Interview with historian Ellen Fitzpatrick about “Letters To Jackie”

[Cliff Roles]

Here's the interview link - click to listen: Letters to Jackie

Letters to Jackie

It is perhaps the most memorable event of the twentieth century, a moment that left a family and a nation mourning, one that many Americans recall as their first historical memory-the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Within seven weeks of the President’s death, Jacqueline Kennedy received more than 800,000 condolence letters. Two years later, the volume of correspondence would exceed 1.5 million letters. For the
next forty-six years, the letters would remain essentially untouched.

Now historian Ellen Fitzpatrick has selected approximately 250 of these letters for inclusion in Letters to Jackie, a remarkable human record that perfectly preserves the heart-wrenching
grief and soul searching of the nation in a time of crisis. Capturing
the extraordinary eloquence of so-called ordinary Americans across
generations, regions, race, political leanings, and religion-in
messages written on elegant stationery, scraps of paper, in pencil,
type, ink smudged by tears, and in barely legible handwriting-the
letters capture what John F. Kennedy meant to the country, and how his
death for some divided American history into Before and After.

In Letters to Jackie, Fitzpatrick allows Americans to write their own history of these tumultuous times. “The coffin was very small,” as one sixteen-year-old girl observed, “to contain so much of
so many Americans.” In reflecting on their sense of loss, their fears,
and their striving, the authors of these letters wrote an American elegy
as poignant and as compelling as their shattered and cherished dreams.

About Ellen Fitzpatrick

Ellen Fitzgerald – Author of Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation
Ellen Fitzpatrick, a professor and scholar specializing in modern
American political and intellectual history, is the author and editor of
six books and has appeared regularly on PBS’s The News Hour with Jim
Lehrer. She has been interviewed as an expert on modern American
political history by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the
Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post,
CBS’s Face the Nation, and National Public Radio. The Carpenter
Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire, where she has
been recognized for Excellence in Public Service, Fitzpatrick lives in
Newton, Massachusetts.