John Cavanaugh Oral History Interview 3/27/1966 Administrative Information Creator: John Cavanaugh Interviewer: Joseph E. O Connor Date of Interview: March 27, 1966 Place of Interview: South Bend, Indiana Length: 21 pages Biographical Note Cavanaugh was a Kennedy family friend who was a Roman Catholic priest and served as vice president (1940-1946), later president (1946-1952) of University of Notre Dame and director of the Notre Dame Foundation (1952-1959). In this interview Cavanaugh discusses his friendship with the Kennedy family; John F. Kennedy (JFK), Robert F. Kennedy, and Edward M. Kennedy s personalities; and JFK s assassination, among other issues. Access Open. Usage Restrictions According to the deed of gift signed September 17, 1969, copyright of these materials has been assigned to United States Government. Users of these materials are advised to determine the copyright status of any document from which they wish to publish. Copyright The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research. If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excesses of fair use, that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law. The copyright law extends its protection to unpublished works from the moment of creation in a tangible form. Direct your questions concerning copyright to the reference staff. Transcript of Oral History Interview These electronic documents were created from transcripts available in the research room of the John F. Kennedy Library. The transcripts were scanned using optical character recognition and the resulting text files were proofread against the original transcripts. Some formatting changes were made. Page numbers are noted where they would have occurred at the bottoms of the pages of the original transcripts. If researchers have any concerns about accuracy, they are encouraged to visit the Library and consult the transcripts and the interview recordings.
Suggested Citation John Cavanaugh, recorded interview by Joseph E. O Connor, March 27, 1966, (page number), John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
John Cavanaugh Table of Contents Page Topic 2 Spending time with the Kennedy family 6 John F., Robert F., and Edward M. Kennedy s personalities and characters 11 John F. Kennedy s (JFK) Catholicism 13 JFK s entry into politics and political views 17 Profiles in Courage 18 JFK s assassination
Oral History Interview with Father John Cavanaugh March 27, 1966 South Bend, Indiana Holy Cross House, Notre Dame By Joseph E. O Connor For the John F. Kennedy Library Father Cavanaugh, what were your first contacts with the Kennedy family? Well, my first contacts with the Kennedy family obviously were through Ambassador Kennedy [Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.] when he was a member of our Board of Lay Trustees here at the university. That would be, I suppose, about twenty years ago, especially when I first knew him and his family, either at their home at Palm Beach or at their home on the Cape, about twenty years ago. It was somewhat earlier than this if you think about my relationships to him. Well, when did you first get to meet him, as early as. He was on our board, and I became president in 1946, which is twenty years ago. And I was vice president for six years prior to this. So that I would imagine it was probably three or four years before 46 that I got to know him. Well, how often did you keep contact with him?
[-1-] After 46, well, the contacts were casual, besides the times we came together twice yearly at our trustees meetings. I went to see the Ambassador and his family on invitation from him maybe for a week or two weeks or more never, I think, more than two weeks at a time. When I was in Florida or up at the Cape, usually at the Cape, it was a matter of four or five days. In Florida it was maybe a week, ten days. That would be practically every year maybe a couple of times. Then I was his guest over in France for three summers, for a month each summer. You must have gotten to know the family pretty well then, at least through the father you must have had quite frequent contacts with the other members of the family? That s right. And I also knew them individually apart from this. I knew Eunice [Eunice Kennedy Shriver], for example, when she and Sarge [R. Sargent Shriver, Jr.] were living in Chicago. For a couple of years we had discussion groups in their home, and they had invited in some friends of theirs, and we would discuss certain problems that we, a week before, would read about. We d all have the same material, and we would get together and discuss it. They were wonderful, interesting evenings. I remember I was going on the same plane one time with Eunice to the Cape. One of the first things I recall was a conversation on the way from Boston. She asked me if I ever played tennis. I play a little tennis, you know. So I said, Oh yes, I play some tennis. And I thought she was a girl that would be capable, as most girls are, of playing tennis so that it would be easy for me, as little as I played it. When we reached their home at the Cape, I happened to have a room overlooking their tennis court. And I looked out there, and I saw her and Bobby [Robert F. Kennedy] the two of them were like professionals warming up. So I never found myself able to get on the tennis court. I was afraid and ashamed to play any of them. The girls were unbelievable in tennis and golf. Two of them one time, Jean [Jean Kennedy Smith] and Pat [Patricia Kennedy Lawford], were guests of a friend of mine at Westchester Country Club. And I called and told him that [-2-] they were going to come and play golf with us, and he arranged this. And he had put them up in the men s section of the Westchester Country Club because Jean and Pat he thought were boys. Then I exploded, They re not boys! When we got to the country club I said, These are girls; don t you have any place for them? My Lord! So he went over, and he arranged for them in the ladies session. Are we going to have to play with a couple of girls? he asked. Well, yes, I told him, and I think you ll enjoy it. I had Pat as partner, and he took Jean. We tossed up, you know, to see who was to hit off first, and I think my partner hit first. She laid it out there two hundred and fifteen yards, right straight down the fairway. (They do this, both of them). Jean and Pat would play about equally. Pat s second shot is just as good. He played about a hundred and five, slicing, hooking, dubbing like me, and he felt sick. You know, when you think that you re much
better than someone, and you begin to look at them, and they can play any game of this type: golf, tennis, any game I ve ever seen. They play pretty near perfectly. Can you give us any general characteristics of the family? Can you generalize about the family at all from what you knew? I ve heard people talk about the family loyalty. I think one of the great advantages of their family to me has always been that they have scrimmaged many times many of the important questions that they discuss outside of their family in public, and therefore, they have the advantage of hearing many other fine minds treat the same problem. This is not like an isolated person, a person brought up alone and is a scholar, who keeps by himself and never enters into any kind of dialogue we re using this word a lot now he has the disadvantage of all of a sudden confronting someone who knows a great deal about this problem too, maybe more than he does. He s never heard this other, or he never has heard an ingenious person confront his attitude or his impression. [-3-] They scrimmage these questions within the family? They scrimmage them, not only within the family but they had always. For the most part their companions were thinking people. They were people whom I would say had extraordinarily good characters. Most of the evenings I was in their homes they would sit around on the floor and talk about questions rather than go to some place, you know, where they would have dinner, or where they would see a show at a night club.(i suppose they went out to dinner, but for the most part when I saw them, at the Cape, they were spending the evening together). They were great for getting people into these dialogues. And this was a tremendous advantage as they grew up, and as they got older and older, a lot of these questions were old hat to them. I think this is one characteristic of them. Another characteristic was that their dinner table was a dialogue. It was on a very high level. If you had humor, this was very much welcomed. It wasn t just an evening in which you threw away your lines all evening. They talked about questions of the day. And usually some or each one of them would quote something, some book, some magazine article, place an idea on the table, and there would be an exchange a lively exchange. Who usually presided over this sort of thing? The father, definitely. Did he really set the pace, or set the tone of the thing? Usually, Although the mother [Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy] is very much underplayed. She also was a very intellectually energetic woman. She
was a very cultured woman. She spoke German and French very well. And she keeps studying French and languages, such as French and German and Spanish. She reads also a good deal and has ideas and is not afraid to express them. After all, she s a daughter of Mayor Fitzgerald [John F. Honey Fitz Fitzgerald], and she has some ideas which help to make this kind of a dialogue. [-4-] I think there is another general feature about them. They are, have right within their very hearts, a sense of loyalty to one another. This doesn t mean that they re disloyal to others, but that they think that real loyalty should begin at home. They go all out for one another. You don t think this sense of competition has interfered with the loyalty of members for each other? This sense of competition with whom? With each other. CAVANAUGH : No, never, so far as I have ever known them. I think they create competition, very strong competition, but it s like the competition of a good organization, say an athletic organization or a close seminar, which through the week or day after day fiercely compete with different members of the group, but on the weekend when they are confronted by some other group in competition, they re very close together. It doesn t create disloyalty. It creates the opposite. I think this you could say about them. This sense of loyalty is tremendous. Their sensed this, their sense of dialogue. From the time I first knew them, it was remarkable to me that they spent so much time with rather uncommonly good people. They would invite their friends to the Cape or over the weekend or to Palm Beach, so that they profited a great deal by the opinions of others, of other people, besides the opinions of their own family. Somehow or other they made their guests just about as free in discussing as they themselves were. Well, you hear often of the Kennedys habit of brain-picking, of inviting others and getting from them the information of value. But I wonder if these instances that you were talking about were brainpicking expeditions, or was there really a give and take between the Kennedys? Brainpicking is not necessarily, well, it s admirable in a way. You re picking my brains now, but there s nothing immoral about this. [-5-] No, not at all.
CAVANAUGH : If I don t have enough sense to let you pick my brain where I want it to be picked or where it should be picked, and I suppose this is the same thing they tried to do. They tried to do this as best they could. But this has a lot to do with the question of whether or not John F. Kennedy or the other members of the Kennedy family were intellectuals or not intellectuals. Really, the word intellectual always throws me. I never knew what it means. In the sense that I think that they were very intelligent, and they had established the environment in which they were going to continue to be more intelligent, they were intellectual. If at the university here somebody goes through and has a high record, a high mark, gets out of here and does nothing more after this but breathe and belch or gets a job and makes a pretty good salary and rarely does anything to continue his development of mind, I know very well and you know that he never will amount to very much. He has to create an environment in which all his life long he s going to continue to progress intellectually according to his ability, even if he never becomes a scholar. And this they had very early in life. In this sense they were intellectual. Now notice this: the men whom President Kennedy picked around him did not embarrass him. McGeorge Bundy or Schlesinger [Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,] or anybody else he simply picked the best man he could think of. McNamara [Robert S. McNamara], I think, is an extraordinarily brainy man, but I think people who were not used to this, who were not used to talking and associating with intelligent people, they d eschew them because they would be afraid these brainy people would show them up. Mediocre men tend to live among the average men who are socially agreeable. In getting a little more specific, could you compare, contrast some of the members of the family with the others? For instance, some [-6-] people are always comparing John Kennedy with Robert Kennedy. I would rather not. I think I would describe each of them and his particular what I thought about each of them, and anybody else can compare them. I d be pleased if you could do that. I think the President was a man of great dignity and reserve power. You felt that he had much he was not expressing. This was true of his sense of humor. He might give you a flash that would reveal much. When he smiled you felt there was a real lot of fun inside of him. In this way I think he created national and international confidence and goodwill and the possibility of eliminating violence as the ultimate solution of domestic and world problems for decent and thinking
men. Maybe the facts that he read widely and suffered much and traveled helped develop him. I thought that he was, rather than philosophical or theological, biographical and sociological. He liked politics, biography, history. And these rather than philosophy or science, the abstract sciences. I suppose he d be existential in this way. But he was very genial. I never saw him create a scene with anybody, even people he would disagree with. He would always find that which they had in common and which made them more pleasant. I never heard anybody else try to make an unpleasant moment with him. He had that gift. He was not negative in this sense. He was rather positive. There was great latent power in the President which he hesitated to use except when necessary. I ve read about Bobby. Because of the nature of his offices, I suppose it is accurate to say he was more juridical than Jack. And I think that many people have interpreted this as meaning that he was more contentious. If he suspected a certain character of being against the law, and it was his business to try to prove that he was guilty of it, he would go after him doggedly. Well, it doesn t make him pleasant to this individual whom he measures against the law or towards the supporters of this individual; and he was fearless of this. I think all of them, if there s a characteristic in general that they share, it s this sort of [-7-] fearlessness. When they made up their mind that something has to be done or something has to be said, well, they go about it. But they don t want to do this just to be obnoxious. I think that Bobby is more relentless. He was also very inquisitive. He had surrounded himself, and I imagine he still is surrounding himself, with people that are intelligent. In his social life he surrounds himself with these people. Say for example, many times they will not be, his best friends, Catholics. They d be non-catholics. They will have discussions of issues that Catholics might see one way and other people see another way. He has a big family. Bobby s very intimate with his family. He spends a great deal of time with them. The girls and boys know how to ride and swim; they have almost all the kinds of animal life that you can have around, that youngsters can grow up with. He tosses them around. Their mother, Ethel [Ethel Skakel Kennedy], is very much the same, a very vigorous character. Ted [Edward M. Kennedy] is the youngest. There is something very affable about him, outgoing. Some people have said that he s the most political of all of them. But I think they re saying about him that he s the most affable, likeable of all of them in this sense that he goes out. This is characteristic of him. But he, again, is working. When he was ill in the hospital with his back, I d call on him two or three times, and you could see the kind of books he was reading. He never let up on this. They were on it all the time. They realize that there is no other way to do it. You can t pick it up and let it go, but you have to make it something you like to do. Before we get on to something else, did you know Joe, Jr. [Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.]? I never did. He had died before I knew them. And also Kathleen [Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish]. She had died. I never knew him or
her, unfortunately. I would have liked to have known them. But I heard a great deal about both of them. Well, the reason I ask this mainly was because people write very often that Robert Kennedy is so much more passionate, so much more emotional, in a sense, than John Kennedy ever was. [-8-] What did you think about John Kennedy, though, as president in the Cuban crisis? Do you think that he was passionate? Not really passionate. Well, I was just going to ask what you mean by this word, passionate? I mean, do you think he was decisive? Certainly decisive. And do you think wasn t this purely he gave the intellectual position he was taking, and you got the impression that he was willing to go all the way on it. Well, in this sense Bob and he are the same. And I would imagine Bob was very close to him at this time. But they re all this way. I think Ted is the same way. And I think most of the girls are the same way. I think if they think that a person can be trusted and is trying to be decent, they re very much with him. But I think if they find that the person is untrustworthy, that they have a way of turning away from him. I was really looking for the sources of this decisiveness. People say sometimes that John Kennedy based his decisions essentially on cool, calm, rational considerations; whereas, Robert Kennedy is much more apt to base a decision on simply a feeling, a feeling of what is right or wrong, a feeling of what is good or bad, or what is favorable or unfavorable or something of this sort? I don t know of any question in which Bob has taken a stand like this. Can you think of any? Well, frankly the instance that you pointed up: the Cuban Missile Crisis. People write about that [-9-] Well, all I know is that the President took a calm stand on this, although he thought that the interests of the United States were very much involved here. Well, I can t think of anything on which Bob, though, has taken an emotional stand that he has not clearly thought out the position that he is
taking. Say for example, this most recent visit of his down in Mississippi. I think this is a terrific, very well thought out visit, and I think all of us should have been down there long ago. I think even his dispute with Hoffa [Jimmy Hoffa], in his opinion, was at the time and is, probably oh, I don t know how much it continues now but I think that when it was continuing that he thought that Hoffa was a man that was dangerous. But it wasn t just because of hatred or anything. He wasn t just chasing him because he didn t like him or something like this, anymore than, say, the President had taken when he was senator a position on the St. Lawrence Waterway simply because of some identification he had with Middle West interests. I think that his idea at that time was that it was best for the country that the St. Lawrence would be developed, even though it might be considered by people in Massachusetts as being offensive to them. All right. In connection, as we were talking earlier about the character of John Kennedy, some people have said before that John Kennedy to a certain degree lacked a moral sense, that he did not, for instance, support the civil rights movement out of a strong moral commitment, but simply for other reasons, for political reasons perhaps, or for very calm rational reasons. They call him an uncommitted man. James MacGregor Burns in a biography that he has written of John Kennedy calls him an uncommitted man, a man who really doesn t have a deep sense of right and wrong or of justice and injustice and this sort of thing. I wonder if you could comment at all on this, if you knew him well enough, or heard the others talk about him enough to know whether this is really so or not? Well, I think that if you are opposed to a man, you d say that he was uncommitted, doing this for bad reasons. Or if you are writing a book and you want to find something that makes it a more [-10-] or less sensational book and nobody s said this before, you say it then, that he s an amoral man. But as far as I ever knew him, he was extremely moral. I would say that John Cogley, in the article that he wrote in Commonweal sometime after the President s death, said that this man who had never been known as a staunch, formal Catholic, in the sense of a man who had gone through Catholic high schools, Catholic colleges, universities, that he had done more as a layman to advance the Catholic cause, the understanding of Catholics, the admiration of Catholics in this country than any man that had ever lived. I think that he had this basic. He said, for example, once, I believe, that if he could not as a president, when he was running for the presidency if anything came up in which he thought that his faith and his politics conflicted, he would quit, and I think this is true of him. I think he would have done it. But why did he do this? I don t think he, when he came into the White House, he didn t have a pathway beaten to the White House door to placate any religion. And I think he was right. It s sometimes been commented that he had not a religious mind at all,
that he may have, in his actions, helped the Catholic Church or helped the position of the Catholic Church, he never did it intentionally, of course. It may have been that by his actions he did so. I wouldn t say his intention was to do this. I think his intention was to be a good president, and accidentally he did it. But did he have a religious mind at all? He wasn t intending to help the Catholic Church by any means I think people agree on this but did religion really enter into his consideration very often? Well, Cardinal Cushing [Richard James Cushing] has a little book out in which he has gone through his pronouncements, his statements, and shows how many times [-11-] he refers, in his presidency, to God and to moral considerations. And this is rather impressive. But what did you think from your personal contacts with him? Did he have a religious mind, or did he have a secular mind? I don t know. I don t know whether you have one. How would I know this? I have been with him many times, and I don t think anybody who thinks can escape the questions that are raised by being moral or immoral. They say that the Ten Commandments are nothing unless you have some theory of life behind them. If you don t believe in God, you might as well throw away the first three of the Ten Commandments. If you don t believe that there s something sacred about your fellow man, about adultery, let s say, if there is no sanctity to marriage, what is adultery? Or if there s no rights of people as to property, what s the use of saying anything about stealing? Or if the character of other people can be cut up at your good pleasure because you are not feeling well, there s no sanctity to other people or your relationships with them. What is there about telling lies about them, talking about them? The whole of the Commandments depend upon a dogmatic system. It becomes larger in the Christian synthesis. The Sermon on the Mount elaborates on the same idea of charity. I think this was right in his feeling. I never saw a man with the extrasensual power that he had. He could sit in a room, in a large room with people, and they would do all the talking this was before he was president and he would have to leave. And maybe in the course of the evening he had smiled at two or three of them a few times, at their opinions, and he would light somebody s cigarette once or twice, then he would get up, and he d excuse himself and say he would have to go. And after he got out, the first thing they would say is, Isn t he wonderful? Now, what he had done when he was there was something much more than intellectual. A cold intellectual person, I think, is an incomplete person, and he always gave the impression that he was a person rather than an
intellect. He wasn t just an intellect running around. He was warm, and he had emotions, and he had understandings of other people, of their difficulties. [-12-] And he seemed to reflect this in his relationships. O CONNOR : not? Okay, we can move on now to another question. The next question I had written down had to do with the decision of John F. Kennedy to enter politics. I wonder if you have any comments to make on that or I am completely unable to say what his decision was. Do you know what it was based on? I wouldn t be able to say anything at all about it. Many people raised the question if his brother, his older brother, had been living, would he have entered politics. I don t know. In the case of Bobby, he s entered even though his older brother is in, and Ted has entered even though the two of them have been in. So I don t know what kind of reasoning they may use in order to say the President would not have entered if Joseph P. [Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.] were alive. I think they all wanted to be of service. I think this has been common to them. They all wanted to dedicate themselves to public service. And I think that they thought the best way you could do it and I would suppose this is pretty near right is by entering politics. I heard him here talk about politics in the two senses: one of the cheap political person, and he didn t want to talk about this, he was telling the students here, but he wanted to talk about politics, the politician in the sense of the statesman, in the sense of the great powers that he possessed, opportunities he possessed, the responsibility to do good, political good, social good, I suppose, economic good. Some of the questions that came up early in his political career: I wonder if we might talk a little bit about those. I had one listed there referring to James Michael Curley. I wonder people have said that John F. Kennedy s attitude toward James Michael Curley was to a certain extent determined by his family s relationship with Curley or attitude toward Curley. I wonder if you had any memories of that or any comments? [-13-] I can t say a thing about it. I wouldn t know what his attitude at all toward Mayor Curley might have been or why he did not sign the petition, if he did not, to free the Mayor from jail. I don t know. I don t know a blessed thing about why he didn t. He may have thought that the man didn t deserve to get out of jail. It s possible it may have been that simple. It may not have been revenge at
all. I suppose it makes excitement if you say it was revenge, family revenge. It went back like the Mafia. I don t know. Well, also, the McCarthy [Joseph R. McCarthy] question is one of the favorite important in his early career. I wonder if you can remember what attitude Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., had toward McCarthy, and whether or not you could comment on the influence that this might have had on John F. Kennedy? I think that many people thought at that time that there were some things that McCarthy was trying to do that were good, but that he was trying to do them badly, and that the things that he was trying to do might have been very necessary to do. It might have been very necessary to do them. This made some people sort of split in their attitude. They were not all against McCarthy, and they were not all for him. I think that there were some people who saw the danger of him, and that maybe they thought there was more danger in supporting him than in opposing him. They were the ones who were anxious to get him out. But I don t know exactly; I don t know. I think the President or as a senator, Senator Kennedy would probably make up his mind himself, and if he didn t take out after him, it was his own decision. I don t think he would be influenced by the fact that somebody, even in his family, told him this. But this is a guess. I just guess this way because I think this is the way he made up his mind. I wonder if Joseph Kennedy had ever talked to you much about McCarthy or whether you could tell what influence he might have had on his son? [-14-] Well, I talked to him about it. My memory is not so uncertain about it; I d just rather not talk about it. All right. There s another question here that perhaps you could comment on: John F. Kennedy s attitude really toward school aid. His attitude toward aid to Catholic schools changed from his early political career to his late political career. He was initially in favor of aid to Catholic schools and wound up being opposed to aid to Catholic schools, and I wonder if you would comment on this. Does this indicate a political sort of mind or. Well, I know my mind has changed on a number of things. I don t think there s anything immoral about it, do you? For example, you can even see now, I have heard people say, there may not be any Catholic higher education. The institutions say you have a law school, you have to have an excellent law school. It isn t very much different in a Catholic university I mean a Catholic law college than it is in any other, or an engineering college or in the research, in the teaching that you re doing in physics or chemistry or biology or in history or in literature,
after all, but it is in an atmosphere that people live in. And this atmosphere could be created if there were land contiguous to a university that a Catholic group or any other group have bought, and they had living accommodations there, and they could have this atmosphere there. They would have then the advantages of having these other, this association with other people, the very best professors and students there were. So that these changes in attitudes towards the parochial school problem I think there are a number of men within the hierarchy and within the priesthood who have had changes of mind as to what s what on this. If there could be, under certain circumstances, a better consideration given to educating the youngsters, boys and girls on the elementary school level, secondary school level, college level, in their religion outside of school, I think that people might take a different view of having Catholics educated within the school, [-15-] within, say, the non-catholic school, whether it s a tax-supported, or whether it is a privately supported school, depending upon has good a school or university it is. So I don t know. I never heard him say, for example. Again this is one of those things. It would be nice to say, more or less, I heard him say this, and I just don t know. I think he was concerned, probably, as president, very much about the amendments and that he d hear people expressing themselves when they were opposed to aid to parochial schools and that this kind of aid would identify the country in an unconstitutional way, against certain of the constitution, and this would impress him. He would say then if this kind of thing was going to take place, going to be that unfair, then it seems to me that he would probably say, I m not for this either. He would say, I was wrong. I think he d think that. Well, another question I had listed there was a decision by John F. Kennedy to vote for the St. Lawrence Seaway. Now you have already commented on this. I wondered if you remembered anything at all that might shed a little bit more light on this particular thing, that might shed light, really, on his character. I think that he had this as one of his ideals, these two responsibilities that you have in being a leader: that means, leading the group that you re representing, and the other one is representing the group. There comes a time when it s better to lead them than to represent them. You have to lead them rather than to represent them, that you re not going to wait to find out what they think and then get out there and get ahead of them and start talking this. There are certain issues, certain times you represent them: if it s a question, I suppose, a neutral question, or if he s convinced that they re right. But in this case I think that he thought that a senator of the United States had this dual obligation of representing his constituents and also of being one of a body that was to think for the wellbeing of the whole country and that he, in this case, thought it was necessary for him to think for the wellbeing of the whole country. So far as I know, I have
[-16-] never heard any evidence that he did this because his father or his family had any interest in the Middle West. That charge has been leveled before. The reason I m asking questions that almost might seem to reflect unfavorably on him is because unfavorable comments have been made, and it s necessary really to get both sides of the story and to get people to talk about it. I simply don t know anything about it. From what I know of him, I never even heard this story about him. But I would think that the reason why he would do a thing like this was because he thought he was asserting himself as a senator in that capacity in which the whole wellbeing of the country depended, although there might be local overtones. Let s skip down to something here now that I know you might have something to say about. The question of Profiles In Courage. When John F. Kennedy was sick, I guess it was 1955, when he wrote that book, some people maintained that he did not really write the book, that it was perhaps Ted Sorensen [Theodore C. Sorensen] or somebody else who wrote the book for him, and I think you were in Palm Beach at the time that he was really writing on that book. I wondered what you d have to say? He brought to me a few times the manuscript. He would ask me to read the manuscript, and he had all the pride of a creator about this. I know that Rockne [Knute Kenneth Rockne], when he was here, used to write very many times, and he was much more concerned about what you thought of his creations as a writer than he was about his creations in football. Jack was very much concerned about this. This is not characteristic of somebody who is showing us something that somebody else wrote, but again, if you re in a court of law and somebody asks you some question they want to know, they say, How do you know that this manuscript you looked at had not been brought in through the back door of the house? I d say, I don t know. [-17-] All I know is that he brought me the manuscript and asked me to read it. He would ask, How did you like it? What did you think of this? Well, I thought this was a good position, if you d say something. I get very definitely the impression that he was doing this as a diversion at the time when he was ill. I think he liked history and read much of it; he liked to read biographies. This is why it was so very natural for him, I think, to write his book with opinions of his own. His history even, I think, was derived from biographies that he had read. He liked existential subjects. He liked history as it is expressed in people and what they did. And, as he liked religion as it is expressed in people, similarly he liked philosophy as it
appears in reality. Sometimes we talk about transubstantiation or something like that. I don t think these things meant much to him. Actions and words did seem real and important. He didn t like abstractions? I don t know that he ever said that he didn t like them, but he just didn t talk about them, at least to me. He was interested in what people are, what they did, and what they re doing, what they re going to do, what our country s going to do, that sort of thing. All right, we can move on to one other thing. I know you had some stories to tell, some interesting experiences just about the time of the assassination, and I wonder if you d talk a little bit about that, what happened, what was your story about that? Well, I suppose I was much the same as millions of other people. I was living at this time, the day of the assassination, in Moreau Seminary. I had, because of blood pressure, to get a great deal of rest. I knew that he was in the South, in Texas, and I was a little bit concerned about it. So I was listening it was after lunch to what was going on, and then over the radio these [-18-] reports started to come in. It appears, it is said, that the President has been shot, but we don t have any confirmation of this. Don t get excited, this sort of thing. Then as the reports clarified I had to take the receiver off my telephone because so many calls were coming in. After it was sure what had happened, I put a call in to the Cape, Cape Cod, to see if his father was all right, and I happened to talk with his nurse who had said that he was and that they were taking care of him according to the prescriptions of his doctor in Boston. I said I would like to come up and see him if I could be of any help. So they said it would be very good if I could come up the next morning. Immediately after this I went over, about five or ten minutes away from here, to the home of another trustee, to Bernard J. Voll s home, because he and Mr. Kennedy had been friends. And it was on a Friday, and we were having tuna fish, and a telephone call came in there, at the home, from the White House asking me if I would be able to come to the White House and offer Mass for the family, or with the family, the next morning, and a few very dear friends, and that if so they would then send me on up to the Cape. I got a private plane through the kindness of Jim Connaughton and Oliver Carmichael here in South Bend and went from South Bend down to Washington on Friday evening. On Saturday morning I went to the White House, and we did offer Mass. They sent me in a plane later Saturday morning up to the Cape, and I was with the President and Mrs. Kennedy... You don t mean the President? You were with the President at this time?
No, the President was dead. Yes, but you said the President. No, I meant with the Ambassador up at the Cape, the Ambassador and Mrs. Kennedy and Eunice and, I believe, with Senator Ed and Miss Ann Gargan. This was Saturday morning. I stayed there Saturday and Sunday and Monday, until after the funeral. I left on Tuesday. [-19-] Some of these things you re never too sure about, but I remembered one incident I thought was extraordinary. I remembered a few things. One thing was that as a group, whenever they, the Kennedy family, were together as a group there was no indication whatsoever of their sorrow, but when one or another might be with you alone there might be quite a different situation. I remembered on Monday after Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy, came back from Washington, she told me something that had taken place that afternoon after the funeral in the White House. She was so impressed by Jackie [Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy] because she said that she and Jackie were together when Caroline [Caroline Bouvier Kennedy] came into the Oval Room, I believe Caroline asked, Mommy, did they love Daddy? And her mother answered, Yes, they did love Daddy. And Caroline followed, No, Mommy, they couldn t have loved Daddy. If they had loved him they wouldn t have done what they did to him. Then Caroline asked, Mommy, do they love you? with evident implications in the question. And her mother returned, Well, I think so, at least some. And the dead President s wife added: Maybe I should have told you that not everybody loved Daddy; many more loved Daddy than loved me. But I think some of them love me, too. This was still loaded with difficulties for the child. But the mother helped her: Well, Caroline, they didn t all love Christ. And when she said this, Caroline seemed to be very much satisfied and went out. Mrs. Kennedy was so much in admiration of Jackie for her thoughtfulness and her poise under a most difficult conversation at a time of supreme trial, on a day like this, having gone through what she had to bear since the unforgettable Friday. They all, I think all of the Kennedys have a great deep feeling for one another. It s so deep that they do not care much about sharing it with anybody else. They all understand it. They take for granted that the others will understand it. So they re not demonstrative with one another. In fact, they withhold any kind of demonstration because they re afraid, I think, of it getting out of hand. But they never try to explain to you anything about it because it is to be taken for granted. I remember that the father looked at television from time to time, and he had [-20-] been advised not to continue to look at it too much while the funeral service was going on. So he would interrupt it. I thought he had great self control.
Did he really understand, do you think, all of what was going on? Oh yes, I have no doubt about this, as far as I m concerned. These inferences that you make from people are very, very difficult. [END OF INTERVIEW] [-21-]
John Cavanaugh Oral History Transcript Name Index B Bundy, McGeorge, 6 Burns, James MacGregor, 10 C Carmichael, Oliver, 19 Cavendish, Kathleen Kennedy, 8 Cogley, John, 11 Connaughton, Jim, 19 Curley, James Michael, 13, 14 Cushing, Richard James, 11 F Fitzgerald, John F. Honey Fitz, 4 G Gargan, Ann, 19 Gargan, Ed, 19 M McCarthy, Joseph R., 14 McNamara, Robert S., 6 R Rockne, Knute Kenneth, 17 S Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 6 Shiver, Eunice Kennedy, 2, 19 Shriver, R. Sargent, Jr., 2 Smith, Jean Kennedy, 2, 3 Sorensen, Theodore C., 17 V Voll, Bernard J., 19 H Hoffa, Jimmy, 10 K Kennedy, Caroline Bouvier, 20 Kennedy, Edward M., 8, 9, 13 Kennedy, Ethel Skakel, 8 Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier, 20 Kennedy, John F., 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20 Kennedy, Joseph P., Jr., 8, 13 Kennedy, Joseph P., Sr., 1, 2, 4, 14, 17, 19, 20 Kennedy, Robert F., 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13 Kennedy, Rose Fitzgerald, 4, 18, 20 L Lawford, Patricia Kennedy, 2, 3