Book of condolences includes local dean's note to JFK widow

CHAPEL HILL -- Fifteen-year-old Barbara Rimer was so devastated by John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963 that she dashed off a condolence letter to the president's widow.

She didn't think of the letter again until an author called 46 years later seeking to publish it in a book.

And with that, Rimer, 61, learned a bit about herself.

When JFK was killed, Rimer was a ninth-grader in suburban Philadelphia. Today, she's the dean of the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill.

She has spent her career in that field, a public service that harks back to the message of service Kennedy conveyed to a nation in his inaugural speech. It was a charge the teenage Rimer took seriously.

The first lady received 1.5 million condolences after the president's death. They came from all over. Some were penned on elegant stationery, some on paper scraps. Some were typed, some were written in pencil, others in ink, stained by tears.

Many were destroyed, but about 200,000 were kept at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. University of New Hampshire historian Ellen Fitzpatrick read 15,000 and chose 250, including Rimer's, to publish.

The book, "Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving Nation," has just been released.

Rimer wrote in part, "I promise you that I will give body and soul to perpetuate the very ideals President Kennedy lived for."

"It's so naive!" Rimer said this week. "But it was a time that was naive. We felt personally connected to the man and his mission. It was a time when people believed in government."

Rimer worked at the National Cancer Institute before coming to UNC-CH in 2003. Rimer, who was an earnest, idealistic teenager, said this week that she's pleased to see that the beliefs she holds now were evident even then.

"The letter shows me I was on the path of mission and service," she said. "I feel like I got a piece of my history given back to me."