One of the perils of having had an eccentric father is that his legacy lives on, long after his death. He was one of those people who would dominate a roomful of people. He did not suffer fools gladly and he wrote all his letters in a purple felt tipped pen.
He would also attract famous people into our lives. For him it probably started early: as a young boy he was chased away by Rudyard Kipling who found him fishing on his patch of water.
He lived before the days of Facebook, Twitter or emails (or at least he refused to acknowledge their existence). He corresponded with politicians film stars assorted people with titles and numerous writers (he was a writer himself, wrote half a dozen books, mainly about fishing, and he contributed the middle page article to the Eastern Daily Press for many years).
He exchanged letters with the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Joyce Grenfell, David Frost, Lady Diana’s mother (with whom he had quite a close relationship as they served on a local committee together) and JFK (about whom more in a moment).
For reasons that are lost in history he made contact with the Duchess of Newcastle who then came to stay so often that I made a plaque for the spare bedroom door “The Duchess of Newcastle slept here”. It remained in position till after my parents died and was still on the door when the family home was sold. I wonder what the new owners made of it.
When Clement Freud was MP for Isle of Ely he would be an occasional visitor to our house. I remember one evening he came to supper. He sat throughout the evening with a long face and saying little. He looked like a beagle with indigestion. It was not a fun evening.
Sometime after we had all flown the nest, the entire family was staying in a hotel in Devon. My father suddenly turned up with "this nice young American couple". They were a Mr and Mrs Bush. This was the time of the first George Bush’s Presidency.
"Are you anything to do with the President?" I asked, (I thought) facetiously.
"Oh yes, he's my brother". It turned out that they were Jonathan and Jodie Bush, he being the brother of the first President Bush. My parents stayed in touch with them for some considerable time afterwards and even visited the Bushes in New York, but they never did actually meet the president though it would apparently have been on the cards had time permitted.
Nor did we meet President John F. Kennedy, the 60th anniversary of whose death will be on 22 November. However, in a strange kind of way we all felt that we knew him.
My mother was American from a primarily Republican family in Nebraska. Her parents and grandparents were homesteaders. She was in her teens when the Great Depression struck. Almost overnight her family lost almost everything. Her father suffered severe depression and was booked into a nursing home in Denver. There the charlatan proprietor, so the story goes, was concerned that he would not be paid his fee. Accordingly he left a cut-throat razor conveniently in my grandfather’s room -which he promptly used to slit his throat. As a direct consequence my mother decided to go into medicine to show that there can be good doctors too. She was regarded as the family rebel and became a Democrat early in life - which was not fashionable in the Middle West - but more about the family history some other time!
Both my parents were taken by the young presidential candidate (who was born a couple of months after my father) and who sought to overturn the previous 8 years of a Republican Presidency under Eisenhower.
True to form, my father wrote to Kennedy telling him that he wanted to start an election campaign in Cambridgeshire to support him (confident no doubt that that would make all the difference). My parents had taken against his opponent Richard Nixon – and how right they turned out to be!
Kennedy wrote that it was good to learn "that I already have at least some small pockets of support in the British Isles.”
He continued:
“I am asking my staff to send you under separate cover some campaign materials so that my campaign can move ahead at once in Cambridgeshire.”
For several weeks the family went around wearing "Kennedy for President" buttons and my parents' cars were festooned with bumper stickers.
Our efforts were obviously effective because John F. Kennedy then became the country’s youngest elected president.
I was 12 at the time and sent him (from the perverse boarding school in which I was at the time incarcerated - more about that time in a later posting) a congratulatory letter I remember that I also told him how to run his country. In due course I too received a reply which thanked me for the "very friendly message you sent to me after my election to the presidency".
In his inaugural address Kennedy set out his agenda for the following four years. His words "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" are as relevant now as they were 60 years ago.
We then watched his progress over the next three years - developing a fondness for the man as he grappled with the difficulties of the Cuban missile crisis and civil rights problems and set America on course for putting a man on the moon.
Then on 22nd November 1963 I was sitting at home doing my school homework. We lived in Elm. My parents were in the village hall listening to a talk by the then MP for the Isle of Ely, Mr Harry Legge-Bourke (a typical conservative). My brother was watching a film at the Empire Cinema in Wisbech (as it then was. It was the posher of the 2 cinemas in the town).
A doctor friend drive to our house and blurted: "Have you heard the news? Kennedy's been shot".
I raced to the village hall to break the news to my parents. At the Empire Cinema a notice was flashed on the screen and my brother bicycled home. The whole family was in tears and we all felt that we had suffered a personal tragedy and that the great hope that we held for the future had been snuffed out.
50 years after the assassination I spoke on local radio about that experience and found, even then, that I was beginning to choke up with tears.
The world of course did not end and we will never know whether Kennedy would have been a wonderful president or would have been consigned to the history books as a bad ‘un. He was rumoured to be free with his sexual favours and no one knows what went on between him and Marilyn Monroe.
What I do know is that his assassination had a huge impact on our family and we all felt a sense of personal loss – something I personally have not since felt following the demise or departure of any other politician.
How did I never know any of this? Something to talk about over moving a few logs maybe.
I was in kindergarten when Kennedy’s death happened. But I remember that the television news was on all day. There was a strange feeling in the air as everyone was in shock. My biggest impression (because of my age) was the horses that pulled the coffin. This was a horrible era for deaths of anyone trying to get civil rights for our black population. These same types are the former US Confederates and the MAGAs of today. It is my hope that the US republican party will implode and not recover for a generation. And then we must work hard to change our systems, our laws, our protections.
How fascinating that your father received a personal letter from JFK. Quite the historical piece of paper!