Who Evelyn Lincoln Suspected, and What She Said: JFK’s Secretary 11/22/19633

Evelyn Lincoln spent twelve years as the private secretary to John F. Kennedy, first in the Senate and then in the White House.

Her memoir records the ordinary texture of those years as carefully as the public events.

One morning in October 1963 she watched him sign the nuclear test-ban treaty in the Treaty Room.

She asked to be present. Afterward he handed her one of the pens he had used and said he had brought an extra for her.

He wanted her to keep it with the others that had marked historic moments. The same week he asked her to send someone downtown for small model airplanes to keep in his bedroom so he could give one to John each morning.

The toys that returned were elaborate, some that tumbled and seemed ready to fly. He approved them, then asked for little horses as well so Caroline would have something when she arrived with her brother.

The shopping continued. Later that month, after a trip to Amherst College, he returned anxious about civil-rights legislation, worked out a compromise he believed could pass the House, and then sat through a meeting on Algeria.

While he was still inside, Caroline and John appeared at Lincoln’s door wearing Halloween masks.

She pretended to be terrified. They waited impatiently for their father. When he emerged he played along, pretending not to recognize them until John pulled off his mask in frustration.

Both children then pounced on him and demanded he roll on the floor with them.

He called for the dogs so he could feed them candy, but the animals were nowhere to be found.

Amid the weight of world problems, the children’s visits seemed to serve as an antidote.

On Veterans Day he took John to Arlington to place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

He left the boy in the car with an agent, then changed his mind and had him brought forward so the child could stand in front of the amphitheater.

Photographs of the two of them filled the next day’s papers. On the ride back the president playfully nudged his son; John nudged back and threatened to tell Mrs. Lincoln.

The president answered that he would tell Miss Shaw. Plans for a southern trip were already under way.

Kennedy wanted to gauge the mood over civil rights, test Republican optimism in the region, and explain cattle-import policy to angry growers.

Florida came first, then Texas. Mrs. Kennedy would join him. The visit was meant to strengthen support in a state the ticket had carried only narrowly in 1960 and to ease a bitter internal Democratic feud.

He insisted that Senator Ralph Yarborough ride in the motorcade and appear on the platform despite local objections.

Lincoln’s husband, Abe, repeatedly told her it would be better not to go to Texas.

On November 19 she passed the warning along. The president answered as he had many times before: if they were going to get him, they would get him.

He had no fear, even in church. He trusted the American people. An afternoon performance of the Black Watch on the South Lawn brought the family onto the balcony.

Caroline sat on the arm of her father’s chair with her arm around him. Later Miss Shaw brought the children for another romp on the office floor.

Lincoln remarked that the public might not expect to see a president down there. He looked at her and answered that he was also a father.

That evening, as the children prepared to leave, Caroline spotted a star and began the old rhyme.

The president finished the lines with her, then told her to go say it to her mother.

Lincoln felt an unexplained unease that lingered after she returned inside. Weather reports for Texas caused a rare outburSt. One source said cool; another said warm.

Bags had already been packed when the second report arrived. The president raged at the Navy aide who had supplied the first information, an anger Lincoln found unusual.

Jackie’s pink wool suit would prove too warm for the actual Dallas weather. On the morning of departure the children came to the helicopter.

John sat proudly in the big seat opposite his father’s place, raincoat and rain hat on.

The president teased him by kicking his foot until the boy protested. Mrs. Kennedy arrived, Caroline stayed behind at school, and the flight to Texas began.

In Houston the crowds were warm. In Fort Worth the next morning Lincoln arranged for three Dallas relatives to have breakfast in her hotel room and then stand in the hallway so the president could greet them as he left.

He strode down the corridor in a dark blue suit, stopped, shook hands, asked if they were more of her relatives, and waved as the elevator doors closed.

Outside a crowd that had waited three hours pressed around him under dark skies. The short flight to Dallas was filled with Texas congressmen talking politics.

The president discussed a full-page newspaper advertisement that had appeared that morning, an ad filled with hostility.

Lincoln felt the same strange unease return. She handed him memos to sign; he signed without reading them, too absorbed in conversation.

As the plane landed the sun came out. She decided she would not need her coat and thought the bubble top on the limousine would be unnecessary.

The president always preferred to be close to the people. At the airport a large crowd delayed the motorcade.

Mrs. Kennedy carried a bouquet of red roses. Lincoln looked across and saw the president’s right hand raised in a wave as the car began to move.

That is the image she kept: a young, energetic man who loved the country and its people, waving as he passed a friendly crowd.

In the weeks that followed, her life felt like a sunflower in darkness. Gradually she began to think of him as someone living in history.

She remembered not the famous rocking chair but the battered black briefcase always full of papers.

It seemed the better symbol of a man who found happiness, as he once said, through the full use of his powers along lines of excellence.

On the flight back to Washington that same day she made a handwritten list of people she thought might have been involved.

The list was compiled before Lee Harvey Oswald was charged. At the top she wrote Lyndon.

Then followed the KKK, Dixiecrats, the John Birch Society, Nixon, and others. Communists appeared at the very bottom.

The woman who had managed his schedule, heard the conversations through the door, and arranged the private meetings placed the vice president firSt. That single ranking, recorded while the casket rode in the same aircraft, remains one of the most quietly striking details she left behind.

The Intimate Final Weeks Recorded by the Secretary Who Saw Both the Father and the President

When Playful Mornings with Children Shared the Same Days as Nuclear Treaties and Quiet Warnings

The Uneasy Feeling That Returned More Than Once Before the Texas Journey Began How a Handwritten List Compiled on the Flight Home Placed One Name Above All Others

The Last Wave Captured Forever by the Woman Who Had Managed Twelve Years of His Days

Nothing lingers quite like the ordinary moments someone close enough to notice decided to write down before the ordinary ended.