Adding to the Legend

Adding ti the Legend

Rose Kennedy gave birth to the man who would become the 35th President of the U.S. in a gray frame house at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, just outside Boston. Last week she returned with two of her other children, Senator Edward Kennedy and Mrs. Jean Kennedy Smith, to present the house to the National Park Service as a memorial. It would have been John Fitzgerald Kennedy's 52nd birthday.

Joseph Kennedy and Rose bought the house in 1914 for only $6,600 and lived there for the first six years of their marriage; the Kennedy family repurchased the house in 1966 for $55,000. It was designated a national historic site by Congress in 1967. The house is to be open to the public daily, which will assure a permanent addition to the ubiquitous Kennedy legend. Some of the original furnishings are on display --including John Kennedy's bassinet, the silver bowl and spoon he used as a child, and two of the favorite books of his boyhood: King Arthur and His Knights and Billy Whiskers, the story of a goat. There is also a toy train of the period, presented by the Museum of the City of New York.

In one of the upstairs bedrooms, visitors will hear an unusual tourist's guide recorded by Rose Kennedy. In it she says: "The President was born in a twin bed near the window on May 29, 1917, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. They always used the bed near the window, so if the baby were born in the daytime the light would be better for the doctor. Years later, when Jack was elected President, I thought how fortunate I was, out of all the mothers in the United States, to have my son inaugurated President on that cold, cold day."

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