More Stories…Some Sad, Some Not

When John Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash in July 1999 along with his wife and sister-in-law, his sister, Caroline wanted him buried with their parents at Arlington National Cemetery.

  When they refused his wife, Carolyn to be interred there as well, her mother made a great fuss, resulting in a burial at sea.

  If only she had listened to her mother, who before accepting John’s marriage proposal cautioned her to think twice, knowing the privacy her daughter so cherished would be too much of a sacrifice for her to make, not knowing how prophetic her words would become.

  At President Andrew Jackson’s funeral in 1845, Poll, his pet parrot, had to be taken out because he kept swearing, the same way his master did, freaking out Andy’s many mourners.

  And the Magnolia Tree he planted 200 years ago in memory of his beloved wife Rachel on the White House lawn still blossomed for her until First Lady Melania Trump, claiming it was damaged, had it cut down in 2017. sigh

   Democratic Senator, Edward Moore Kennedy, commonly known as Ted, representing Massachusetts for almost 47 years until his death in 2009 at the age of 77, when opposed by his peers, rather than fight on the Senate floor, would invite them to his home for a meal to best discuss how they could come up with an amicable solution.

   Despite his flawed personal life, he more than earned the title The Lion of the Senate, getting 300 bills passed into law, including the Americans With Disabilities Act, in 1990. 

   In 1944, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was accused of sending a Navy Destroyer to pick up his little dog Fala, he allegedly left behind on the Aleutian Islands, instead of getting mad, addressed it in pure Rooseveltian charm.

“These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala.

“Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks — but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers, in Congress and out, had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him — at a cost to the taxpayers of 2 or 3 or 8 or $20 million — his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. 

It’s called the Fala Speech, Franklin and Fala at their very, merry best.  

SB