JFK rocking chair for auction
Published May 16th, 2006
A rocking chair that researchers believe was a gift to the late President Kennedy from the leader of Pakistan could fetch up to half a million dollars at an upcoming auction, officials said.
Kennedy used rocking chairs because doctors to him they would help ease the pain of his bad back. Several of his rockers have sold at auction, including a pair at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis estate auction 10 years ago that sold for $453,000 and $442,500.
The prices have varied depending on when and where the chairs were used. The auction starts Friday and runs through June 7.
“It is one of the most important of the Kennedy chairs,” said Tom Slater, director of Americana for Heritage Auction Galleries, based in Dallas. “This is the chair he probably sat in when he was preparing speeches and reading memos in the White House.”
A 1963 photo shows the chair in Kennedy’s bedroom at the White House.
The late first lady gave the Pakistani chair to her husband’s valet, George Thomas, soon after the president’s assassination. Thomas kept the chair until his death in 1980, when his family sold it. The current seller has requested to remain anonymous, Slater said.
The auction house will sell other JFK items, including Kennedy’s monogrammed briefcase, the president’s golf bag, and assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s autopsy documents, the only Oswald documents on the market, Slater said.
