John F. Kennedy's Rocking Chair

If you're not familiar with the John F. Kennedy rocking chair then you might be interested to know that's there's a lot of history behind this particular rocker.

Well before he was President of the United States John Kennedy suffered from a back injury he sustained during World War II. His doctor, Dr. Janet Travell, told him that he should use a particular rocking chair and to swim in order to alleviate the pain. She felt that if he used a rocking chair it would help the muscles in his lower back to contract, relax and move and that the movement would relieve the tension he felt in his back.

So, in 1955, Kennedy bought an Appalachian oak rocking chair from the P & P Chair Company in Asheboro, North Carolina.

Kennedy became attached to this rocking chair. When he became President, whenever he traveled ,his aides brought it aboard Air Force One. The President liked the rocking chair so much that he bought dozens of them for Camp David as well as for the Kennedy estates in Palm Beach, Florida and Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He also gave them to his friends and to heads of state.

The chair that he bought was shaped and assembled while it was still green and then steam bent. It's a very simple rocking chair without any frills. It's comfortable because in the back there's a steam bent curve which firmly supports the sitter's back.

After the President was assassinated, in December 1963, Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy gave the President's long time valet, George Thomas, the rocking chair that was in the Kennedy's bedroom. The chair stayed with him until his passing in 1980.

Subsequently it was bought by the Thomas family.

Over the course of time a number of President Kennedy's rocking chairs have been auctioned. In 1996, when Jacqueline Kennedy's belongings were auctioned, two of the Kennedy rocking chairs were bought. One was sold for $453,000. The other rocking chair bas bought for $442,500.

Then, in an auction in 1998, the rocking chair from the Kennedy suite in the Carlisle Hotel was auctioned for the "bargain price" of $332,500.

However, the most desirable of all of the Kennedy rocking chairs is the one that was given to George Thomas. Because the President personally used it in his White House bedroom, if it ever went to auction it would probably bring in many multiples of what the other rocking chairs were sold for.

It's possible for you to get all of the benefits of a rocking chair without having to spend a king's ransom.

And many parents of newborn children find that having a rocking chair in the nursery makes caring for their babies much more comfortable - for both themselves and the child.

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