Documents Offer Glimpse of Rose Kennedy
By KEN MAGUIRE, AP

(Sept. 28) - Rose Kennedy, for one brief shining moment the most powerful  
mother in America, went over John F. Kennedy's head in 1962 to write directly to 
 Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev. For that, she got a playful scolding from 
her  son.

She spunkily wrote a letter asking the Russian leader to autograph  pictures 
of his meeting with her son, and Khrushchev complied.

"Would you be sure to let me know in the future any contacts you have with  
heads of state ..." John Kennedy wrote to his mother on White House stationery  
on Nov. 3, 1962, just days after the Cuban missile crisis ended. "Requests of 
 this nature are subject to interpretations and therefore I would like to 
have  you clear them before they are sent."

Unfazed, Rose Kennedy wrote back: "Dear Jack: I am so glad you warned me  
about contacting heads of state as I was just about to write to  Castro."

The exchange was contained in Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy's papers -- 250 boxes  
of letters, photographs, notes -- that became available to the public for the  
first time Thursday at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in  
Boston.
The collection sheds light on a woman best known as the daughter of a  mayor, 
wife of an ambassador, and mother of sons who became president, attorney  
general and senator in a family that has known intense grief as well as enormous  
success.

"She's a hot ticket," said Megan Desnoyers, archivist for family  collections 
at the library. "I don't think people know much about Rose  Kennedy."

The eldest daughter of Boston Mayor John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, who  
also was a congressman, Rose Fitzgerald married Joseph Kennedy. Their 1914  
Wedding Log, which is part of the collection, shows that they traveled to  
Philadelphia on their honeymoon to watch the Boston Braves play in a World  Series 
game at Shibe Park.
Desnoyers describes Rose Kennedy as a "note taker  and a keeper." She lived 
to be 104, dying in 1995.

As a teenager she became comfortable on the campaign trail with her father,  
said James Wagner, exhibits specialist at the library. That came in handy 
during  her son's 1960 presidential campaign, when she visited more than a dozen  
states.
A six-page draft of a stump speech she gave in Wisconsin in 1960  includes 
her handwritten revisions.
"On the dais up until the last minute,  she'd be revamping her speech," 
Wagner said. "She was a very comfortable public  speaker. She would write her own 
speeches and edit them."

The papers were donated by the Kennedy family two years ago. Buried  
somewhere in the 250 boxes, but not yet pulled out for public display, is a  letter 
she wrote to her son Edward in the early '60s, around the time he was  either 
running for Senate, or after he was elected. It schools him on the proper  
pronunciation of "nuclear."
"She was always correcting their grammar. She  definitely was a mother," 
Desnoyers said.
She was a disciplinarian as  well.

"When the children needed to be spanked, I often used a ruler -- and  
sometimes a coat hanger which was often more convenient because in any room  there 
would be a closet and the hangers in them would be right at hand," she  said in 
a letter dictated in 1972.
"Of course," it continued, "the children  would sometimes anticipate what was 
coming and stuff their trousers with a  pillow so I am not sure the spankings 
had much lingering effect."

Rose Kennedy's papers include solemn remembrances as well.
"My reaction  to grief is a certain kind of nervous action," she wrote in her 
diaries shortly  after the assassination of John Kennedy. "I just keep 
moving, walking, pulling  away at things, praying to myself while I move, and making 
up my mind that it is  not going to get me. I am not going to be licked by 
tragedy, as life is a  challenge and we must carry on and work for the living as 
well as mourn for the  dead."
 

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