Aug. 11, 1963 - Carrying a small bouquet of garden flowers, a solemn Caroline Kennedy went today with her father, the President, to see her mother in the hospital at the Otis Air Force base in Massachusetts. It was the first time Caroline, who will be six in November, has seen her mother since the First Lady was rushed from a family outing by helicopter to the hospital for the birth of the child that lived only 39 hours, 12 minutes. Caroline had been told the baby brother she and John Jr. had hoped for is now in heaven, and they would never see Patrick Bouvier Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy also brought with him to the hospital a number of the messages of condolence that have been coming in from world leaders. They included a message from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who expressed his personal distress at the death of the Kennedys’ child. Khrushchev had telephone Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who was then in Moscow, when he heard that the baby had died and asked him to take back his personal message. Rusk cabled the Soviet premier’s condolences from Bonn when he stopped there en route home. Today’s visit was clearly a happy one. The father and daughter emerged 48 minutes later with small but obvious smiles on their faces. Later, Assistant White House Press Secretary Andrew Hatcher said Mrs. Kennedy, who got up and walked for the first time in her hospital suite, was cheered by the visit. Mr. Kennedy, who has been through five sorrowful days of crisis, drama, and tragedy, is scheduled to return to the White House tomorrow to take up again the affairs of state which he put aside briefly to cope with a personal loss which faced him as a husband and a father.
