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John F. Kennedy, Just Weeks after His Older Brother's Tragic Death, Seeks Help on a Tribute Volume that Would Become "As We Remember Joe"
John F. Kennedy, Just Weeks after His Older Brother's Tragic Death, Seeks Help on a Tribute Volume that Would Become "As We Remember Joe"
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Kennedy John


John F. Kennedy, Just Weeks after His Older Brother’s Tragic Death, Seeks Help on a Tribute Volume that Would Become "As We Remember Joe"

 

John F. Kennedy writes to his and his brother’s friend and roommate Richard Flood for assistance as he seeks to memorialize his brother through a series of pen portraits by those who knew him. The result was As We Remember Joe, a small memorial book that Jack hoped to present to his distraught parents at Christmas.

 

JOHN F. KENNEDY, Typed Letter Signed, to Richard Flood, October 6, 1944, Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. 1 p., 7.25" x 10.5". Expected folds; very good.

 

Complete Transcript

hyannisport

massachusetts

                                                                        October 6, 1944

Dear Dick:

            For some time I have wanted to do something to perpetuate Joe’s memory among his immediate family and his close friends. I thought, perhaps, of getting together some essays, written by those who knew him well, which together with photographs could be placed in book form. It would be primarily as a gift for my mother and father and for anyone else who wished it.

            As I know you were always a great friend of Joe’s and that he held you in very high regard, I was wondering if you would care to help out by writing one.

            I would suggest that the essay could be any length up to five hundred words and that perhaps you could include in this what to you was Joe’s outstanding characteristic and perhaps an anecdote illustrating this on [or] some other side of his character.

            Nothing is being said to my father or mother, as I should like to see it all together and finished before they are told about it.

            Warmest regards.

                                                                        Very sincerely,

                                                                        Jack

Ensign Richard Flood / Gallatin Hall B-24

N.S. C.S. / Cambridge, Massachusetts

[Handwritten postscript:] If you have any ideas on this, give me a call. Best / Jack

Did Max come through?

 

Historical Background

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was the oldest son of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, and both he and his father expected him one day to be President of the United States. He graduated from Harvard College in 1938 and attended Harvard Law School but left before finishing to enlist in the Naval Reserve. His tragic death on a dangerous mission on August 12, 1944, shocked the Kennedy family.

 

Within weeks of his older brother’s death, and still recovering from his own back surgery after the destruction of his PT 109 boat more than a year earlier, Jack Kennedy writes to his and Joe’s friend Dick Flood, who was then at the U.S. Navy Supply School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When Flood first heard the news of Joe’s death, he wrote to Jack: “You have lost a brother, and I have lost my closest friend.”

 

Kennedy edited a group of twenty letters or remembrances that appeared in As We Remember Joe in 1945, privately printed by the University Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Richard Flood wrote one of the essays. In his essay, Flood related the story of the Harvard freshmen’s annual smoker, which he had organized. Joe Kennedy had organized a very successful one the year before, and he rescued Flood when things began to go wrong. Of Joe’s many attributes, Flood focused on “his innate understanding of human nature.” “In his passing,” Flood concluded, “I lost one of the rarest of life’s blessings, a true friend. His community, his state, and his country lost one of its brightest and most promising sons.”

 

Others who contributed essays included Robert Downes, Joe’s football teammate and roommate at Harvard; Dr. Payson Wild Jr. (1907-1998), Joe’s advisor and a professor of government at Harvard; Commander James Reedy, U.S.N. (1910-1999), a graduate of the Naval Academy and the commanding officer of Squadron VB110, who allowed Joe to volunteer for his final mission; Professor Harold J. Laski (1893-1950), who was Joe’s professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1933-34; Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy Cavendish (1920-1948), one of Joe’s sisters, whose wedding he attended in London on May 9, 1944, and whose new husband was killed on September 9, 1944, less than a month after Joe’s death; Joseph F. Timilty (1894-1980), Joe’s friend and the Boston Police Commissioner from 1936 to 1943; Grandpa (John Francis Fitzgerald) (1863-1950), mayor of Boston from 1906 to 1908 and from 1910 to 1914, and of whose nineteen grandchildren Joe was the oldest; and Arthur Krock (1886-1974), Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist and chief of the Washington Bureau of the New York Times.

 

In the Foreword, Kennedy wrote, “My only hesitancy in collecting these essays was that I doubted that Joe, if he had had a voice in it, would have approved. But I have disagreed with him before, so here they are.”

 

Although Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. found the book so sad he could only read one brief essay at a time, he told Arthur Krock that it was “a splendid piece of work” and was grateful to Jack for producing it.

 

Richard R. Flood (1914-1969) was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard College in 1939 and from its law school in 1946 as of 1942. Flood served as a lieutenant in the Navy during World War II. He received a master’s degree from the Harvard Business School cum laude in 1947. Admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1948, he established a practice in Lowell, Massachusetts, and was a partner in the firm of Flood, Valentine, and Foisy until his death.

 

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (1915-1944) was born in Massachusetts, the oldest of nine children born to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.  He graduated from the Choate School in Connecticut in 1933 and from Harvard College in 1938. While at Harvard, Kennedy participated in football, rugby, and crew and served on the student council. He then spent a year studying at the London School of Economics before enrolling in Harvard Law School. Both he and his father had aspirations that Joseph Jr. would become President of the United States, and he planned to run for Congress in 1946. Kennedy left before his final year at Harvard Law School to enlist in the U.S. Naval Reserve on June 24, 1941. He trained as an aviator and received his commission as an ensign in May 1942. In 1943-1944, he completed twenty-five combat missions from Great Britain. He then volunteered for an Operation Aphrodite mission in which two crew members took off in a bomber, activated a remote-control system, and parachuted from the aircraft. A ground crew then navigated the unmanned, explosive-laden bomber to crash into a target. In the Navy’s first Aphrodite mission, on August 12, 1944, Kennedy and his co-pilot took off in a B-24 bomber, set the controls, and armed the explosive package, which detonated prematurely over southeastern England, killing Kennedy and his co-pilot instantly. Kennedy received the Navy Cross posthumously.

 

 


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