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BOSTON — Fifty years after Jacqueline Kennedy publicly thanked Americans for their letters after the loss of her husband, the JFK Library released some of those letters.
She had been widowed for only 53 days, less than two months since the assassination. She was oined by her husband's brothers Bobby and Teddy, she wore black and her only jewelry was her gold wedding band.
Jacqueline Kennedy spoke to the nation for the first time since that terrible day in Dallas, thanking the nearly 800,000 people who'd written letters of condolence.
"The warmth of these tributes is something that I shall never forget. Whenever I can bear to, I read them. All his bright light, gone from the world," Kennedy said at the time. "I thank you again on behalf of my children and the president's family for the comfort that your letters have brought to us all."
A time capsule of comfort and pain, the 22,000 letters were so moving, so personal, that they were set aside to be answered individually by volunteers.
The carpenter in Paterson, New Jersey who made a bust of JFK for his garden.
Miss Prince's French class in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.
10-year-old Bridget Faith Hebert from Lake Charles, Louisiana, wrote:
"Mrs. Kennedy: I would love for you and your children to come over to our house when you are not busy."
In a Kenyan village, the toddler named "Kennedy" after the President had recently sent his namesake a signed picture. It arrived two days after the president was killed.
But most poignant of all was the letter from Maxine McNair, mother of Denise McNair, one of the young girls killed five months earlier in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
"Dear Mrs. Kennedy, when the tragic news came across the air waves, again my heart said, 'it isn't true, it didn't happen.' Isn't it strange how people with so much to give to the world are taken? That's God's will however, and not for us to question."
McNair wrote the letter hoping to bring comfort in the same way she was comforted.
"I was hoping it would give her some comfort, because I got a lot of comfort from the letters people wrote me," McNair said.
Two women, a world apart, brought together by the shock and pain of violent, sudden loss.
The letters are an archive, now preserved for all time.
