JFK letters to Swedish sweetheart sold
Passionately tender correspondence written by John F Kennedy to his Swedish sweetheart has fetched more than $100,000 at an auction in the United States.
The letters and telegrams were sold by Gunilla von Post, now 78, described by Kennedy as my “Swedish flicka” (girl). An anonymous collector from the US west coast snapped up the loving lot from Legendary Auctions for $115,537.
The relationship started in 1953, just before Kennedy’s marriage, when he met the 21-year-old Swedish siren on the French Riviera. A “magical evening” with the 35-year-old Kennedy, then a senator, led to a series of 11 letters and three telegrams from him. The relationship was maintained, off and on, for five years.
In one letter, dated 1956, Kennedy writes that “I got word today – that my wife & sister are coming here. It will all be complicated the way I feel now – my Swedish flicka. All I have done is sit in the sun & look at the ocean & think of Gunilla… All love, Jack.”
In 1997, von Post wrote a book about the relationship, and spoke movingly of her American beau. She recalls being “flooded with warm feelings…his charismatic smile.”
They met for the last time in 1958 at the Paris Ball in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, and shared a final goodbye.
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The letters and telegrams were sold by Gunilla von Post, now 78, described by Kennedy as my “Swedish flicka” (girl). An anonymous collector from the US west coast snapped up the loving lot from Legendary Auctions for $115,537.
The relationship started in 1953, just before Kennedy’s marriage, when he met the 21-year-old Swedish siren on the French Riviera. A “magical evening” with the 35-year-old Kennedy, then a senator, led to a series of 11 letters and three telegrams from him. The relationship was maintained, off and on, for five years.
In one letter, dated 1956, Kennedy writes that “I got word today – that my wife & sister are coming here. It will all be complicated the way I feel now – my Swedish flicka. All I have done is sit in the sun & look at the ocean & think of Gunilla… All love, Jack.”
In 1997, von Post wrote a book about the relationship, and spoke movingly of her American beau. She recalls being “flooded with warm feelings…his charismatic smile.”
They met for the last time in 1958 at the Paris Ball in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, and shared a final goodbye.
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