2008-09
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/31/2008
Rare White House issued card “The President and Mrs. Kennedy deeply appreciate your thoughtfulness and expression of sympathy at this time.” 6”x3-1/2”, with Presidential seal embossment, with “The White House” envelope sent to Mr. & Mrs. Ernest Barlow of Massachusetts. Fine. Early in 1963, Jacqueline became pregnant again, and curtailed her official duties. She spent most of the summer in the Kennedy family's Cape Cod compound at Hyannis Port, where she went into premature labor on August 7, 1963. She gave birth to a baby boy , named Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, via emergency Caesarian section at Otis Air Force Base, five and one-half weeks early. Because his lungs were not fully developed, Patrick could not breathe and he was air-lifted to Boston Children's Hospital where he was placed in an oxygen-rich, pressurized room. He died of Hyaline Membrane disease (now known as Respiratory Distress Syndrome) on August 9, 1963. The couple was devastated by the loss of their infant son, and that tragedy brought them closer together than ever before. Shortly after, Jacqueline, still despondent at the loss of Patrick, received an invitation, through her sister Lee, to a Mediterranean cruise aboard Aristotle Onassis's luxury yacht. Despite concerns of the President's entourage over possible bad publicity it might bring, Jacqueline and her sister went on the cruise along with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. and his wife. Upon her return, feeling reinvigorated, she made her first public appearance at the White House in the middle of November 1963 and decided to accompany her husband on an official pre re-election campaign visit to Texas, where President Kennedy was assassinated.
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