E. Lincoln; Kennedy’s Personal Secretary

Evelyn Norton Lincoln, confidante and personal secretary to John F. Kennedy, died Thursday in Georgetown University Hospital of complications from cancer surgery.

Mrs. Lincoln, 85, was involved with Kennedy campaigns starting in 1951, when he was a congressman. She became his personal secretary in 1953, when he began his first term in the Senate, and was in the motorcade with him Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas when he was assassinated.

She wrote two books about her experiences: “My Twelve Years With John F. Kennedy” and “Kennedy and Johnson.”

Mrs. Lincoln also was one of the few people who knew that Kennedy secretly taped conversations in the Oval Office. When that fact became known to the public in the early 1980s, she strongly defended it.

“There wasn’t any sinister motive on the part of the President to get any information on anyone in order to blackmail them or whatever. It was just a recording of the events,” she told the Washington Post in 1982.

She kept a diary throughout the Kennedy years and, although she published bits and pieces in her books, the diary has remained secret. She told an interviewer in 1982 that she would make it public only after her death.

Mrs. Lincoln was born 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 visited 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 the 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.

After Kennedy’s death, she worked on his personal papers, many of which are in the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston and the National Archives in Washington.