EXTRACT FOR
Good Was The Day
(Author Unknown)

Good Was The Day



Evensong,

From Cromwell and Other Poems by John Drinkwater.

David Nutt, 1913



Come, let us tell it over,

Each to each by the fireside,

How that earth has been a swift adventure for us,

And the watches of the day as a gay song and a right song,

And now the traveller has found a bed,

And the sheep crowd under the thorn.



Good was the day and our travelling,

And now there is evensong to sing.



Night, and along the valleys

Watch the eyes of the homesteads.

The dark hills are very still and still are the stars,

Patiently under the ploughlands the wheat moves and the barley,

The secret hour of love is upon the sky,

And our thought in praise is aflame.



Sing evensong as well we may

For our travel upon this Sabbath day.



Earth, we have known you truly,

Heard your mutable music,

Have been your lovers and felt the savour of you,

And you have quickened in us the blood's fire and the heart's fire,

We have wooed and striven with you and made you ours

By the strength sprung out of your loins.



Lift the latch on its twisted thong,

And an end be made of our evensong.





From Immortality by John Drinkwater

Olton Pools, Sidgwick and Jackson Ltd.,1917



There in the midst of all these words shall be

Our names, our ghosts, our immortality.





I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.

Samuel Goldwyn



Dedication



Jack Kennedy would like to dedicate his book first to his wife Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, second to all members of his family, past and present and third to all his true friends.  They know who they are.  



He would like to acknowledge the tremendous feat achieved by Barack Obama, fighting all the odds to become the first African-American President.  Jack wishes him well in his term of office and his future life.  He also sends his sincere and heartfelt thanks and love to Dorothy for channelling his book.  



Dorothy wishes to dedicate this book to the memory of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 29th May 1917 ??" 22nd November 1963, in recognition of the service he gave his country and the world.  



And to Dorothy Rose Hansen, late of Richland, Washington, USA.  We exchanged letters for forty-four years, never meeting but having the unique and wonderful friendship only letter writing can produce, for in the written word is the honesty that builds a true relationship.  She is still sadly missed. 



Note: This book was started in 2015, during President Barack Obama's second term of office. The work stopped and the book was allowed to mature quietly for two years. This will explain the references to President Obama in the opening chapters.





Preliminary Days

When John Fitzgerald Kennedy began to think about his life story.

    

I sat for some time, wondering how to convey to people what it meant to be John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States of America.  

    I considered the position from all angles, working out my feelings and choosing my words.  It seemed to take an age, but finally I began to speak to the channel who would translate those words into the computer.

    

To be President is a privilege and an honour granted to very few people and whilst it can be said to be the choice of the people, the truth is you have to be someone quite outstanding to make your way through the preliminaries and final stages of what is an extremely arduous period of campaigning. There are times when you wish you did not have to make another speech, to spend time shaking hands, smiling even though your face is aching, discussing or even arguing points of policy with your opponents without losing your temper, wondering if you would ever again live without the glare of spotlights, the ever-present cameras photographing your every expression, capturing with microphones your every word, and then you realise the only thing that is truly yours is your mind. When you accept that your thoughts are inviolate, sacred and very secret, all else becomes bearable.  But not until that realisation dawns and sometimes it is a long time coming.

    To be President is to have the ultimate in power. In history there have been powerful monarchs who took part in battles, caused the deaths of thousands of people and were responsible for executions at all levels: to them this must have seemed to be the ultimate in power. The President of the United States goes much further than that. For a start the population of the United States is entirely his responsibility. How many millions is that? He has the key which controls the launch of nuclear weapons. How incredible is that? In his hands, literally, is the future of the planet. He has the power to invade another country if he deems it right to do so, to send American troops to their death in the name of liberty. How incredible is that!

    This is power on a level, or should that be, at a height few people can appreciate and even fewer actually attain.  It is heady, it is an aphrodisiac; it is ??" beyond words.

    To hear the words 'Mr President' for the first time brings a thrill that cannot be replicated by any other act.  I know this for I tried everything possible to put that thrill back into my life, without success. I was concerned that it would become commonplace and I didn't want that. I didn't want to get to the point when I would wake in the morning and think 'it's just another day.' I believe the office of President is of such magnitude it is impossible to describe unless you have lived it. 

    To walk through the White House, to sit at the presidential desk, to know telephones link you to the other incredibly powerful people in this world and all you have to do is to pick up the receiver and speak with them, gives you a sense of unbelievable supremacy. I realise I am labouring the point but how else can I get the reader to understand just how it felt to hold that position?  Even when the popularity ratings went down, as they always do after a successful election, it doesn't matter because whoever is elected has the power for at least four years, provided death or illness or insanity does not intervene.  Any or all of them could happen... the job is that pressurised! If at the end of four years you have to surrender the White House to someone else, that doesn't matter, either. You will always be remembered as a President of the United States. 

    What it means in practice is: that person can never go back to what they once thought of as 'normal' life.  Everything they do is governed by the fact of once being President. Wherever they go, whatever sport they take up, they are an ex-President, reported, photographed, consulted, invited, guarded, protected and wealthy.  

    Unless, of course, they were 'fortunate' enough to be assassinated and so go out with all the glory that an assassination bestows.

    I mused on the question, was I sad when it ended so abruptly?

    In truth I had to say 'No'. There was much I wanted to do which had to be left to someone else to carry on, but no, I was not sad when it was over - for one very big reason.

    

On the 23rd June 2010 I made a momentous decision. I decided to tell the world why I was not sad that my life ended on that November day in Dallas. Up to and including 22nd June 2010 I had held firm to my decision not to speak of it. In fact, my channel had been working on another book; that author kindly stepped aside to allow me to dictate the words so a record could be made of the decision. 

    The fact was, if I had planned my own assassination, if I had paid the assassin, it could not have been better timing for the Kennedy family, or for the United States. Only now, as the 50th anniversary of my assassination draws near, the secret that had bothered me; almost haunted me I might say, for fifty years, can be revealed so that I can at last find a degree of peace.



Contemplative Days

When time was spent working out how to tell the story of John Fitzgerald Kennedy

    

I looked at the blank screen, at my channel patiently waiting and all but panicked. Where did I start, truthfully? With the Kennedy clan which made us all what we were? When I first realised I was a man who adored women?  What was it the readers would really like to know about me?  The prologue was over; the first thoughts were in place.  Now came the really hard part.

    I left my channel's office, returned to my home and began to pace, glancing at the walls where family photos were displayed to remind me of what the Kennedys once were, a powerful, influential and very rich family, tainted in some areas, venerated in others.  I thought of those who praised the family and me, then of those who hated the family and me; idly wondering who, out of all those who carried hate, felt the emotion fiercely enough to arrange my death.  Was Oswald the one who fired the killing shot?  Films I have seen since my death say no.  Conspiracy theories abounded but they always do when someone high profile is killed. In this case, though, it seems they were very likely right.  To my mind, the killer has not been found.  As with all good paid assassins, and I am one hundred per cent sure the gunman was a professional, he got clean away and someone else took the rap.  Someone else died; someone who was probably innocent of killing me.  But who can prove anything?  That's another matter entirely.  Can't prove a thing from this side of the divide, I thought.  What I can do, though, is write about the events that led up to that single shot moment.  The one that killed me.

    Hmm, single shot moment. Nearly a title for a thriller there, if I had been so inclined. No, I had enough to do putting my life story together and sorting out some of the rubbish that has appeared in print over the last fifty years.  So much has been written about me, some of it true, some false, some halfway between the two and some so outrageous I wonder where the writers got it from, asking myself what sort of distorted imagination came up with the 'facts' presented in written form for people to read.  There is a problem with that, when people see something in print, they tend to believe it even if it is so outrageous and stupid it can't possibly be true.  Ah, they would say, it could be true... 

    How much of what has been written about the Kennedys, how much of what continues to be written about Jack Kennedy and the family came from minds which are free of bias? How many people continue, even after all this time, to be jealous of what the Kennedys achieved? And as for my errors, my misjudgements... no man is perfect, whether he be the President of the United States or a street cleaner. Everyone comes with guilts, sins, imperfections, obsessions, fears, hates, loves and, most of all, that driving ambition which pushes people on even when the odds are stacked against them.  Was the jealousy because of their own inadequacies, the realisation that they did not have the drive, the determination, to push ahead and change their lives and those of their fellow citizens? Who knows? But it was there, and it was real.

    Back to my life story.  I lived a very full, varied and complicated life.  I need to try and explain it from my perspective, rather than from letters, conversations, film clips and all the other sources a biographer has.  It has to be feelings; it has to be different, why else would anyone want to read it?

    

I have to admit to my channel that this preamble is going on somewhat and that's because I have still to pin down the point at which I wish to start this story. 

    The trouble is - I'm not sure how much the reader will want to know, or more importantly, how much I'm able to tell them. In truth, I know they will want to know it all and some things can't be revealed, even now.  It is one thing for an author to say, "I'm going to be honest with you" and quite another to be as openly honest as the reader would hope for. Of necessity there are things that each author would not be able to speak of, whether that be political, religious, or quite simply being incapable of speaking of it. That is only human.  So, where to begin?

    At the start, where else?

    Oh yes, at the start, but before then, I realise I still have things I want to say.