Does this one sentence, a quote from the nurse at Parkland Hospital, solve the mystery of what happened to Jackie's pink pillbox hat 50 years ago today?
"Some time later, Hinchliffe said, she learned that she had thrown away the pink pillbox hat that Jacqueline Kennedy wore that day. It was with the flowers she removed from the president’s stretcher when he was wheeled into the hospital."
You can read the nurse's story in this piece from the Fort Worth Star Telegram. It's difficult to know what really happened in that chaos.
Though there remain many other mysteries from that awful day, what we do know is that Jackie, like her country, persevered. She raised her children, established a career as a book editor -- not for the money but because she enjoyed the intellectual stimulation -- and became a preservation activist to save important buildings such as Grand Central Terminal. Those more life-affirming aspects are always what I prefer to remember each Nov. 22, especially this one.
