Kennedy’s Secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, Dies

Evelyn Norton Lincoln, who was personal secretary to President Kennedy, died Thursday in Georgetown University Hospital of complications after surgery for cancer, the family said. She was 85.

Mrs. Lincoln was Kennedy’s personal secretary from January 1953 when he started his first term in the Senate until his death Nov. 22, 1963, when she was in the motorcade in Dallas when he was assassinated.

She had been hospitalized since April 2, said Francis McGuire, a family spokesman.

Mrs. Lincoln was born June 25, 1909, on a farm in Polk County, Neb., and her father, John N. Norton, was a member of the House of Representatives. She came to Washington in 1930 with her husband, Harold W. Lincoln, and the two got involved in politics.

She was known for visiting Kennedy’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery every year on the anniversary of his death. In 1988, on the 25th anniversary, she went alone to the grave and laid three red roses near its eternal flame.

“I always come. I haven’t missed a one. I feel that I should honor him. It’s the least I can do,” Mrs. Lincoln said then.

She said she “wouldn’t give anything” for the experience of working in the White House with Kennedy. “That’s why I’m grateful and I come out to the grave to thank him,” she said.

Mrs. Lincoln also was the author of two best-selling books, “My 12 Years With John F. Kennedy” and “Kennedy and Johnson.”

She is survived by her husband, to whom she was married 64 years.