Letters to Jackie went on sale at bookstores across the country on March 2
Marcia Grann O’Brien, a 1962 graduate of Gustavus Adolphus College is featured in a new book titled Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving Nation.
The book consists of 250 letters sent to former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the days, weeks, and months following the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy. University of New Hampshire professor Ellen Fitzpatrick compiled the letters after combing through thousands of letters at the JFK Library in Boston.
One of the letters Fitzpatrick chose was written by Grann O’Brien, who at the time was going by Marcia Schwen. When Grann O’Brien penned the letter in 1963, she was a 21-year old teaching English at Long Island Lutheran High School in New York.
“It’s been so long that I was flabbergasted when I got the call (from the publisher). I also feel humbled and honored,” Grann O’Brien told the Providence Journal in Rhode Island. “I was grief-stricken and I think one of the things that compelled me to write was that I had just lost my father, and I felt so much empathy for Mrs. Kennedy and her children.”
In the closing paragraph of her letter to the former First Lady, Grann O’Brien writes, “To you in life, Mrs. Kennedy, go our prayers and our deepest sympathy. To your late husband in death goes our pledge – that we will carry the torch that he lit – and that the world will be lit in his name. For the watchman did not wake in vain.”
Grann O’Brien has enjoyed a long and successful career as a journalist including stops at the Warwick Beacon, the Narragansett Times, and the Rhode Island Catholic.
Click here to read Grann O’Brien’s letter to the former First Lady.
Click here to read the Providence Journal’s story.
Click here to read the Warwick Beacon’s story.
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Media Contact: Director of Media Relations and Internal Communication Luc Hatlestad
luch@gustavus.edu
507-933-7510