Evelyn Lincoln
| Evelyn Lincoln | |
|---|---|
Lincoln at her desk in the White House, 1961
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| Personal Secretary to the President | |
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In office January 20, 1961 – November 22, 1963 |
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| Appointed by | John F. Kennedy |
| Preceded by | Ann C. Whitman |
| Succeeded by | Gerri Whittington |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Evelyn Maurine Norton June 25, 1909 Polk County, Nebraska |
| Died | May 11, 1995 (aged 85) Washington, D.C. |
| Resting place |
Arlington National Cemetery Arlington, Virginia |
| Political party | Democratic |
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 a point of visiting Kennedy's grave every year on the anniversary of his death.
Mrs Lincoln 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. In 1930, she married Federal worker Harold W. Lincoln, whom she had met as a law student at George Washington University.
Evelyn had always aimed to work on Capitol Hill for a future president, and she achieved this ambition in 1953 by becoming personal secretary to the newly-elected senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. She proved exceptionally suitable for the job, and remained close to the president up to the day of his assassination in Dallas, when she was travelling in the same motorcade. She made it a point to visit Kennedy's grave at Arlington National Cemetery every year afterward on the anniversary of his death.
Many noted the irony of her surname, since Abraham Lincoln had employed a secretary called Kennedy, and both the assassinated presidents were succeeded by a President Johnson.
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,
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