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An Assassination Diary:    page 2

It is ironic that Kennedy and Connally should be inextricably linked in history. Though Connally served as JFK's Navy secretary, the Texan had spread (correct) allegations about Kennedy's secret Addison's disease while campaigning for Lyndon Johnson at the 1960 Democratic National Convention. In 1963 Connally worried that the liberal New Frontier might hurt his gubernatorial re-election campaign. Jacqueline Kennedy disliked the Texas governor, whom she privately considered self-satisfied and too handsome for his own good.

In her diary and an interview for NEWSWEEK, Mrs. Connally offered other sidelights on the assassination. When JFK, whose liberalism was playing badly in Lone Star country, first proposed four fund-raising events in the state, the president got a warning from the governor: angry Texans, Connally said, would complain Kennedy was trying to "financially rape the state." Connally told Nellie that when he insisted Kennedy bring Jackie on the trip, the president did not enjoy being told that his wife's presence would be essential to win votes in Texas. In the end, however, the governor felt that JFK would "rope and tie" her to come. The trip was set for Nov. 21 and 22, 1963, so that the Kennedys could be back in Washington for John Jr.'s third-birthday party--the day that turned out to be the day of President Kennedy's funeral.

The shots echoed long after that bloody Friday in Dallas. Mrs. Connally recalls that their old friend LBJ quizzed the governor at length about what it was like to get shot. In later years the assassination was never far from the Connallys' minds--the governor recoiled from sounds resembling gunfire; to this day, his wife blanches when she spots an automobile interior of the same navy blue as that of Kennedy's limousine.

Invited to JFK's funeral, Mrs. Connally refused to leave her husband's bedside at Parkland Hospital, where security agents had shrouded his windows with steel covers. Instead she sent their 17-year-old son John III with a letter to give to Mrs. Kennedy. In Dallas a week later, a courier handed the governor's wife a handwritten note from Jacqueline on pale blue White House stationery. In the letter, never published before now, the widow implores Nellie to never forget JFK: "Do you know, the only thing I can think of, if Jack had to die that way, in a car in a motorcade, I'm glad he did it in the company of a man like John Connally ... And the other thing I'm glad about is that on that awful ride to the hospital we were two women who really loved their husbands, with those two brave men." It was a tragic ride into history.

Beschloss is the author, most recently, of "Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964."

Newsweek, November 23, 1998

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