November 4, 1963: The Kennedy Kids In the Oval Office

November 4, 1963: With First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy away, President John F. Kennedy did something she would not have allowed: He let Cecil Stoughton, the official White House photographer, into the Oval Office. He took pictures of JFK playing with his children Caroline and John Jr.

Always protective of her privacy, and her family's, Jackie didn't like it when pictures were taken of the kids, but Jack knew it helped the family's image. Both the photo of Caroline and John dancing, and John under the Resolute Desk, became icons of the "Camelot" era.

The desk was a gift from Britain's Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, and was built from the oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute, which the U.S. Navy had rescued from its own failed mission to rescue a lost ship. (The ship they were looking for was later found by another ship, but all hands they were looking for had long been lost.)

The 1,300-pound desk was created by William Evenden, a skilled joiner at Chatham Dockyard in Kent, probably from a design by Morant, Boyd, & Blanford. The kneehole panel that John Kennedy Jr. played in was added in 1945.

President Kennedy was assassinated 18 days later. The desk was put in storage, and later became part of a traveling exhibit of items that would later be put into his Presidential Library in Boston. But it never made it there: President Jimmy Carter asked for it to be returned to the White House, which it was, and every President since has used it. Every Presidential Library, including JFK's, has a replica of the Oval Office as it looked during his Presidency, including a replica of the desk then in use.

Interviewed by Oprah Winfrey in 1997, John F. Kennedy Jr., then 36 years old, said that he didn't remember playing under the desk. He also said he didn't remember giving the salute to the coffin at the funeral, which took place on his 3rd birthday. He did say he remembered his father calling him "Sam," which he didn't like.

Apparently, it was the President yelling, "John! John!" after his son that led to John Jr. being nicknamed "John-John," which followed him for the rest of his life.

Cecil Stoughton, the photographer, was an Iowa native, and 43 years old at the time of the photos. He had also taken several photos of JFK on his yacht off the coast of Hyannis Port, Massachusetts; the photo of John and Robert Kennedy with Marilyn Monroe at the old Madison Square Garden in 1962; and the photo Lyndon Johnson's swearing-in aboard Air Force One after the assassination.

From 1967 to 1973, he was the official photographer for the National Park Service. He died in 2008, and, like President Kennedy and his brothers, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

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November 4, 1963 was a Monday. This was also the day The Beatles played the Royal Variety Show in London, in front of Elizabeth the Queen Mother. I have a separate entry for that date.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek: There would be no Monday Night Football for another 7 years. The NBA and NHL seasons were underway, but no games were scheduled for either league on this day.