12/31/2025
December 6, 1963.
Jacqueline Kennedy walked out of the White House for what she believed would be the last time.
Two weeks earlier, her husband had been assassinated beside her in Dallas. Her pink Chanel suit was still stained with his blood when she boarded Air Force One. Her children—Caroline, who had just turned six, and John Jr., three days shy of his third birthday—had lost their father.
As the motorcade pulled away from the South Lawn, Jackie made a silent vow.
She would never return.
Every hallway of that house held memories she couldn't bear to face. The rooms where her children had played. The bedroom where she had nursed baby Patrick, who lived only two days. The Oval Office where her husband had faced the Cuban Missile Crisis.
All of it was now a mausoleum of grief.
Jackie rebuilt her life in New York. She remarried in 1968, hoping that Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis could offer her children protection from the relentless spotlight. She avoided Washington entirely. When drivers took her through the city, she asked them to take routes away from the White House.
For eight years, she kept her vow.
Then came an impossible choice.
The White House Historical Association—the organization Jackie herself had founded—had commissioned official portraits of herself and President Kennedy. The portraits were finished. A public unveiling was scheduled for February 5, 1971.
Tradition dictated that she attend. Stand in the East Room. Face the cameras. Let the world watch her grieve again.
Jackie knew she couldn't do it.
So she did something remarkable.
In her distinctive handwriting, on her powder blue stationery, she wrote a letter to First Lady Pat Nixon.
"As you know, the thought of returning to the White House is difficult for me. I really don't have the courage to go through an official ceremony and bring the children back to the only home they both knew with their father under such traumatic conditions."
She asked if, perhaps, "the children and I could slip in unobtrusively to Washington, and come to pay our respects to you and to see the pictures privately."
The request was unprecedented.
The Nixons and Kennedys had been bitter political rivals. Richard Nixon had lost to John Kennedy in 1960 in one of the closest elections in American history. Nixon had spent years convinced the race was stolen from him. The animosity between the two men had been real.
But Pat Nixon's answer was immediate.
Yes.
And then she did far more than simply agree.
On February 3, 1971—two days before the public ceremony—President Nixon sent a military jet to New York. After Caroline and John Jr. finished school that day, a car took them and their mother to the airport named for their father.
JFK Airport.
They boarded the small jet and flew to Washington.
Only six people in the entire White House knew about the visit: The President, Mrs. Nixon, their daughters Tricia and Julie, Chief Usher Rex Scouten, and Curator Clement Conger.
No photographers. No reporters. No announcement.
At 5:30 that afternoon, a White House limousine met them on the tarmac and whisked them onto the South Lawn.
The Nixons were waiting.
They led the Kennedy family to the portraits—President Kennedy's hanging in the Green Room, Jackie's outside the Diplomatic Reception Room. Then Pat Nixon stepped back, giving the family privacy to experience this moment alone.
What must Jackie have felt, seeing her husband's face rendered in oils?
The portrait was unlike any other presidential portrait. It showed him looking downward, eyes hidden, lost in thought. It was haunting and melancholy—nothing like the vigorous campaign posters.
When Jackie had first seen it, she approved immediately.
It felt true.
Pat Nixon personally led the tour. She showed Jackie the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden—dedicated in her honor during the Johnson administration, but which she had never seen.
They walked through the state rooms, then upstairs to the private residence where the Kennedy children had once lived.
For Caroline, now thirteen, and John Jr., ten, it was a journey into their own half-remembered past. They had been so young when they lived here. John was just three days shy of his third birthday when they left.
Now they could see their childhood home through older eyes.
They were especially thrilled to see the third-floor solarium, where Caroline's kindergarten class had been held.
The Nixon family dogs—Pasha, Vicki, and King Timahoe—gave them an enthusiastic welcome.
Both families shared an intimate dinner together in the private quarters—two political dynasties from opposing parties, breaking bread in the house where both had lived.
During dinner, young John Jr. accidentally spilled milk all over the table.
Everyone laughed. The tension dissolved. For a moment, they were just two families.
After dinner, President Nixon himself led the Kennedy children through the West Wing and into the Oval Office—the room where their father had worked, where he had faced down nuclear war, where he had made decisions that shaped the world.
Then it was over.
The Kennedys flew home to New York. The entire visit lasted just a few hours.
True to their word, the Nixons took no photographs and told no one.
The next day, Jackie wrote to Pat Nixon:
"Can you imagine the gift you gave me? To return to the White House privately with my little ones while they are still young enough to rediscover their childhood—with you both as guides... Your kindness made real memories of his shadowy ones.
"Thank you with all my heart. A day I always dreaded turned out to be one of the most precious ones I have spent with my children."
She signed it simply: "Jackie."
John Jr., with the earnestness of a ten-year-old, wrote on his monogrammed stationery:
"I can never thank you more for showing us the White House. I really liked everything about it. You were so nice to show us everything. I don't think I could remember much about the White House but it was really nice seeing it all again. I really loved the dogs, they were so funny."
Rose Kennedy—JFK's mother—also wrote to Pat Nixon:
"I was deeply moved by your warm welcome to her and my grandchildren on what could have been the most difficult day for them all... You have brought joy to many who are close and dear to me, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart."
Jackie never returned to the White House again.
Despite living another twenty-three years, that February evening remained her only visit after 1963.
Whatever peace it brought her was apparently enough.
Richard Nixon gained nothing politically from this gesture.
No photographs were taken. No press release was issued. The public didn't know about it at the time.
He did it simply because it was the right thing to do.
In a strange twist of fate, Jackie and Richard Nixon would end their lives in the same place. In April 1994, both were admitted to New York Hospital, occupying private suites on separate floors.
Nixon died on April 22, 1994.
Jackie died less than a month later, on May 19, 1994.
She was sixty-four years old.
Today, this story stands as quiet proof that political opponents can show each other basic human kindness.
A Republican president and his wife. A Democratic widow and her children. A house that belonged to both of them—and to all of us.
Sometimes the most powerful thing we can offer another person isn't agreement or alliance.
It's simply grace when they need it most.
That's what happened in February 1971.
And it's what's still possible today—whenever we choose compassion over grievance, and humanity over politics.
~Old Photo Club
