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Manuscript/Mixed Material Letter, John F. Kennedy to Clare Boothe Luce thanking the congresswoman for a good luck coin, 29 September [1942].

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About this Item

Title

  • Letter, John F. Kennedy to Clare Boothe Luce thanking the congresswoman for a good luck coin, 29 September [1942].

Created / Published

  • 1942

Headings

  • -  Women
  • -  Japan
  • -  Naval officers
  • -  United States Navy
  • -  Presidents
  • -  Congress
  • -  Legislators
  • -  Diplomats
  • -  Dramatists
  • -  Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald) (1917-1963)
  • -  Luce, Clare Boothe (1903-1987)
  • -  Luce, Henry Robinson (1898-1967)
  • -  Manuscripts

Genre

  • Manuscripts

Notes

  • -  Reproduction number: A60 (color slide; pages 1-4)
  • -  In 1942 a young John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) entered the United States Navy eager to see action in World War II. Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987), playwright, diplomat, wife of Time-Life, Inc., publisher Henry Robinson Luce (1898-1967), and a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Connecticut, knew the Kennedy family well. She sent the young naval officer a good luck coin that had originally belonged to her mother. In this note Kennedy thanked Luce for her thoughtfulness and promised to clip the coin to his military identification tags.
  • -  In summer 1943 Lieutenant Kennedy commanded a PT boat operating against the Japanese near the island of New Georgia in the Pacific. One night Kennedy's PT boat was rammed and cut in two by a Japanese destroyer, but the injured Kennedy and most of his crew survived. A few months later, Kennedy wrote again to Luce, enclosing a gadget, originally intended to be a letter opener, which he had made for her "from a Jap 51 cal. bullet and the steel from a fitting on my boat, part of which drifted onto an island." He told her, "With it goes my sincere thanks for your good-luck piece, which did service above and beyond its routine duties during a rather busy period." (John F. Kennedy to Clare Boothe Luce, [20 October 1943], Container 116, Clare Boothe Luce Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.)

Source Collection

  • Clare Boothe Luce Papers

Repository

  • Manuscript Division

Online Format

  • pdf
  • image

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Rights & Access

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Letter, John F. Kennedy to Clare Boothe Luce thanking the congresswoman for a good luck coin, 29 September. 1942. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://aj.sunback.homes/item/mcc.080/.

APA citation style:

(1942) Letter, John F. Kennedy to Clare Boothe Luce thanking the congresswoman for a good luck coin, 29 September. [Manuscript/Mixed Material] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://aj.sunback.homes/item/mcc.080/.

MLA citation style:

Letter, John F. Kennedy to Clare Boothe Luce thanking the congresswoman for a good luck coin, 29 September. 1942. Manuscript/Mixed Material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <aj.sunback.homes/item/mcc.080/>.