HGB Ep. 564 - The Life and Afterlife of John F. Kennedy

Moment in Oddity - Invention of the Webcam (Suggested by: Ruth Dempsey)

For many people, coffee fuels their day. Those who work in a corporate setting know how tragic it can be heading to the coffee machine just to find the energizing beverage is all gone. What if you worked in a seven story building that only had a single coffee pot that held a mere 6 cups! That's the stuff of nightmares. Traveling multiple floors just to find an empty pot is a horrifying thought! In 1991, the University of Cambridge was in that particular predicament. Their solution was an invention that many of us use today. Computer scientist, Dr. Quentin Stafford-Fraser stated, "One of the things that's very, very important in computer science research is a regular and dependable flow of caffeine". To resolve the issue, Dr. Quentin and Dr. Paul Jardetzky set up a camera to monitor the single coffee pot that supplied all seven floors of their building. The webcam would record photos three times per minute. The men also wrote software that would allow people in other departments to view the camera images on their computers. This helped people cope with the emotional distress of traveling all the way from other floors just to find an empty carafe. Contemplating a building of 7 floors only containing a 6 cup fuel for life is terrifying in and of itself, but the fact that it was the precursor to a modern day device such as the webcam, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Bram Stoker Born

In the month of November, on the 8th, in 1847, Abraham "Bram" Stoker was born in Marino Crescent, Dublin, Ireland. He was the third of seven children born to parents Abraham Stoker and Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley. Bram was a sickly boy due to an unknown illness which seemingly resolved itself once he started school at the age of seven. He wrote of this time, "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years.". Serious illness never found him again until later in life. He even excelled in multiple sports while attending Trinity College and Dublin University. Stoker began his interest in the theatre while still a student. He took a position as a theatre critic but at the time, this type of job position was held in low regard. However, Stoker's way with the written word garnered much attention. Soon he was publishing his first short stories beginning in 1872 with "Crystal Cup" and graduating to his first novel with "The Primrose Path" in 1875. During his days as a theatre critic, Stoker wrote a favourable review of Henry Irving's performance in Hamlet. This critique prompted an invitation to dinner by Irving and the two became fast friends. Bram Stoker went on to work at the Lyceum Theatre alongside Henry Irving serving as his business manager and personal assistant. Stoker was a prolific writer but he is most well known for his Gothic horror novel Dracula. Some say that Vlad the Impaler was Stoker's inspiration for the classic novel, although today many people dispute this. However, the physical attributes of Count Dracula are said to be modeled after his friend Henry Irving with his aquiline face, high nose bridge, arched nostrils, domed forehead and bushy eyebrows. Bram Stoker suffered a stroke in 1906, shortly after the death of his friend Henry Irving in October 1905. The initial stroke left him significantly debilitated and over the following six years he suffered many more before his passing in 1912.

The Life and Afterlife of John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy's presidency lasted for only 1,000 days, but his legacy has lived on for decades. He was the youngest man elected to the Presidency and his youth and vision inspired a nation. His life was cut short by an assassin's bullet, a bullet that people still debate the origin of to this day. And perhaps that is why the spirit of JFK seems to be at unrest. Or was it because his life was cut so very short? Join us for the life and afterlife of John F. Kennedy!

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born to Joseph and Rose Kennedy on May 29, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was the second of their nine children and named for Rose's father. Every one called him Jack. The family faced a bit of discrimination because they were Irish Catholics and this seemed to fuel the families desire to be successful. Joseph Kennedy attended Harvard College and made a promise to himself to become a millionaire by the time he was thirty-five. And he made good on that mainly through the Stock Market where he did insider trading and market manipulation. The Kennedy family was involved in politics, which would pass down from Joseph Kennedy's father to his sons. Trust funds were set up for the Kennedy siblings and they would never know want. Despite the life of privilege, Jack was a sick kid. He nearly died from Scarlet Fever before he was three. A variety of illnesses would plague him his whole life.

The Kennedys moved outside of Boston when Jack was three. The family spent summers in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod, which is a six acre property with three houses that has been nicknamed the Kennedy Compound. Christmas and Easter would be spent at the Kennedy winter retreat in Palm Beach, Florida. Jack Kennedy started attending Canterbury School in 1930, but transferred to Choate (KOH-ate) the following year after he had an appendectomy and had to leave school to recover for several weeks. Choate technically was Choate Rosemary Hall, which was a private college-preparatory school in Connecticut. Joe Sr. had picked this school because he wanted his sons to mingle with Protestants as he figured this would help their future political careers. The pressure to succeed was tough for Jack and he had a hard time measuring up to his older brother Joe. So Jack became a rebel, leading a pack of boys into playing pranks like exploding a toilet seat with a firecracker. He nicknamed his crew The Muckers Club after the headmaster said a bunch of "muckers" had done the deed. One member of the group was a guy named Lem Billings who would be a lifelong friend of Kennedy.

Billings was a year ahead of Jack, so he repeated his senior year so that he could graduate with Jack. He spent holidays with the Kennedys and they treated him like another son. Jackie Kennedy would later comment that Billings had been a house guest at her house since she married Jack. Billings helped with the campaign for the presidency and would help organize White House dinners. He was often referred to as the "First Friend" and he helped Jack to get around when he was ill, some staff referring to him as being better than a trained nurse. Billings was gay and Kennedy knew this all the way going back to Choate. Based on some pictures that I've seen of the two, it would seem Billings carried a torch for Jack. The feelings may or may not have been reciprocated, but Jack wasn't worried about Billings.

Kennedy enrolled at Harvard College in 1936 and he got involved in sports and various clubs, one of which was the Spee Club, an elite "final club" at the university. In 1939, he traveled extensively through Europe. In 1940, he graduated cum laude from Harvard with a Bachelor of Arts in government. War was rolling across Europe at this time and the Kennedy brothers joined the Navy, with Joe going off to be a flyer in Europe and Jack became a commander of a patrol torpedo boat in the South Pacific. That boat had a crew of twelve men under Lt. Kennedy and on August 2, 1943, it came upon a Japanese destroyer that was headed directly towards it. The destroyer split  Kennedy's boat in half, killing two men. Everyone else abandoned ship as Kennedy was slammed hard in the cockpit. He had an old football injury that was aggravated. Despite his injury, Kennedy rescued one of his men and then led the rest to a small nearby island. The group survived on the island for six days before two native islanders found them and went to get help. Jack had escaped death. The following year, his brother Joe would not escape death. His plane blew up while he was on a dangerous mission.

Jack returned home and received medals and the war ended. Joseph Sr. had been grooming his eldest for politics and he had big dreams for his son Joe. Now Joe was dead and Joe Sr. was determined to push Jack in the same direction he had been guiding Joe Jr. In 1946, Jack began his assent to the presidency by running for Congress in Massachusetts and he won. He served three terms and then ran for Senate, winning that seat in 1952. The following year, on September 12, 1953, he married Jacqueline Bouvier. Jackie was 12 years his junior. She was born in 1929 in New York and named after her father John "Black Jack" Bouvier. She grew up in Manhattan and Long Island and had a great relationship with her father early on, but he fell into alcoholism and had multiple affairs leading her mother to separating from her father in 1936. The divorce would be finalized in 1940 and Jackie was deeply affected by the split. Jackie graduated from George Washington University in 1951. 

Jack and Jackie met at a dinner party hosted by journalist Charles L. Bartlett in May of 1952. They had a lot in common. They were both Catholics and intellectual equals. Jackie's wedding dress was designed by fashion designer Ann Lowe, who came up in our previous episode about the Tampa Bay Hotel. The marriage was tested early with Jack nearly dying during a spinal operation in 1954 and Jackie suffered a miscarriage in 1955. In 1956, the couple had a stillborn daughter. In 1957, Caroline was born and the family posed for the cover of a Life magazine in 1958 as Jack ran for re-election to the Senate. Jack Kennedy was a writer on top of everything else and he wrote "Profiles in Courage" in 1955 and he won the Pulitzer Prize in history. Jack began flirting with the presidency in 1956 when he was almost nominated as Vice President. Four years later, the Democrats would make him their nominee for President.

JFK chose fellow challenger Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate. He figured Johnson would help him win the South. Richard M. Nixon, who was the current Republican Vice President, was nominated as the Republican nominee. Many people thought that Kennedy was too young to be President at the age of 43, but it worked in his favor because this campaign would be the first to be heavily televised. Debates were run in prime time slots and a sweaty, older Nixon looked bad next to a young and fresh-faced Kennedy. The race was very close and Jack barely won the popular vote. During the campaign, Jackie was pregnant with John Jr. and he was born right before Kennedy was inaugurated. Jack was sworn in as the 35th president on January 20, 1961. His inaugural speech would give us the enduring line, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." The Kennedys would have another son named Patrick that was born in 1963, but he died shortly after birth from a serious lung ailment.

The Kennedys tenure at the White House improved "the People's House" greatly. The couple loved history and they wanted people to visit the White House. Jackie restored all the rooms in the White House and the couple gathered the finest art and furniture in the United States. The White House also became a home catered towards children as Caroline and John-John were very young. A tree house sat out on the White House lawn and a preschool was set up inside. Kennedy was the first president to have press conferences broadcast live on television.

The Kennedy presidency occurred at the height of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and the United States had been racing to outdo each other in manufacturing nuclear weapons. JFK was very worried about the prospect of a war that he knew would kill millions of people. He also wanted to fight Communism and President Eisenhower had set his eyes on Cuba and overthrowing Fidel Castro and Kennedy carried out that task. A band of Cuban exiles were trained and sent to invade Cuba and the place they landed was called the Bay of Pigs. The invasion was ill-fated and no one was supposed to know the US was involved and it failed on all fronts. Kennedy paced around the White House for days berating himself for being so stupid. When it came to confronting the Soviet Union, he was far more successful.  

The Cuban Missile Crisis originated in October of 1962 and this would be the closest that America and the Soviet Union would come to nuclear conflict in all of history. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev had reached a deal with Fidel Castro to bring nuclear missiles into the country. Castro was eager to agree because of the Bay of Pigs attempted invasion. American intelligence services caught wind of the plan and Kennedy knew there was no way he could allow those weapons to get so close to America. A public warning was issued by President Kennedy and it went ignored as missile sites were constructed in Cuba. Kennedy sent a letter to Khrushchev and issued a "quarantine" on Cuba. JFK addressed the nation that evening and said, "It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union." Tensions rose, we went to DEFCON 2 and JFK considered an attack on Cuba. There were mixed messages and misunderstandings as things escalated. The crisis ended on the 13th day of the confrontation after a secret deal was made that embarrassed the Soviets in public. They publicly removed everything from Cuba, while America secretly removed their missiles from Turkey in exchange. 

President Kennedy had big goals for America. He wanted to pass civil rights laws to help end segregation in the country and he proposed a new Civil Rights bill to Congress. He addressed Americans on TV saying, "One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds…[and] on the principle that all men are created equal." JFK created the Peace Corps, that still exists today, and this program takes Americans around the world to help on projects in disadvantaged areas. He had dreams of winning the space race and he said in a speech at Rice University, "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." Kennedy would be president for 1,000 days and then an assassin's bullet would cut him down in the prime of life and at the height of his presidency and he wouldn't see many of his goals come to fruition.

Now before we get into the assassination, we've painted a very nice picture here of JFK. This is what the Kennedys would want, specifically Jackie who would present the whole idea of Camelot to the general public. But there is a lot of "ick" when it comes to JFK. As we discussed in our Life and Afterlife of Marilyn Monroe, it was no secret that JFK was having an affair with Monroe, as was his brother Bobby. The idea that the brothers were behind her death is a source of controversy, but one that we could believe. JFK ended up cutting Monroe off after Jackie threatened to take the kids and make the affair public so that he could kiss a second term goodbye. The Kennedy men were not good for women. No one knows for sure how many women Jack slept with during his marriage, but saying "dozens," hardly scratches the surface. Three to five different women a week is very possible. JFK was an ill man with a list of ailments and he believed that sex helped treat some of these illnesses. And Jackie may have looked the other way because trying to keep up with a sex addict would be an impossibility. Maureen Callahan wrote the book, "Ask Not: The Kenndys and the Women They Destroyed" in 2024. In it, she shares the assault of a young virginal 19-year-old by JFK and it is clear that the Kennedy men for several generations have used women for their own needs.

But that wasn't the only dark side to JFK. Did the Mafia help get Jack elected? There are theories that the Chicago Outfit was approached by either Joseph Kennedy or Frank Sinatra to get their help with getting union members to elect Kennedy. Was JFK's marriage to Jackie, his second marriage? New York Times writer Seymour Hersh suggested in his book "The Dark Side of Camelot," with FBI records to back it up, that Jack got really drunk at a party in 1947 and ran off with a beautiful socialite named Durie Malcolm to a Justice of the Peace and got secretly married. When his father Joseph found out, he had it annulled. Malcolm denied before her death that she had ever married Kennedy. The Kennedy family used to joke that if a mosquito ever bit Jack, it would die. Jack had a failure of the adrenal glands called Addison's disease that would have killed him if not for cortisone shots. He had intense back issues for which he needed painkillers. He was prone to infection. The man was basically a walking pharmacy and his doctor was the original Dr. Feelgood. He would give the President these speed-laced cocktails. So whether he meant to be a drug addict or not, JFK certainly was one.

And this brings us to a day that would be a moment in time that many people can set the calendar of the lives upon. It was around thirty minutes after noon on November 22, 1963 when President Kennedy and his wife Jackie were sitting in the back seat of a limo going through Dealy Plaze in Dallas, Texas, waving to the crowds when a bullet blew a hole into Jack's head. JFK was preparing to run for re-election in the fall of 1963 and Texas was an important state. The President's team planned a two-day, five-city tour through Texas which began with San Antonio. Dallas was the third stop and Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie, picked the Kennedys up in an open convertible Lincoln Continental limousine. It had a plastic bubble that could go on top of it in case of rain, but some early morning rain had stopped, so the top was taken off. The car entered Dealey Plaza and Nellie Connally yelled back to JFK, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you." President Kennedy answered, "No, you certainly can't." She then heard three gunshots in quick succession. Her husband was shot in the back and the President was shot once in the upper back that went through to the front of the neck and once in the head. The back wound indicates a shot from behind. The head wound indicates a shot from the front.

The car had just gone past the Texas School Book Depository and inside, on the third floor, was a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald had once been a Marine who earned a sharpshooter qualification. He was reportedly a Marxist who moved to the Soviet Union and tried to get citizenship. When the Marines found out about this, they downgraded his discharge from honorable to undesirable. Oswald returned to the US with a woman he had married in the Soviet Union and their daughter in 1962. He purchased a rifle with telescopic sight and a .38 revolver. In 1963, he moved to Texas and got a job at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. The official investigation, The Warren Commission, would claim that Oswald acted alone and that he fired three bullets from a sixth-floor window at the southeast corner of the Book Depository. Oswald ran from the scene and when confronted by Patrolman J.D. Tippit, he shot and killed him. He then hid at the Texas Theater and was arrested there. He was arraigned and interrogated over two days. Oswald denied any guilt and said, "I didn’t shoot anybody, no sir … I’m just a patsy." The plan was then to transfer him to the county jail on November 24, 1963 and he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby. Ruby claimed he acted alone and that he was angry over the assassination, but many people believe he was part of a wider plan too. Ruby was convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair, but the ruling was overturned on appeal. A pulmonary embolism from lung cancer, killed Ruby in 1967.

Nobody believes that Oswald was a lone shooter. Ok, there is a poll that about 33% of people do think Oswald acted alone, but anyone who watches the Zapruder film knows that the head shot came from the front of the President. That's why his head goes back and the back of his skull is blown off. A few seconds before that happens, Jack reaches up to his throat, which is probably when he was shot through the back. The House of Representatives Assassination Committee in 1979 found that it was possible that there was another shooter. Official records claim that there was no federal agent on the grassy knoll that day. JFK Documentary Producer Brent Holland tells a story about Texas police officer Joe M. Smith racing behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll and encountering a suspicious man lurking right behind the fence where it was believed the shots had come from. This man pulled out a Secret Service badge and he told Smith to keep looking. Several other witnesses reportedly ran into a Secret Service agent as well. So if there were officially no federal agents assigned to be there, where was this guy from? Was he really Secret Service? Did he fire the shots? 

There was a man named James Braden who was arrested on the day of the assassination at the Dal Tex Building in Dealey Plaza. It was found that this was an alias and his real name was Eugene Hail Brading and he had a long record of criminal activity. He was later released, but there are verified reports that he met with Jack Ruby the night of November 21, 1963. Fast forward to Robert Kennedy's assassination and guess who was picked up for questioning fifteen minutes away from the site of the assassination? Brading. There are other conspiracy theories as well. Some believe Cuban exiles carried this out or that the Mob had Kennedy taken out. New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello admitted on tape to the FBI in 1985 that he had planned the assassination and that Ruby worked for him. Still others look at the government and point at the CIA. There's no better way to shut up a President and give a stark warning to future Presidents, than to gun him down in broad daylight in front of a crowd of people. We've heard people argue that Lyndon Johnson and George H.W. Bush might have been involved as well.

Jackie was an amazing woman. She had endured losing three children. She tolerated countless affairs. And she watched her husband get his head blown off in broad daylight as he sat next to her. She immediately crawled across the back of the car to gather the pieces of his skull that had been blown off the back of his head and then she tried to piece his skull back together and hold it together as they rushed to Parkland Hospital. Jackie boarded Air Force One later that day, still covered in her husband's blood and probably brain matter, and witnessed the swearing in of Vice president Lyndon B. Johnson because she wanted to reassure the nation that we had a continuity of government. And then she planned a great memorial and helped a nation mourn.

President Kennedy's assassination affected the country deeply. Neither of us were alive at that time, so we thought it would be interesting to hear from Diane's parents what it was like to be alive at that time. (Mom and Dad on Kennedy)

As Diane's parents said, a horse-drawn caisson carried Kennedy’s flag-draped coffin to St. Matthew’s Catholic Cathedral from the Capitol Rotunda on November 25th. The riderless horse with the boots in reverse in the sirrups was named Black Jack. This is one of the highest military honors bestowed upon the fallen. There were 800,000 people along the funeral procession route. Kennedy was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery and Jackie lit eternal flame. But this may not have been the end for JFK's spirit.

There are those that claim that there is a curse connected to the family, the Kennedy Curse. Now keep in mind, this is a large family so having several tragedies is possible. But it does seem they have had more than their share.

August 12, 1944 – Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. died when the military aircraft he was piloting exploded over East Suffolk, England.
September 9, 1944 – William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, newlywed husband of Kathleen Kennedy, was fatally shot by a German sniper while leading his company near Heppen, Belgium.
May 13, 1948 – Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy (formally known as Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington) died in a plane crash in France.
August 23, 1956 – Arabella Kennedy, daughter of John F. Kennedy, died at birth.
August 9, 1963 – Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, son of John F. Kennedy, died of infant respiratory distress syndrome two days after his premature birth on August 7 in Otis Air Force Base, Massachusetts.
November 22, 1963 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
June 5, 1968 – U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the night of his victory in the California primary; Robert died the following morning.
January 23, 1974 – Athalia Ponsell Lindsley, who dated Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. until his death, was murdered at her home.
April 25, 1984 – David A. Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, died of a drug overdose in a Palm Beach, Florida hotel room.
December 31, 1997 – Michael LeMoyne Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, died in a skiing accident after crashing into a tree in Aspen, Colorado.
July 16, 1999 – John F. Kennedy Jr. died together with his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and her sister Lauren Bessette, when the plane he was piloting crashed off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
September 16, 2011 – Kara Kennedy, daughter of Ted Kennedy, died of a heart attack while exercising in a Washington, D.C. health club.
May 16, 2012 – Mary Richardson Kennedy, wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., died by suicide on the grounds of her home in Bedford, New York.
August 1, 2019 – Saoirse Kennedy Hill, granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, died of an accidental drug overdose at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
April 2, 2020 – Maeve Kennedy McKean, granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, disappeared with her eight-year-old son, Gideon, during a short canoe trip in Chesapeake Bay. Their bodies were recovered from the bay later that week. Autopsies revealed that both had accidentally drowned in the turbulent and chilly water.

Another weird thing about Kennedy that seems to have some paranormal connections are the connections between President Kennedy and President Lincoln. (pg. 117 in "Haunted Presidents by Charles A. Stansfield, Jr.)

As for Kennedy's ghost, there are people who say they sense the spirit of JFK at the Kennedy Compound. And his final resting place at Arlington Cemetery has reports of a bright, luminous mist being seen over the grave or near it. The full-bodied apparition of JFK has been seen at the grave as well. These mostly came in at a time when the coffin had to be moved so that a permanent gas line could be installed to replace a propane tank. Jack might also haunt a historic location on the Freedom Trail in Boston named the Union Oyster House.

No one is sure exactly when the building was built, but the street it is named for was laid in 1636. Hopestill Capen's dress shop was here starting in 1742. The oldest newspaper in the United States was established on the upper floor in 1771 and was called "The Massachusetts Spy." This was published by printer Isaiah Thomas. The first paymaster of the Continental Army set up his headquarters here in 1775. During the Revolutionary War, Capen's silk and dry goods store hosted the wives of Adams, Hancock and Quincy, as well as other women, who sewed and mended clothes here. Louis Phillippe, who would be king of France from 1830 to 1848, lived on the second floor of the building in 1796. He taught French to the young ladies of Boston. Capen's Dry Goods Store closed in 1826 and two men named Hawes Atwood and Allen Holbrook Bacon bought the former store and opened the Old Oyster House in 1826. They installed a semi-circular Oyster Bar. Fun Fact: The toothpick was used here for the first time. A man named Charles Forster had imported toothpicks from South America and he hired Harvard boys to eat at the Union Oyster House and ask for toothpicks. The restaurant then was owned by someone else and in 1970, Joseph and Mary Ann Milano bought the place and still own it today. This was a favorite restaurant for Jack and he loved the privacy of the upstairs dining room. The booth that he used was nicknamed "The Kennedy Booth" and it was dedicated to his memory. JFK's spirit likes to hang out at the booth. His apparition has appeared in the dining room and seems to just be silently watching people eat. In the bathroom, his reflection has sometimes been seen in the mirror.

President John Kennedy inspired a nation and highlighted that we could solve our common problems if we put our country's interests first and worked together. He was a catalyst to civil rights legislation. He protected this nation from nuclear war. And he was a flawed man. Jack's life was cut short and there really has been no justice for that act. Could his spirit be at unrest? That is for you to decide!