People who loved President Kennedy also loved his children, Caroline and John-John. We got to know them through things JFK said about them and through photographs taken (mostly when Jackie was away).

Jackie was pregnant during the presidential campaign although JFK never mentioned it. He wasn't one of those politicians who gained votes by plucking heart strings. JFK and Jackie had already lost two babies to miscarriage and although they had three-year-old Caroline, most people knew how badly they wanted a son.

JFK's closest aides, Kenneth O'Donnell and Dave Powers, think they know where John-John was conceived. It was during the Presidential primaries in February 1959 when Senator Kennedy was trying to win the support of delegates to vote for him, not his opponent Hubert Humphrey, as the Democrat candidate for President in the upcoming Los Angeles' convention. JFK had already won the New Hampshire primary in a landslide, but that was a state close to Massachusetts and he was expected to win. But Wisconisin was next door to West Virginia, Humphrey's home state, and so Humphrey was expected to win. Plus the state was 95% bible-thumping Protestant, made up mostly of farmers and factory workers, most of whom had never heard of Kennedy. Unlike most politicians, JFK didn't do his campaigning in cloakrooms with Senators and Representatives in Washington, as did types like Lyndon Johnson. JFK always went straight to the people and so he and his team spent the dead of winter in Wisconsin driving all over the state shaking hands and holding meetings in small towns. On many occassions Jackie would campaign with him.

Here's what O'Donnell and Powers say in their book JOHNNY WE HARDLY KNEW YE about one of those times: [note: Kenny is the book's narrator]

"Jackie Kennedy was unable to join the later campaign, after her husband won the nomination at Los Angeles, because of her pregnancy, but she worked hard in Wisconsin, not only in March and April when we brought in everybody in the family and all of their friends to help in the final drive before the voting, but on weekends in January and February when the rough winter weather was at its worst. Getting out of the car into the snow and wind, Jackie would shake hands and talk with people on one sidewalk on the main street of a small town while her husband worked his way along the opposite side of the street. He kept his eyes on her, and often muttered to one of us, 'Jackie's drawing more people than I am, as usual.'

With his total recall of dates, names and places, Dave tells a story about Jackie and Jack in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, in which the date is significant. I remember the incident well, but I cannot swear to the authenticity of the date that Dave ascribes to it. When we arrived in Fort Atkinson, a town noted for manufacturing sausages and musical saws, the wife of the local Lutheran minister was waiting outside the Blackhawk Hotel with her thirteen children, eager to introduce them to the Senator. She had read Profiles in Courage and admired it deeply. Jack shook hands with the beaming mother and each of her children, posed for pictures with them, and then said to me, 'Get Jackie and bring her over here'. I escorted Jackie across the street from the opposite sidewalk where she had been charming a crowd of her own admirers. Jack introduced her to the mother of thirteen children and said to her, 'Shake hands with this lady, Jackie. Maybe it will rub off on you'. Dave pauses dramatically at this point in the story before delivering the punch line.

'That was on February 15, 1960', he says. 'Nine months later John F. Kennedy, Junior, was born'."

In his first press conference - given in Hyannis Port on November 9th, the day after being elected President - JFK gave his acceptance speech, saying:

Sixteen days later, on November 25, 1960, a little boy was born. They named him John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Junior. Two months later, on January 20, 1961, the Kennedys moved into the White House and so began the era of Camelot.

One thousand days later that same little boy, now exactly three years old - it being his birthday -- saluted his father's coffin and etched that image into the minds of the bereaving world watching the amazing funeral on television. ~ Jackie Jura

CAMELOT'S LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY

JACKIE KENNEDY ONASSIS (On July 28, 1929, Jacqueline Bouvier was born in a small Southampton hospital in New York. With her birth came beauty and grace, courage and strength. The world would never be the same again...)

ORIGIN OF CAMELOT ALLUSION

watch JFK Election Victory Speech (President-elect Kennedy acceptance of the 1960 election returns. November 9, 1960. The election was Nov. 8, 1960). Hyannis Port Armory, Nov 9, 1960

JULY 16 DARK-DAY EVENTS (John Kennedy Jr's plane disappeared in 1999)

JULY 16 A SIGNIFICANT DATE (John-John went missing same day as Atomic Bomb tested...)

JFK-JR'S CRASH STILL A MYSTERY (The Camelot Killings by Pat Shannan)

JFK TRUTH & UNTRUTH