Wednesday, February 23, 1944

Small Hospital Room

JFK was in a small hospital room and was visited by journalist and friend John Hersey, who was preparing an article on the PT 109 mishap. He recalled JFK on that day to another biographer:

I have a picture of a rather small hospital room. There was nothing splendid about it. He was in the room alone, as I remember…. He asked if the crew had given a decent account of him and I assured him they had. His insistence that I see the crew first struck me very favorably. It didn’t seem to me to be self-serving. There was a real kind of officer modesty about it. He said all along that some of his crew members were the ones who really ran the boat, although I don’t think that was true. He had a kind of diffidence about himself that seemed to genuine at that time. So in a joking way he wondered how he looked to them. They were wildly devoted to him, all of them. Absolutely clear devotion to him by the crew. No reservation about it. They really did like him.

[153, p. 365]