Ms. Owens's mother included her daughter's letter with her own condolence note to Mrs. Kennedy, something Ms. Owens did not learn until she was contacted about the book. "It brought tears to my eyes to hear my mom's words," said Ms. Owens, whose mother died in 1990.
Ann Owens, 72, of Seattle, was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia when she heard that the president had been killed
Letters Capture Grief for President Kennedy
By KATIE ZEZIMA
Published: March 8, 2010
BOSTON - Days after President John F. Kennedy was killed, Dr. Ira Seiler sat at his desk and wrote a letter of condolence to his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy.
"Today, on Thanksgiving, I keenly sense his death for it was just three years ago today that I forced my breath into the lungs of his newly born son," Dr. Seiler wrote. John F. Kennedy Jr. was born premature; Dr. Seiler, a pediatric resident, said he placed a tube in the baby's trachea and breathed air into his lungs.
"I met your husband only once after this but the part I played in saving his son's life gave me a feeling of deep closeness to your husband," Dr. Seiler wrote. He added: "I only wish I had been able to give my life in place of that of your husband. He had so much to offer."
Dr. Seiler was one of more than a million people who wrote to Mrs. Kennedy in the months after her husband's assassination in 1963. Many of the letters were destroyed - there were simply too many to keep - but thousands of others were stored at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, where they were rarely seen; even many of the writers forgot what they had said.
For a new book, "Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving Nation," released by HarperCollins, Ellen Fitzpatrick, a historian, culled through the archives. Now she has published about 250 letters, most for the first time, from people around the country who felt compelled to write to Mrs. Kennedy.
[Excerpt]
Ann Owens, 72, of Seattle, was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia when she heard that the president had been killed. Schoolchildren and villagers mourned, and the school where Ms. Owens taught was closed for days.
"I feel now as if a member of my family had died," she wrote to her mother. "In a very real sense he was our idol; he is the reason for us being here - his idealism, his courage."
Ms. Owens's mother included her daughter's letter with her own condolence note to Mrs. Kennedy, something Ms. Owens did not learn until she was contacted about the book. "It brought tears to my eyes to hear my mom's words," said Ms. Owens, whose mother died in 1990.
