Mrs. Kennedy at the birthday party she held for her son ten days after his father’s funeral.

The absence of their mother during the shocking aftermath of their father’s murder had led to several hours of uncertainty about who should first break the news to Caroline Kennedy and John Kennedy, Jr. and how it should be explained.

Caroline Kennedy.

Earlier that afternoon, Caroline Kennedy was being driven by the mother of her schoolfriend Agatha Posen, about to have her first experience sleeping over her friend’s house.

A news bulletin about the assassination broke over the radio. Mrs. Posen snapped it off.

If that didn’t make the First Daughter suspect something was awry, the fact that the Secret Service agents in the follow-up suddenly seized upon her and took her to the White House did. She began to cry in fear.

The Kennedy Yellow Oval Room in May of 1962.

She was brought to the White House where a group who usually didn’t organize in the Yellow Oval Room in the middle of the afternoon without her parents sat nervously waiting for news from Dallas: her grandmother Janet Auchincloss, her aunt Jean Smith and her mother’s confidante Nancy Tuckerman.

The familiar presence of her brother John and their nanny Maude Shaw, was the only note of normality. John busily played with a new toy plane, and bragged that his birthday was coming in only three more days.

His mother had promised to give him a birthday party. He would be three years old.

The Georgetown home of Jackie Kennedy’s mother.

A message conveyed by the Secret Service from Air Force One, now on its way to Washington, requested that the children be immediately removed from the White House and brought to their grandmother’s nearby home. Maude Shaw quickly threw some overnight clothes in a suitcase for them and a White House car sped them away.

Shortly thereafter, when her mother was able to speak to Jackie via the phone on Air Force One, she updated her on the children’s whereabouts. Mrs. Kennedy was annoyed: no, she wanted them in their rooms at the White House. The children were again packed up and rushed back.

John and Caroline Kennedy on the White House Truman Balcony with their nanny Maude Shaw.

Janet Auchincloss asked her daughter whether she wanted her or the nanny to break the news to the children that their father had died. “I think Miss Shaw should do exactly  what she feels she should do. She will have to judge how much the children have seen or heard or whether they are wondering. . She will just have to use her judgement.”

As Janet Auchincloss conveyed this by phone to Maude Shaw, the nanny was losing her battle to fight back tears. And Caroline Kennedy was standing right there as she took the call. She put John to sleep and began reading to Caroline. Tears filled her eyes. The First Daughter, who would celebrate her sixth birthday within the week, asked what was wrong.

Finally, Shaw told her that her father had gone to Heaven to keep their brother Patrick company, since he was lonely. Now, both of them would be watching over her as guardian angels.

Just months before his third birthday, John Kennedy, nicknamed “John-John” by the press and public but never called that by his friends and family.

John Kennedy was unable to emotionally make the distinction between his father being gone permanently and the frequent and lengthy trips the President had taken away from home. He seemed matter-of-fact about the news.

Despite the house filling with hundreds of people, both familiar and unknown to him, and the crowds and spectacle of the two days of the funeral, he could only be distracted from his excitement about his promised birthday party by little gifts of flags and a model Air Force One airplane.

John Kennedy holds the flag he was given at the Capitol Building.

When he began talking loudly during the U.S. Capitol Building service, John was taken to a Senator’s office and first given a flag. He wanted another one. Asked why, he piped up that it was for his father.

John Kennedy delivers his famous salute to his father’s coffin.

That day of his birthday, November 25, 1963 was also the day he had to be brought out of St. Matthew’s Cathedral during his father’s funeral mass as he talked out loudly, delighted by the echo of his voice there, and famously saluted his father’s coffin when prompted by his mother.

The late President’s siblings Edward Kennedy and Eunice Kennedy Shriver consult while keeping an eye on the room full of world leaders.

Despite her physical and emotional exhaustion, once the funeral and burial were over, and the foreign heads of state had left, his mother tried to make good on her promise.

There were a few of his cousins about in the family quarters, but the laughing, drinking and crying people all over the White House family quarters that evening were almost entirely the grown-up friends of his parents. They all gathered to sing John Kennedy “Happy Birthday,” as he sat in front of a little cake made for him by the kitchen staff.

One month before his birthday, John Kennedy feeding dogs Clipper, Shannon and Wolf, helped by the President’s secretary Evelyn Lincoln, October 24, 1963.

But Jackie Kennedy knew it wasn’t a real birthday to a three-year old boy.

Beginning the next morning and going at an intense rate for the next ten days, the widow’s every waking hour was frantic, forced to make rapid decisions about a life suddenly without a husband. Through the anxiety and the grief, she held fast to her priority of raising her children with as much well-balanced emotional health and normal routine for children their age as she could.

Jackie Kennedy presides over JFK, Jr.’s third birthday party.

She knew what she had to do. She had to host a real birthday party for her son.

Even though it was ten days after his actual birth date and the very same day when, in only a matter of hours, she and the children would leave the White House forever, Jacqueline Kennedy organized a full-on birthday party for a three-year old.

Inviting about a dozen and a half of John’s little friends, on December 5, 1963, in the private family dining room, across the hall from the bedroom that was no longer hers.

John Kennedy Jr. plays on the floor with one of his birthday toys.s.

There was ice cream, the cake the candles and the party favors and the singing.

The party then moved down to the corridor of the East Wing, for games, music and presents to be unwrapped.

Having recently become fixated on the uniformed military figures he’d seen around his father when they visited Arlington National Cemetery together exactly two weeks before his birthday, John Kennedy announced that he wanted a uniform like them. His mother mentioned this to presidential aide Dave Powers. When he unwrapped the largest of his birthday gifts at the party, John Kennedy was ecstatic to see his very own uniform. He immediately begged to be permitted to try it on. One more birthday wish was granted.

And then, standing in the West Sitting Hall with one of the late President’s military aides, the excited three-year old raised his hand to his temple and made all the laughing adults suddenly choke back tears.

John Kennedy, saluting again, in a miniature uniform given him as a birthday gift.

Related articles

• The Kennedy Family’s Last Weekend Together in Home Movies (carlanthonyonline.com)
• Why John F. Kennedy Took His Son to Arlington Cemetery (carlanthonyonline.com)
• Caroline Kennedy: From Princess of Camelot to U.S. ambassador (amanpour.blogs.cnn.com)
• Jackie Kennedy’s Four Dark Days in Many Rare Pictures (carlanthonyonline.com)

Categories: First Daughters, First Families, First Ladies, First Sons, History, Presidents, The Kennedys

Tags: Arlington National Cemetery, Caroline Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, JFK, John F Kennedy, John Kennedy Jr., Kennedy family, The Kennedy Assassination