Auction Inflames Passions Over Kennedy Memorabilia

History recalls the late Evelyn N. Lincoln as the kind and discreet secretary who let Caroline and John Kennedy play under their father’s desk in the Oval Office and who deeply mourned the shattering of Camelot by an assassin’s bullet.

Now that image is under attack in an arena of high-powered auctioneering and potentially huge profits.

In an extraordinary statement, Kennedy’s children accused Lincoln of taking advantage of her position by breaching “both the public trust and that of our family” in taking items from the White House that are scheduled to be sold at auction today.

Lincoln, who died two years ago, willed the items to Robert L. White, a Maryland collector, who in turn is putting them up for bid.

Defenders of Lincoln point out that Caroline and John Kennedy had no historical qualms when they sold 5,000 items from their mother’s estate two years ago for $34.4 million at an auction at Sotheby’s.

“It is disappointing that the Kennedy children have chosen unnecessarily to sully the name and image of a woman like Evelyn Lincoln who was so dedicated to their father and was so dear to both their parents,” said Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey’s, the auction house planning the current sale.

The auction in an armory on Park Avenue has drawn scrutiny not only from the Kennedy family, but from the Kennedy Library in Boston and the National Archives.

On Tuesday, the archives announced it had agreed to take possession of 21 items of major historical significance that were set to be sold.

Under the compromise, the government gave up its claim to ownership of any other material in the catalog.

“I’m pleased that this is over,” said Ettinger.

But bitterness remains. The children called the auction “offensive” and asserted that Lincoln did not have a right to take many of the items.

“Mrs. Lincoln never owned the vast majority of items that Mr. White received from her, and neither he nor Guernsey’s has any legal right to sell them,” Kennedy’s children said. “They once belonged to our father. They now belong to our family, to history and to the American people.”

While 70 consignment agents have provided Kennedy articles for the auction, the largest number comes from White, who as a 12-year-old in 1960 wrote to Lincoln asking for the president’s signature. She sent him back a facsimile.

It was the start of his collection, and over the years, his relationship with Lincoln ripened into friendship.

“There are 70 consigners. We should all get on a bus to Boston and hand it over [to the Kennedy Library?]” scoffed White’s lawyer, Robert Adler.

“We are proceeding to the auction undeterred. Mrs. Lincoln and White lawfully own these things and so does a universe of people who received JFK memorabilia either during his lifetime or after his death,” the lawyer said.

In an essay in its catalog, Guernsey’s said Lincoln started to save drafts of documents and even scraps of paper when she began working for Kennedy when he entered Congress and continued the practice when he became president.

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“Carefully safeguarding the collection she began to keep, Evelyn Lincoln kept her treasure quiet, with the exception of telling John F. Kennedy, who was amused and honored by her dedication and reverence,” Guernsey’s said.

“Not having children herself, Evelyn Lincoln took a motherlike role toward the children, who loved her as a kind of authority figure and occasional playmate,” the auction house added.

Ettinger said: “The great affection that all of the Kennedys had for Mrs. Lincoln during and after her years of service with the late president is evident by a number of items in the auction, including many letters from Jacqueline Kennedy in which she consistently expresses her appreciation and thanks to Mrs. Lincoln.”

In one such letter, Kennedy wrote in 1964 that “both my children spent so many hours in your office--it was the best way they could see their father--and if you hadn’t been so sweet to them and made them feel that they were loved and wanted there more than any important visitor--they would have missed so much of their closeness with him . . . I love you for all that you were to him and them and me.”