In Charlotte, JFK suffered wedding-bell blues

On this day in 1940: John F. Kennedy, on the verge of graduating from Harvard and writing the best-selling “Why England Slept,” visits Charlotte for the wedding of an old girlfriend.

Frances Ann Cannon, a member of the well-known textile family, marries John Hersey, future author of “Hiroshima.” Kennedy dated Miss Cannon for a year and may even have asked to marry her. She was Protestant and he Catholic, however, and her family took her on an around-the-world tour to discourage the romance.

The wedding is at White Oaks, the James B. Duke mansion. Beforehand, Kennedy wrote a friend that “I would like to go but I don’t want to look like the tall slim figure who goes out and shoots himself in the greenhouse half-way through the ceremony.”

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