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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