Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [40]
[John Kennedy, Jr., enters the room.]
John, can you talk? Hold it a little farther away from there—like that. John, you went to the airport today.
JOHN: Yeah.
Did you like it?
JOHN: Yes.
John, what happened to your father?
JOHN: Well, he's gone to Heaven.
He's gone to Heaven?
JOHN: Yeah.
Do you remember him?
JOHN: Yeah.
What do you remember?
JOHN: [mischievously] I don't remember any-thing!
You don't remember anything? Remember when you used to come and run into his office?
JOHN: Yeah.
And he'd play with you?
JOHN: Yeah. Can you put John on?34
O.K., we'll put John on.
[John leaves the room.]
PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND JOHN IN THE WEST WING COLONNADE
Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
Do you remember when the President knew he was going to be President? Did he say anything or did he just sort of take it in his stride?
Well, I think we were all out somewhere and someone yelled, "Nixon's conceded!" I think by then you sort of knew, by the votes, that it was bound—it was just sort of waiting for Nixon to concede, wasn't it?
Yes.
So, well, when it came, what could you do? I mean, you know, we hugged each other.
Would you say he was a religious man?
Oh, yes. Well, I mean, he never missed church one Sunday that we were married or all that—but you could see partly—I often used to think whether it was superstition or not—I mean he wasn't quite sure, but if it was that way, he wanted to have that on his side.
Pascal's wager.35
But I remember once he said to me something Somerset Maugham said: "Suffering doesn't ennoble, it embitters." So I don't know whether—he ever—must have had a few talks with God—I don't know if he did—just thinking, "Why does all this have to happen to me?" But he never said that. I think you couldn't be brought up the way he was without just thinking—
Well, obviously he accepted the religious sort of structure of existence and belief in a God and he believed that—he liked his children to be raised as good Catholics, and believed in Sunday Mass, and so on.
I mean, I know he wasn't an atheist or an agnostic or anything. No, he did believe in God but he didn't—You know, like all of us, you don't really start to think about those things until something terrible happens to you. And, you know, I think God's unjust now and I think he must have thought that along— He used to say his prayers—really—
He'd say prayers every night?
Yeah, but he'd do it so quickly it was really a little ritualistic thing. He'd come in and kneel on the edge of the bed—kneel on top of the bed and say them, you know. Take about three seconds—cross himself. That was—I don't remember him doing that in the White House. But, you know, it was obviously—it was just like a little childish mannerism, I suppose like brushing your teeth or something. It's just a habit. But I thought that was so sweet. It used to amuse me so—standing there.
Did he ever have any close friends in the clergy?
Not really his friends. I know Bishop Hannan he saw, but I guess that was more because of politics and everything down here—that's the one he always liked the most. Oh, and then Father Cavanaugh was a great friend of his father's and, you know, was a rather liberal priest.36 He liked him.
Bishop Wright in Worcester?
Oh, yes, he liked him very much. And of course, he loved Cardinal Spellman37 after—
He really liked—I didn't—really?
In the beginning when we got married, I know they were having a big fight, but by the time he was President he liked him.
Did he?
What Cardinal Spellman did—you know, he was just so for Jack, and then he made all those speeches about—he really changed. Because he'd been such a conservative churchman. Kenny O'Donnell told me that Cardinal Cushing38 used to make speeches