Evelyn Lincoln

71
Evelyn Lincoln bigraphy, stories - Presidents

Evelyn Lincoln : biography

June 25, 1909 – May 11, 1995

Evelyn Maurine Norton Lincoln (June 25, 1909 – May 11, 1995) was the personal secretary to John F. Kennedy from his election to the United States Senate in 1953 until his 1963 assassination in Dallas. Mrs. Lincoln, who was in the motorcade when Kennedy was assassinated, made it a point to visit Kennedy’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery every year afterward on the anniversary of his death.

Books

Mrs. Lincoln was the author of two books:

  • My 12 Years With John F. Kennedy
  • Kennedy and Johnson, 1968

Personal

She was born Evelyn Maurine Norton on a farm in Polk County, Nebraska. Her father was John N. Norton, a member of the United States House of Representatives. Evelyn married Harold W. Lincoln in 1930, and moved to Chevy Chase, Maryland.

In 1968 she wrote a book, Kennedy and Johnson in which she wrote that President Kennedy had told her that Lyndon B. Johnson would be replaced as Vice President of the United States. Lincoln wrote of that November 19, 1963 conversation, just before the assassination of President Kennedy,

According to the National Archives, Lincoln gave away many of Kennedy’s documents and artifacts that she had been entrusted with managing by the Kennedy family after Kennedy’s assassination. In 2005, a legal settlement was reached that enabled the National Archives, the Kennedy Library, and Caroline Kennedy to recover thousands of pages of documents and other items.

Lincoln died at Georgetown University Hospital in 1995, after complications that followed surgery for cancer. Her ashes were placed in a niche in a sepulcher at Arlington National Cemetery.

Sources

  • James M. Roth, , Prologue Magazine, Summer 2006, Vol. 38, No. 2.

Category:1909 births Category:1995 deaths Category:People from Polk County, Nebraska Category:People from Montgomery County, Maryland Category:Personal secretaries to the President of the United States Category:Kennedy Administration personnel Category:Burials at Arlington National Cemetery