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HOW DO YOU WANT TO DIE?
david cooper
I’d like to die quickly, say, in a plane crash. But if
they’re going to get me, they’re going to get me,
even in church. Remember the time we were attending
Mass in Hyannis Port and the whole pew behind us
was filled with reporters? I turned and asked them,
“did you ever stop to think that if anyone took
a shot at me, they might get one of you guys first?”
Now, Jackie loves that bubbletop because it keeps
her hair from getting windblown. But there’s no way
around it. They put me in a bubbletop and I can’t
get to the people. I want them to feel I am
the President of The United States, their
President of The United States. I belong to them
-- they don’t belong to me. You can’t stop a guy,
can you? If someone tried with a high-power rifle
and a telescopic sight during a downtown parade,
there would be so much noise and confetti that
nobody would even be able to point and say,
“it came from that window”. If this is the way
life is, if this is the way it’s going to end,
this is the way it’s going to end. God,
I hat to go to Texas. I hate to go,
I just hate like hell to go. I have
a terrible felling about going. I wish
this was a week from today, wish
we had this over with. We’re going
into real nut country.
ATTRIBUTION: A composite of President John F. Kennedy’s private remarks to Florida Senator George Smathers, Peace Corps Deputy Director Bill Haddad and White House aid Ken O’Donnell as quoted in Ralph G. Martin’s A Hero For Our Time (NY: Macmillan, 1983) pp. 539-540.
