Heck Yeah Kennedy Quotes

Caroline said, ‘I only cried twice’

George P. Hunt, Managing Editor, in Life Magazine (December 6, 1963):

During the three years of the Kennedy administration, Life’s Washington Bureau Chief Hank Suydam spent many hours at the White House. He was there again last week, and this is what he wrote about the White House, then and now:

It wasn’t just the flag at half-mast, or the bustle of extra reporters and TV floodlights, or even the solemn comings and goings of the Cabinet and legislative leaders. The whole mood of the place had gone with the President.

While he was there, the White House was highly unpredictable, an ever-changing combination of intensity, boyishness, purpose, gaiety and above all spontaneity. It was infectious to all who worked with him and knew him.

Yet he was always the President. Once, while he and I talked in his oval office about the background of a major story, he sat in front of his desk, getting a haircut. He was draped in a barber’s cloth and the wisps of brown hair fell to the rug. But I never really noticed the informality - not because of the oval office but because of the man.

On another occassion I talked with him in the small room next to the swimming pool where he took daily massages for his back. As we talked, he stripped down until finally he stood only in his shorts. He used some healthy profanity for emphasis, but even then it was the same: the setting and the setting and the costume didn’t matter. This was the President.

Last week they were moving out his belongings. Evelyn Lincoln, his personal secretary, and two Army sergants carried them out of the oval office. The two sergeants had taken care of his baggage whenever the President traveled. This was still a personal service that they and Mrs. Lincoln were performing, and wanted to perform, yet hated to do. They stripped the office clean - the desk, the ship models, the naval paintings, the books, the momentos, the rocking chair.

A close friend and chief aide says, “When we went inand out before, the White House police used to love to banter and joke. They’d kid us about the Redskins’ lousy season, or who was overweight around the White House, or about the weather or anything. Now they’re either quiet or they whisper. Everyone whispers. It’s a house of whispers.”

It’s a quiet time even for children. Exactly a year ago Caroline and John-John celebrated a joint birthday with a gay, noisy party for some 30 children. As they sat at large tables gobbling up their ice cream and cake, the President popped in, grinning at the scene, moving around the table to chat with the kids. His fondness for children was warm and genuine, one of the few places he was willing to let his emotions show.

John was 3 on Monday of last week, and Caroline was 6 on Wednesday, but there was no birthday party. The White House school continued and Caroline attended the classes, but she disappeared during the play periods. To one of her classmates she made a single quiet comment on her father’s death: “I only cried twice.”

(Source: heckyeahkennedyquotes)