way to assuming the proverbial seats of the outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower, and his wife, Mamie Eisenhower. 

The twenty-five or thirty students in our 6^th grade class sat at rapt attention, as the Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren swore in the 35^th President of the United States. Either just before or just after the swearing in ceremony, the time element escapes me now, Robert Frost, the aging, white-haired poet, stepped to the podium to read one of his well-known poems.

As Frost stood to recite “The Gift Outright” the wind and the bright reflection of sunlight off the new fallen snow made reading impossible. He was able, however, to recite the poem from memory. For whatever reason, I recall the old man’s valiant rendition of his poem more clearly than the highlight of that momentous occasion; JFK’s inaugural address, and its two most memorable lines, 

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

Fast forward 2 ½ years, and I found myself just short of half way through the 9^th grade. 

November 22^nd, 1963

 ‘a day,’ as my 6^th cousin, Pres. Franklin Roosevelt might have said, 

…“which will live in infamy.”

I ‘laid out’ sick that day; the only sick day I would take during my entire 9^th year of school. I cannot account for it. As I reflect on it now, it seems almost personally prophetic on my part that I’d chosen this day of all days to remain home. 

As I lay in our television room watching “As the World Turns,” just prior to the 2 PM (EST) hour, an alert icon of some sort came up on the screen. In those days, those bulky old television cameras had to be warmed up for several minutes; prior to being used. And thus, I heard him before I saw him. Walter Cronkite, the mainstay of the CBS Evening News broadcast. 

“News Bulletin. President Kennedy has been shot.”

Eight minutes later, Mr. Cronkite’s image joined his disembodied voice. During those eight minutes, (the amount of time required for a beam of light to travel from the sun to the earth) live television was little more than a radio broadcast. However, CBS had beaten NBC ‘to the punch’ by about 40 seconds, and was credited with the ‘news scoop’ of the century. From that time forward the major networks learned their lesson, and had learned it well. They would always have a couple of live television cameras warmed up and ready to broadcast.

Pt. 2

Clint Hill, Jackie Kennedy’s personal Secret Service agent, was riding in a staff car that day; immediately behind the Presidential Limousine. The president had not only instructed Jackie to remove her sunglasses, but that no Secret Service agents run alongside, or sit on the fender jump seat of ‘White House One.’ Jack was all too aware of the 1964 national election, and he was determined to present an air of openness and availability to the potential voters which surrounded him.

As with his first inauguration, thousands of Texas citizens had turned out in Dallas that day. And in spite of President Kennedy’s instructions, Secret Service Agent Hill ran back and forth between the two cars; at times trotting next to the long, black limo, at times sitting on the back fender; but mostly riding in the follow up vehicle. Strangely enough, (and much to his relief) JFK never objected to the obvious breach of his earlier instructions, but continued to smile and wave at the crowd.

And then that fatal shot.

Clint Hill has always regretted not having been closer to the presidential couple during the course of the three (some say two) shots. Having witnessed Jack Kennedy’s response to the first shot, as his hands shot to his throat, Jackie’s agent hopped to the street, and dashed towards the truck of the limousine. During those fatal few seconds, JFK was struck again. 

A fatal head wound. In his book, “Mrs. Kennedy and me” (which I have read cover to cover) and in subsequent interviews, Mr. Hill speaks to the absolute horror of that day. He displays little, if any sensitivity when he relates how that when the subsequent bullet slammed into the president’s head, the sound which echoed throughout Dealey Plaza was much like that of a machete against the surface of a ripe watermelon.

By the time the courageous agent reached the fender of the limo, Mrs. Kennedy had crawled onto the truck; in a misguided effort to retrieve a piece of her husband’s skull. The Zapruder film records the entire sequence of events in all its gory glory. 

Ultimately, Agent Hill managed to push or drag Jackie Kennedy into the back seat, and covered the president and his wife with his body.

The first (and thus far, the only) president who has been assassinated during the watch of the Secret Service, (and the most profound, and enduring regret of Agent Clint Hill’s life).

Pt. 3

Jackie’s Secret Service agent was all too aware that it was all for naught, for as he jumped up onto the fender of the limo, he noted the right hemisphere of JFK’s cranium, and the empty space which had only seconds before encapsulated a pound and a half of gray matter.

Having only just managed to mount the trunk of the automobile, without falling to the pavement, and possibly being run over by the limousine, Agent Hill covered the couple as best he could. The Lincoln reached speeds upwards of 80 mph in its eight minute quest of Parkland Hospital. The closest our republic ever came to royalty lay dying in the back seat of car named after the first American president taken by an assassin’s bullet.

Dr. Robert McClelland, (a man whose autograph I have in my collection) recounts the scene in the trauma room:

"I was horrified to see him like that. With his head covered in blood, with that light shining down on it."

NBC asked McClelland how large the hole was in the back of Kennedy's head, he made a circle with his hands about the size of an orange.

"It was a hole about like this size. As I said, the whole back half, the right side of his brain was gone.”

Even today's medical advances couldn't have saved the president. Within 10 minutes, a priest came to deliver the last rites.

Most of the doctors cleared the room. But McClelland found himself trapped behind a gurney pressed against the wall and couldn't get out before the priest arrived.

"It was a private moment, and I'm a bit embarrassed that I was there. But I didn't want to have to walk across the room past the priest," McClelland said. NBC asked McClelland to remember what the priest, Father Oscar L. Huber, said during the ritual.

"Before he said anything he made the sign of the cross on the president's forehead, anointed his forehead. And then he leaned over and said, 'if thou livest,' in a loud, audible voice. Then he completed the rest of the ceremony in a softer voice and I couldn't hear him."

Jackie Kennedy then walked into Trauma Room One, her pink suit covered in her husband's blood. The first lady spent a few, final moments with her husband.

"She stood there for a minute over him. And then she exchanged a ring from her finger to the president's finger," McClelland remembers.

"And she stood there another moment or two, and then walked slowly to the end of the gurney, where the president's right bare foot was protruding out from underneath the sheet that was covering him. She stood by his foot for a moment, leaned over and kissed his foot, and walked out of the room. And that was the last I saw of the first lady."

(Jeff Smith, NBCdfw.com)

I admit it. I am rather ‘taken up’ with the events of that era; especially the Kennedy Assassination and mankind’s first lunar landing; outside of the two World Wars, the premier events of the 20^th century. And, without doubt, I could continue to elaborate on the murder of our 35^th president, and its aftermath.

But it is in the following account we pursue the purpose of this story, and reveal the logic of its title.

After President Kennedy’s body was laid in the casket, and literally taken by force by his security team, (as Texas authorities had demanded an autopsy be performed in Dallas) his remains were manhandled up the stairs to Air Force One, and loaded into the cargo hold; prior to the presidential swearing in of Vice President Johnson.

And as Jackie sat next to her husband’s casket, still covered in JFK’s blood, Agent Hill stepped up to her, and took a nearby seat. 

“Mrs. Kennedy, my profound regrets. I hardly know what to say. Is there anything I can do for you?”

Jackie was the pampered daughter of socialites, and as America’s First Lady spent untold amounts of money on custom-made French creations. Jack grew up in a wealthy Catholic family, and his father was America’s Ambassador to Great Britain; a father who set the standard for the sort of philandering John Kennedy later emulated.  In spite of their excesses, America’s ‘royal couple’ were loved and respected, and the unfulfilled potential of JFK’s administration is still debated.

As Agent Hill and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy sat alone together in the cargo hold of Air Force One, she seemed almost oblivious to her body guard’s earlier question, and answered his question with a question.

“Oh, Mr. Hill. Whatever is to become of you?”

As I type these words, tears spring to my eyes.

Sheer Empathy

Absolute nobility

In the midst of her abject despair, and when Mrs. Kennedy might have deservedly exercised the ‘quality’ of selfishness, she expressed concern for a person whom any reasonable person would have branded her inferior.

Agent Clint Hill went on to serve Mrs. Kennedy for another year, and faithfully performed his duty in five presidential administrations. 

Reflecting on a previous phrase and resulting occurrence in this story, I find it ‘personally prophetic’ that Jacqueline Kennedy (Onassis) passed away on May 19, 1994; my own 45^th birthday.

But I think for all the myriad details of all the myriad accounts of the Kennedy Assassination, and it’s aftermath to which I have been exposed, for all of their fascination and innuendo, my favorite, the most poignant detail of them all can be none other than the conversation to which I just alluded.

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 38. Copyright pending

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