EXTRACT FOR
Good Was The Day
(Dorothy Davies)
Good Was The
Day
Evensong, From Cromwell and
Other Poems by John Drinkwater. David Nutt, 1913 Come, let us tell it over, Each to each by the fireside, How that earth has been a swift adventure for
us, And the watches of the day as a gay song and
a right song, And now the traveller has found a bed, And the sheep crowd under the thorn. Good was the day and our travelling, And now there is evensong to sing. Night, and along the valleys Watch the eyes of the homesteads. The dark hills are very still and still are the stars, Patiently under the ploughlands the wheat
moves and the barley, The secret hour of love is upon the sky, And our thought in praise is aflame. Sing evensong as well we may For our travel upon this Sabbath day. Earth, we have known you truly, Heard your mutable music, Have been your lovers and felt the savour of
you, And you have quickened in us the blood’s fire
and the heart’s fire, We have wooed and striven with you and made
you ours By the strength sprung out of your loins. Lift the latch on its twisted thong, And an end be made of our evensong. From Immortality by John Drinkwater Olton Pools, Sidgwick and Jackson Ltd.,1917 There in the midst of all these
words shall be Our names, our ghosts, our immortality. I don't think anyone
should write their autobiography until after they're dead. Samuel Goldwyn Dedication
Jack Kennedy would like to dedicate his book
first to his wife Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, second to all members of his
family, past and present and third to all his true friends. They know who they are. He would like to acknowledge the tremendous
feat achieved by Barack Obama, fighting all the odds to become the first
African-American President. Jack wishes
him well in his term of office and his future life. He also sends his sincere and heartfelt thanks
and love to Dorothy for channelling his book. Dorothy wishes to dedicate this book to the
memory of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 29th May 1917 – 22nd
November 1963, in recognition of the service he gave his country and the
world. And to Dorothy Rose Hansen, late of Richland,
Washington, USA. We exchanged letters
for forty-four years, never meeting but having the unique and wonderful
friendship only letter writing can produce, for in the written word is the
honesty that builds a true relationship.
She is still sadly missed. Note:
This book was started in 2015, during President Barack Obama’s second term of
office. The work stopped and the book was allowed to
mature quietly for two years. This will explain the references to President
Obama in the opening chapters. Preliminary Days
When John Fitzgerald Kennedy began to think about his
life story. I sat for some time, wondering how to convey
to people what it meant to be John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President
of the United States of America. I considered the
position from all angles, working out my feelings and choosing my words. It seemed to take an age, but finally I began
to speak to the channel who would translate those words into the computer. To be President is a privilege and an honour
granted to very few people and whilst it can be said to be the choice of the
people, the truth is you have to be someone quite
outstanding to make your way through the preliminaries and final stages of what
is an extremely arduous period of campaigning. There are times when you wish
you did not have to make another speech, to spend time shaking hands, smiling
even though your face is aching, discussing or even arguing points of policy
with your opponents without losing your temper, wondering if you would ever again
live without the glare of spotlights, the ever-present cameras photographing
your every expression, capturing with microphones your every word, and then you
realise the only thing that is truly yours is your mind. When you accept that
your thoughts are inviolate, sacred and very secret, all else becomes
bearable. But not until that realisation
dawns and sometimes it is a long time coming. To be President is to
have the ultimate in power. In history there have been powerful monarchs who
took part in battles, caused the deaths of thousands of people and were
responsible for executions at all levels: to them this must have seemed to be
the ultimate in power. The President of the United States goes much further
than that. For a start the population of the United States is entirely his
responsibility. How many millions is that? He has the key which controls the
launch of nuclear weapons. How incredible is that? In his hands, literally, is
the future of the planet. He has the power to invade another country if he
deems it right to do so, to send American troops to their death in the name of
liberty. How incredible is that! This is power on a
level, or should that be, at a height few people can appreciate and even fewer actually attain. It
is heady, it is an aphrodisiac; it is – beyond words. To hear the words 'Mr
President’ for the first time brings a thrill that cannot be replicated by any
other act. I know this for I tried
everything possible to put that thrill back into my life, without success. I
was concerned that it would become commonplace and I didn’t want that. I didn’t
want to get to the point when I would wake in the morning and think 'it’s just
another day.’ I believe the office of President is of such magnitude it is
impossible to describe unless you have lived it. To walk through the
White House, to sit at the presidential desk, to know telephones link you to
the other incredibly powerful people in this world and all you have to do is to pick up the receiver and speak with them,
gives you a sense of unbelievable supremacy. I realise I am labouring the point
but how else can I get the reader to understand just how it felt to hold that
position? Even when the popularity ratings
went down, as they always do after a successful election, it doesn't matter
because whoever is elected has the power for at least four years, provided
death or illness or insanity does not intervene. Any or all of them could happen... the job is
that pressurised! If at the end of four years you have to
surrender the White House to someone else, that doesn’t matter, either. You
will always be remembered as a President of the United States. What it means in
practice is: that person can never go back to what they once thought of as
'normal’ life. Everything they do is
governed by the fact of once being President. Wherever they go, whatever sport
they take up, they are an ex-President, reported, photographed, consulted,
invited, guarded, protected and wealthy.
Unless, of course,
they were ‘fortunate’ enough to be assassinated and so go out with all the
glory that an assassination bestows. I mused on the
question, was I sad when it ended so abruptly? In truth I had to say
‘No’. There was much I wanted to do which had to be left to someone else to
carry on, but no, I was not sad when it was over - for one very big reason. On the 23rd June 2010 I made a momentous
decision. I decided to tell the world why I was not sad that my life ended on
that November day in Dallas. Up to and including 22nd June 2010 I had held firm
to my decision not to speak of it. In fact, my channel had been working on
another book; that author kindly stepped aside to allow me to dictate the words so a record could be made of the decision. The fact was, if I
had planned my own assassination, if I had paid the assassin, it could not have
been better timing for the Kennedy family, or for the United States. Only now,
as the 50th anniversary of my assassination draws near, the secret that had bothered
me; almost haunted me I might say, for fifty years, can be revealed so that I can
at last find a degree of peace. Contemplative Days
When time was spent working out how to tell the story of
John Fitzgerald Kennedy I looked at the blank screen, at my channel
patiently waiting and all but panicked. Where did I start, truthfully? With the
Kennedy clan which made us all what we were? When I first realised I was a man
who adored women? What was it the
readers would really like to know about me?
The prologue was over; the first thoughts were in place. Now came the really hard
part. I left my channel’s
office, returned to my home and began to pace, glancing at the walls where
family photos were displayed to remind me of what the Kennedys once were, a
powerful, influential and very rich family, tainted in some areas, venerated in
others. I thought of those who praised the
family and me, then of those who hated the family and me; idly wondering who,
out of all those who carried hate, felt the emotion fiercely enough to arrange
my death. Was Oswald the one who fired
the killing shot? Films I have seen
since my death say no. Conspiracy
theories abounded but they always do when someone high profile is killed. In
this case, though, it seems they were very likely right. To my mind, the killer has not been
found. As with all good paid assassins, and
I am one hundred per cent sure the gunman was a professional, he got clean away
and someone else took the rap. Someone
else died; someone who was probably innocent of killing me. But who can prove anything? That’s another matter entirely. Can’t prove a thing from this side of the
divide, I thought. What I can do,
though, is write about the events that led up to that single shot moment. The one that killed me. Hmm, single shot
moment. Nearly a title for a thriller there, if I had been so inclined. No, I
had enough to do putting my life story together and sorting out some of the
rubbish that has appeared in print over the last fifty years. So much has been written about me, some of it true,
some false, some halfway between the two and some so outrageous I wonder where
the writers got it from, asking myself what sort of distorted imagination came
up with the ‘facts’ presented in written form for people to read. There is a problem with that, when people see
something in print, they tend to believe it even if it is so outrageous and
stupid it can’t possibly be true. Ah,
they would say, it could be true... How much of what has
been written about the Kennedys, how much of what continues to be written about
Jack Kennedy and the family came from minds which are free of bias? How many people
continue, even after all this time, to be jealous of what the Kennedys
achieved? And as for my errors, my misjudgements... no man is perfect, whether
he be the President of the United States or a street cleaner. Everyone comes
with guilts, sins, imperfections, obsessions, fears, hates, loves and, most of
all, that driving ambition which pushes people on even when the odds are
stacked against them. Was the jealousy
because of their own inadequacies, the realisation that they did not have the
drive, the determination, to push ahead and change their lives and those of
their fellow citizens? Who knows? But it was there, and it was real. Back to my life
story. I lived a very full, varied and
complicated life. I need to try and
explain it from my perspective, rather than from letters, conversations, film
clips and all the other sources a biographer has. It has to be
feelings; it has to be different, why else would anyone want to read it? I have to admit to
my channel that this preamble is going on somewhat and that’s because I have still
to pin down the point at which I wish to start this story. The trouble is - I’m
not sure how much the reader will want to know, or more importantly, how much I’m
able to tell them. In truth, I know they will want to know it all and some things
can’t be revealed, even now. It is one thing
for an author to say, "I’m going to be honest with you" and quite
another to be as openly honest as the reader would hope for. Of necessity there
are things that each author would not be able to speak of, whether that be
political, religious, or quite simply being incapable of speaking of it. That is
only human. So, where to begin? At the start, where
else? Oh yes, at the start,
but before then, I realise I still have things I want to say. |