the kennedy assassination for young adults. >> hi am here to welcome you to this session of the southern festival of books where this

evening session, as you know our writer for this session is james swanson, the edgar award winning author of the new york times best-seller manhunt, the 1284 lincoln's killer as well as chasing lincoln's killers, the best-selling adaptation of manhood for young adults. he had a number of government and big tech posts in washington d.c. including the u.s. department of justice. is two recent books called end of days, the assassination of john f. kennedy and the presentation this afternoon which is the president has been shot, the assassination of john f. kennedy. mr. swanson? [applause] >> thank you very much. to give you fair warning the book that has been published in case you want to leave, this is a children's book. and at the festival. my adult book, an end of days is

coming out in a couple weeks. i don't see many kids here so i thought i would give you a advance notice that i'm talking about this children's book today. whenever i hear authors talk i don't like to see them read from their books or read from a script. if they are going to do that i could just read the book anyway so why go to the event? saltus will talk about how i did this book and how i'd do my books and why do these. i am interested to know the back story. everything i have done as a writer for, something i heard about as a child. even the kennedy assassination. i got into writing because of abraham lincoln. i was born on lincoln's birthday of february 12th in chicago, ill. lincoln country and i realized some of the southern states like kentucky claimed a lincoln affiliation but as far as we are concerned in illinois we are the land of lincoln and

we are the lincoln states so we forget the others. from an early age i was exposed to lincoln things, objects, comic books, trinkets from the lincoln home in springfield, as a boy i would go visit the lincoln deathbed at the chicago historical society. at the turn of the century, a millionaire purchase the entire contents of the lincoln death room in the peterson house in washington d.c. flew into chicago and the room was recreated. i remember as a boy going in that room and pushing a button and a voice of a man would come out and there was a story of what happened to abraham lincoln on april 14th, 1865, and i remember when i was 6 or 7 years old, pushing that button to listen to that story of what happened to president lincoln. a few years later when i was 10 my grandmother gave me what you might think would be an odd gift

for a little boy, not a baseball bat or ball, she gave me a framed an engraving of the derringer pistol used to kill abraham lincoln and framed with that in graving was part of a clipping from the chicago tribune from the morning of april 15th, 1865, the morning the president died and i remember reading that story and that the headlines and in those days there was no big broad horizontal headline across the newspaper page, the headlines were all on the left-hand column and there were a series of them from top to bottom. i remember reading those headlines president shot, john wilkes booth the actors the assassin. ..

i must have read this story hundreds of times as a boy wanting to know what happened on the night of april 14, 1965. years later when i was working on my book manhunt a great find i was able to acquire from my collection and original set of 100 issues from the "chicago tribune" from the spring and summer of 1865 that covered not only the end of the war the assassination the manhunt the trial of the conspirators so years later after i was exposed to that as a boy i actually had in my hands and entire original issue of the "chicago tribune" april 15, 1865 and is one of my treasured possessions. i was exposed to other stories attaboy too.

my grandmother worked for chicago newspapers. the very tail end of that era. the sun-times, the sun-times and those reporters hung out at bars. they dress like cops. they acted like a man pretended to be them. it's just just an arab wild storytelling and i remember once when i was six my grandmother told me this. she loved to tell me while terrifying stories preachy said jamie did you know that during the 1893 world's fair and madman doctor murdered 100 girls and dissolve their bodies and asset? i was six years old when she told that to me. [laughter] years later when my agent said what you want to do next i said when i was a boy my grandmother told me about the story of a madman doctor who dissolved his patience in acid and i said i want to do that.

he said do you know who eric larson is? he is in the middle of writing that very book so i did manhunt instead of writing about the mad dr. homes. my grandfather who is a chicago policeman from the 1930s the al capone gangster area -- era through the 1960s the anti-vietnam war protests in civil rights movement era. he came home said and almost a stage whisper and i wondered if he wanted me to hear this. he said don't let jamie read the newspapers. they lived with us and of course what i do the moment i was alone? i grabbed a copy of the sun-times to read the newspaper. how many of you remember the name richard speck? almost all of you. a madman murdered a number of student nurses in chicago and i read all about it because my grandfather said don't let him read the newspaper. since that day i have read seven

newspapers a day and four on weekends. i'm addicted to newspapers and i'm sure's because of my grandmother and grandfather exposing me to these when i was a boy. my father went to a high school in chicago and the teacher used to point at the desk -- he would tell me this. in that desk sat herbert hans hout one of the eight nazi saboteurs who landed on american shores by u-boats in 1942. of course he was executed and i told my agent i want to write about the nazi spies who came to america. my father told me about when i was a boy. this was after 9/11 and my agent said i have great news. there is no eric larson writing a book about the nazi saboteurs. their three authors writing the same book about the nazi saboteurs so you can't do that. my childhood was filled with the storytelling from my parents and my grandparents.

and there is nothing i have ever written that doesn't come out with something i was exposed to as a child. because of my lincoln interest i became a fanatical collector looks objects memorabilia and artifacts related to abraham lincoln and the civil war and i almost view myself as a full-time curator of curiosities who happens to know about what those curiosities inspired me to think about. over the years i have collected things like a lock of lincoln's haircut from his head by secretary of war stanton in the peterson house after lincoln died that morning april 15 and that lock of hair is framed with flowers that had formed lincoln's coffin at the white house funeral on april 19. i have a fragment of the dress worn by actress laura keene stained with the president's blood. you might remember she dropped

to her knees and cradled lincoln's head in her lap. i've spend a lifetime pursuing these objects which are touchstones to me that get me interested when i write about it. the same is true with the assassination of john kennedy. november 221963. do you remember? i see that many of you are old enough to remember. if you're over 55 or 56 years old you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing and how you felt when you heard that news. it was 50 years ago next month. it seems like yesterday. i remember. i was four years old and i don't remember anything about the assassination itself. i remember nothing about november 22 or saturday november november 20 3rd. but i had to neighbors across the street and i remember them to this day. they were seven and about 10 and

they tolerated the 4-year-old who wanted to play with them. their father who was very conservative did not want them to watch television. they didn't have one. he wanted them to go to harvard. one of them did. one of them slammed it and went to my college the university of chicago. but my mother said to me on the morning of sunday november 24, get dressed. get out of your pajamas and get dressed. the girls are coming over. why? they are coming over to watch television. i thought television? where the girls allowed to watch television? my mother said the president has died. we are going to watch the carriage take his coffin from the white house to the u.s. capital where there will be a memorial service in honor of the president. i remember that conversation with my mother as though it happened last week it made such a vivid impression on me. i realized that is why i have

written these two books "the president has been shot!" and -- for kids and adults. after i did manhunt i thought about doing books for young people because my boys would tell me they don't find a lot of good history books and we talk so much about these stories. they said dad wouldn't you write books for kids? at that time they were seven and nine and they gave me good tips about how to get into this. my 9-year-old said readers want blood. and the 7-year-old said and nights. [laughter] and there was a lot of doubt in my lincoln books. i can assure you of that. i love speaking to kids audiences. one of the first times i did was add a school attended by my knees in the alumni. it was a writing class and the students have prepared writing samples to show me and i would comment on them and discuss how to write or what to do. after that day the children all

wrote letters thanking me for coming to the school. i remember getting a letter from one girl who i identified as one is the smartest kids in the class in her letter said dear mr. swanson thank you so much for visiting our class. i dare say you seems to enjoy yourself quite a bit. this was from a child. [laughter] and then she said i felt i they gained insights into your personalities. [laughter] by staring into your right eye as he spoke. and i asked my knees about this. i said what's with this girl? she said she's just weird don't worry about it. she is not a witch or anything. don't worry about it. but since then what i speak to an audience of young adults i'm almost attempt -- to tempted to put a patch over my right eye so no child can look at my right eye and figure out who i am. a few years later after that

november day when i was a 4-year-old toy i was going through my mother's closet -- she called it her more. she was a painter and a lot of her source materials were in this closet. it was a tall twice my height sliding door closet with a number of shelves crammed with photographs newspaper clippings magazines and souvenirs and she would use these things in her paintings. i remember one day in that closet i discovered her memorabilia from the assassination of president kennedy. the life magazines the look, the saturday evening post in the old brown newspaper that are brittle and you have to turn the pages so carefully. i didn't fully understand what it was all about. i didn't know who president kennedy was. i was eight years old. i didn't know what had happened but i knew from my mother's tears when she looked at these things with me that something terrible happened and i learned

more as i looked through these documents in these old newspaper stories. i'm sure it's because of what happened when i was four and what i found at my mother's closet so many years ago is the reason i have written these books. so a little bit about them. there is so much one could say about november 22, 1963. it's especially a challenge to talk about it and write about it for young people. children and adults who don't remember anything about it. those of us who do, it seems like yesterday but it was a challenge to write about something for people who have never experienced that, who didn't know who john kennedy was. children are taught about john kennedy and elementary school and high school today. very few kids are taught about the cold war of the vietnam war. history stops in a lot of schools with the civil war and

they might move forward to the civil rights movement and modern history. i was dealing with kids who don't know much about the subject and i really had to figure out what to tell them. so i really tried to tell the story the way i experienced it as a child. through vivid imagery historical photographs maps drawings and through vivid chronological descriptions of what happened. to make it come alive for kids who knew nothing about it. and so the tough thing was the story is so gigantic, what do you do? i began the way i tried to do in my other books as though i am writing a novel but pretend you don't know the outcome. it's kind of like writing about the titanic. everyone knows the ship sank and everybody died but i tried to persuade the reader that it didn't have to happen that way. i think i tried to do that in all my writing.

it's tough being an historian writing about things that everyone knows. you all know that president kennedy was assassinated. you know that john wilkes-booth killed abraham lincoln so how could my other books of apprise you with any information? i discovered that readers seem to like getting involved in the telling of the tale. tell a story as it happened as though people don't know the ending. week by week's, powered by our, day by day sometimes minute by minute and in some cases on elm street from the school book depository second by second and don't tell readers anything that a person living at the time wouldn't have known before it happened. on the manhunt for john wilkes-booth i don't want you to know on day to two what's going to happen on day 10. in the story of the kennedy assassination when i tell you about lee harvey oswald seven months before he murdered president kennedy attempting to

assassinate the united states army general with the rifle i don't want you to know that he is going to plan an attack on president kennedy later. that's one way tried to tell the story. another way is through reports of what happened through the eyes who saw it then. there was an incredible newspaper and television and radio coverage they came out of the kennedy assassination. it's almost as though shakespeare was providing the lines to these journalists. if you look at the arrival of the kennedys in dallas. who doesn't remember that? you should listen to the reporter saying there is mrs. kennedy now stepping offutt air force one, her bright pink suit close in the sun. a the deep red roses contrasts beautifully with the pink suit. it's almost as though they know but they don't know.

the reporters talk about the secret service protection. we spent many days talking to circuit -- secret servicemen. this is split-second time operation. nothing is left to chance. that is what they said at the airport. nothing is left to chance. then the reporters even said security precautions extends down to this date the president will eat it is lunch at the dallas trade market. the secret service would randomly select a state from the 2000 stakes being selected so no one could poison president kennedy unless they poisoned all 2000 people at the lunch. but they didn't mention that the president would drive past 20,000 open windows on the way to the trade lunch. they didn't mention that none of the buildings had been searched. they didn't mention that fbi agents had forgotten to mention that a strange man named lee harvey oswald was being

interviewed by them regularly because of this curiosity of the soviet union. nobody confronted the president and said we absolutely refuse to get off the back of your car and not stand behind you. he didn't like them on that car. president kennedy was not well protected just like abraham lincoln. it wasn't raining. kennedy wanted the top off the car. he often traveled in the car when it was a convertible. agents would try to stand up but that a hind him and by the way if two agents are standing on the back of that car oswalt wouldn't have much of an angle of rifle fire at the president. he didn't want that. he wanted to show himself to the people. i have found photographs that would shock you to see how close people were allowed to get to the car in that motorcade. motorcade. and he would could have jumped on him or thrown a knife. people got so close someone could've lunged forward or

stabbed him or jack in the front seat. that is how close people were allowed to get to the president in that day. nothing would have happened that day if it was raining at the top is on the card. if the agent stood on the back of the car. if a friend of oswald's wife hadn't by chance found him a job at the texas school depository depository -- book depository. if oswalt succeeded in murdering general walker in texas seven months earlier maybe that would have satisfied his taste for blood. if his wife had hidden the rifle from him so he couldn't find it that morning. he took it to the office. so many things could've happened in different way. president kennedy himself believed that ultimately nothing could protect him in the end from an assassin. he said something very airy just a few hours before he was shot. he was still in fort worth. he had gotten up in the morning,

went outside and spoke to a crowd in the rain. by the way that crowd was right up against him. there were open windows all around in front of the hotel taxes in fort worth. then he went inside and spoke at a breakfast to supporters. then he was in his room with jackie suite 850 and the hotel taxes and ease of reading the newspaper. he sees the dallas mooring paper and there's a full-page ad that says welcome mr. president. at first blush it looks like a friendly greeting. it was a vicious ad that asked a series of impertinent questions. essentially why are you a communist? it was just filled with her less things. he said jackie did you look at this? we are heading into not country today. then he policinski said you know last night would have been a

hell of a night to assassinate a president. the crowd was jostling us and it was dark. anyone could have pulled a pistol out of a briefcase and shot me. then he caused in said, what would stop a man and in a tall building with a rifle from shooting me? there was nothing he could do about it. you couldn't stop it. later that day i'll were slater air force one was flying from dallas to washington and jackie kennedy was sitting next to the coffin for the whole flight back she was joined by dave powers kenny o'donnell and other top aides. o'donnell said what were we talking about today's? why did we talk about at? what made us all discuss the assassination of the president this morning just a few hours before it happened? again i say it's a shakespearean story.

one thing i try to do in the children's book and the adult talk is bring you back to the day it happened before you knew it would happen. we have been so distracted by a number of contradictory conspiracy theories involving grassy knoll's, cubans either pro-castro, anti-castro come koreshan's naval intelligence the fbi the secret service the doctors at bethesda naval hard hard -- naval hospital where the president had been autopsied. officer j.d. tip of the brave who was viciously murdered i oswald. right after the assassination oswald shot him four times. by the fourth shot he walked up to the helpless policeman on the sidewalk and a pistol at his head and he said ford dam cop.

some theorists have named officer tipped it as a in the conspiracy to kill the president. other theories say there were two oswalt. there was a double oswalt but the oswald who moved to russia was not the same oswalt they came back from russia. it's funny his mother and his brother and the other people never said that is not oswald. these conspiracy theories have so seized our imagination and therefore whether i think -- say whether i think they are true or false or what they mean or why we want to believe them because conspiracy theories have done this. they have detached us from the emotional truth of november 22, 1963. it was real. it's not some theory. a wife lost her husband murdered in her arms. two children lost a father. the nation lost a president.

other men were shot that day. other children were left without their fathers. america suffered its most tragic and emotionally traumatic day since the assassination of abraham lincoln 98 years before. and so i really tried to get that across in these books of what it did to the nation, well did it to to the kennedys haughwout was reported how those four days of constant radio in newspro scat -- broadcast multiple editions of of of the news magazines how that unify the nation. it was the first unifying experience through the mass media that brought the american people together to experience the same thing at the same time. i think even the dropping of the atomic bomb our victories in world war i and world war ii, no this things compared to the emotional defense of the assassination of president

kennedy on the american people. so i really wrote the book -- both books for three audiences. one for all of those of us who do remember. then for younger generations of adults who only know what they have seen in movies, who have only heard the conspiracy talk who have never really read a book of what happened moment i moment and then of course for the children who don't know the story at all. one thing i advise kids is that conspiracy theories have been part of american history for over 300 years. we use them to explain terrible things. why terrible things have happened in our nation. conspiracy theories do have one thing in common. they deny the role that luck, chance accident or happenstance

have had in human history for thousands of years. and so neither one of those books is a rebuttal or support of any conspiracy theory. i want to tell you what happened and take you through this day by day. i do advise that the kids that just as the conspiracy theorists are skeptical of what happened in dallas texas so should they be equally skeptical of any one or more of these theories. i won't take time to get into the theories one by one because that's really the point of my book. one point of the book is to tell the story around dallas. jackie kennedy became as interesting to me as the president or oswald. and i really chaw them out of their characters counting down the hours to november 22. i show you who oswald was, what

he was doing, where he was in his life. i show you john and jackie kennedy and their story and what was happening to them before they went to dallas. it's so fascinating to me that on the last half of his life john kennedy had dinner alone with jackie. they were going to a political event and of course the president can never eat a proper meal in an event with thousands of people. they are in their hotel room and he is dressed. he was the bit of a fashion plate. john kennedy usually changed clothes two times a day, clothing ties and shirts. that's the way reason he always looks great in his photographs. he had a personal man who traveled with him to take care of his clothing and outfitted him throughout the day. jackie of course always looked great. she is in her black velvet dress he is innocent and they have dinner alone in a hotel room in

texas. as that is happening lee harvey oswald is with his wife not far away in texas, not such a happy occasion. most of you know that they weren't living together then. oswald was living in a rooming house in dallas and his wife was -- we oswald would visit on weekends. oswald came one day earlier that week on thursday november 21. they were bickering and he promises to buy her a washing machine which is not a small thing when you have two infant children at home and you were doing laundry by hand. marina later said i was too hard on him. maybe i shouldn't have been. one image strikes me at the kennedys are up in the morning and their hotel. the trip has been great. one thing that is often forgotten is what a great trip this was before dallas. the crowds loved kennedy.

huge receptions. he was really enjoying this. when he landed in dallas he said look at that crowd. he would over to the fence to the people who were cheering and waiting for him. dallas was really the tale and of what would have been a great trip to texas. so he is with his wife in the hotel room. oswald is at mrs. payne's house. he gets up and takes almost all the money he has in the world, $170 in cash and he leaves it on the top of the dresser. he keeps about 15 bucks which coincidently is approximately the price of a bus ticket to mexico. he then removes his wedding ring and places it in a china cup that his wife brought back from the soviet union. he then leaves the house, walks to a neighbor a man who lives in

that house works at the book depository. he has been giving oswald writes back and forth each weekend. that morning, the day before on november the 21st oswald says to him can you give me a ride tonight? sure, but why? you always go on friday. i want to pick up some curtain rods for mrs. payne. okay. he didn't tell the man in the boarding house room had curtains and already had blinds. the next morning after he leaves the money and the wedding ring the sister of the co-worker sees him come to the house. he is carrying a package wrapped in brown paper about that long and about that tall. the woman looks out the window and sees him with the package, sees him put it in the backseat. oswald's co-worker gets in the car. okay lets go. he backs out and he says what's

that package? oswald says zero cohost of the curtain rods i told you about. he picked them up that morning. the man walked 75 feet ahead of oswald her into the backdoor of the depository. the co-worker said he always walks next to me that this day he rushed ahead. he said he held the package sideways one park tucked under his hand at the other part tucked under his arm and held it close to his body. i won't go on with all the details but that's the kind of detail that i tried to search for the book to make the story alive. i'll give you one more quick example about that about oswald and jackie kennedy. it's often said by those who dispute the warren commission and we know of a lot more today about the assassination and the warren commission. some theorists even dispute that any shots were fired from the

depository. some say not a shot was fired. he was shot from a grassy knoll or shop behind the book depository. here's a little fact. when i mention this to kids because i've been going around the country speaking to audiences of young adults and they ask me these questions because they have seen the movies and they have heard the talk. i

and let the reader know what those people said. certainly that puts to rest any question of whether three shots were fired from the sixth floor window. oh god away about 10 witnesses saw the barrel pointing out the window. i high school boy saw the rifle tracking the president's car. so again that puts to rest any question that there wasn't a rifle in that window aiming out. most of the people when they heard the shot turned around and looked up at the texas school. that in miniatures when i tried to do in this book. tried to cover exactly what

happened in detail. again it's not a book to refute conspiracy theories. i don't get into it very much. i began by telling you what i think happened that day and giving you as much eyewitness testimony and facts to support it. it's really impossible to refute a lot of conspiracy theories point by point. how can i prove to you that khrushchev didn't order the death of kennedy? how could i prove to you that oswald didn't do it? the way to begin is to show the facts that are known. what did happen that day? jackie. there was always the myth that she was trying to escape the car and climb out of the car. it's actually not true. she saw part of her husband's school in the backseat of this this -- car. she never climbed out and if you look at the photos carefully she is kneeling and reaching out to

take something. later at the hospital she was in such a state of shock that she went to the doctor and handed him part of her husband school and brains. in her state of shock she was thinking somehow they'd might need them to fix them or help them. when a car pulled up to the house she wouldn't let go of the president. they had been about a 60 minute ride siren to 80 miles an hour. after the third shot the secret service agent ran to the car leaps on and cover jackie pushed her back in and put his body on top of the president and jackie. i tell the readers what happened in that car. what she said what clintonville said what she saw and what he saw. a car pulls up to the brooklyn hospital. the reporters russia to the car because no one has taken a present out of the car. reporters are standing 2 feet

from jackie kennedy and the president. she is holding in her lap and covering up his head with her arms like this. agents tried to take the present out of her and she said no. he is dead. agent he'll encourages her let us take him. why? he is dead. you know it. he then realizes she doesn't want to see the president that way so that is why he removes his suit coat and drapes it over the president's head and takes him inside. jackie tries to enter the emergency room and burling hearst tries to stop her. she pushes the nurse and the nurse pushes her and then jackie says it's my right and i want to be with him when he dies. a navy admiral says let her in. jackie enters the room and stands there. again what i'm trying to do is not to persuade readers about

the conspiracy theories. i'm trying to take you into the hotel room the morning before it happens to hear what he says about assassination. i want to take into the car in and emergency room and then explain what jackie did after that. she decided that her husband should have the greatest funeral since that of abraham lincoln. there is very much patterned after that. the decoration of the white house the procession up the avenue, the ceremonies at at the capital and the funeral at arlington cemetery.

later she said when she looked in the mirror she said i shouldn't have wiped the blood from my face or my hair. i should've left it on for everyone to see. she did though and then she posed for the photograph. she devoted the next couple of years of her life to the memory and legacy of john kennedy. one of my favorite stories involves what she did one week

after the assassination. we all know the story of camelot and the myth of the golden age of president kennedy. did you all know that jackie kennedy created that myth one week later it? she was in hyannis parred. the hurricane was coming and she calls the journalists ted white who wrote the making of a president in 1960. jackie calls and says there's something i want to tell you and only you and "life" magazine can tell it to the american people. we are old enough to remember life. when i speak to young audiences they are shocked to know that once upon a time there were picture magazines that tens of millions of americans would get every weekend that is where they would get their news. when i tell kids there were three network tv stations for editions of the newspaper a day these news magazines with pictures they picked a primitive

time. so he comes over. jackie tells everyone i want to be with him alone. and she says i have called you here because i didn't want people to forget jack kennedy and that's impossible. what did she mean? she said people are always trying to write summaries of his administration what he did right and what he did wrong and what was good and what was bad. that was not the real man that i knew. and then for the next three and a half hour she went out of his stream of consciousness telling him about the car combat the blood and what happened and how she moved her wedding ring and placed it in her husband's hand. and then she gets to the point she wanted to make to him. she says you know before we go to bed we would often play records on the stereo. we often played this musical,

this broadway musical camelot. king arthur and his courts mythical time of knights and their ladies. some of the songs from camelot have phrases like brief shining moment for once there was a place known as camelot. jackie said there will never be another camelot again. she says that three or four times to hawaii. that is what she wants him to write. she by the way used to be a journalist and she was a great writer. i have read some of the things that jackie is written including some of her private letters to the secretary of defense mcnamara. her prize essay the price of paris to become a junior editor of "vogue" magazine she wrote as a college student she was a terrific observer. he goes up to -- they are holding the presses

while he types the story of her house right after she had spoken. he comes down and she takes it from his hand, could she reads it and she starts editing the story. white later said i've violated all journalistic ethics by letting her do that. i became hurt tool so she edits the story. he dictates the story to new york from a wall telephone hanging on her kitchen wall. the editors in new york are telling her what's this camelot stuff? get rid of some of it. she is standing right next to white and she looks at him and says no. then the editors in new york say wait a minute is she standing right next to you? is she listening to you right now? and white without saying it, that was what was happening. the story runs in the december 6 , 1963 issue of "life" magazine.

the last two pages of that issue a tribute to john kennedy and it's filled with the whole camelot story. white later says there were no galahad. he was embarrassed about what it done but then in his memoirs he believed in the myth of camelot again. he said when i left her house that night and got back on the main road i was on familiar ground once again. i did not realize that i and the american people had passed through an invisible membrane of time. that nothing would be the same again. and so it's very important to me and telling the story of the death of president kennedy the story of jacqueline kennedy during and after the assassination to talk about the myths and the legends and memories we all have about president kennedy. was camelot in myth or because tens of millions of people believe it does that make it

true and make it real? jackie did other things to remember him. she wanted to go home to georgetown. she wanted her old huspeth. the night of the assassination secretary mcnamara offered to buy it for her. she said no. she said that would be morbid and how could i go back there with all the memories? averell harriman and important diplomat that served in many -- he wanted to live a normal life again like they did before the presidency. the people wouldn't let her do it. that was the beginning of the strange national obsession with jacqueline kennedy. people stood in front of her house to spy on her. they would take photographs when she came out with children. they would never leave her alone. she didn't like crowd