The year 2023 marks 60 years since the assassination of the nation’s first Catholic President, John F. Kennedy. The Daughters of Charity Provincial Archive contains several references to this day and to the late President.
Most directly, the Daughters of Charity taught at Holy Trinity School in Dallas during that time period, a longtime parish of the Vincentian Fathers, the brother community to the Daughters. Inside the boundaries of that parish was Parkland Hospital, where the President was rushed after the shots rang out. Father Oscar Huber, C.M., the pastor at Holy Trinity, provided the Last Rites for President Kennedy.
A tradition of the Daughters Schools at the time was the Children of Mary groups, several of which sent condolence cards to Jacqueline. Two of Mrs. Kennedy’s polite responses survive, once from Holy Trinity School in Dallas and the other from Utica Catholic Academy in Upstate New York.
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, the President’s gravesite in Arlington Cemetery became a pilgrimage site. When the Superioress General, Mother Suzanne Guillemin, visited the United States from France, the Daughters arranged a trip to the gravesite in the midst of her full travel schedule.
The Daughters maintained relationships with members of the Kennedy family in the subsequent years. Perhaps most notably, Jacqueline hand-wrote a personal thank-you letter to Sister Helen Kelly at Carney Hospital, Boston, in 1969 thanking Sister for favoring her preferred site of the future Kennedy Presidential Library, a controversial site choice at the time. The Daughters also worked with Jean Kennedy Smith, the President’s sister and their brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, in the governance of the Kennedy Child Study Center in New York City.
Although not strictly part of the collection scope, several Sisters over the years have donated their JFK memorabilia to the Archives, reflecting the deep scar that the assassination left across the Daughters, the American Catholic community, and the nation. Even 60 years on, this remains a deep emotional wound in the American psyche.
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div dir=”ltr”>Thank you for posting. I love the picture of Sister Mary Patricia Finneran. God bless her. May she rest
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Good afternoon. First of all, please excuse my English; unfortunately, I don’t speak it and I’m using an automatic translator. I’m writing a book about the assassination of President Kennedy, but focusing on the human side, especially the Secret Service agents. I understand that the president stopped during his drive when he saw a group of children and a Catholic nun on the streets of Dallas. I believe the nun was a Sister of Charity and the children were from Trinity School in Dallas. I’ve seen the photo taken by Sister Fitzgibbon, but I’m not sure if it’s the same nun. I would appreciate it if you could provide me with the details I’m missing. It’s also important for me to know if the children were from the school or if there was more than one nun, and if it was a boys’ or girls’ school, and therefore, whether the children on the sidewalk were boys or girls. Thank you in advance for your help.
Rafael Fernández.
From Spain.
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Hello: Can you please send this in an email to archives@doc.org? We would be happy to send you some information on Trinity School and discuss the full scope of the photographs in that collection.
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