Fifty years ago, in that tranquil fall of 1963, Liz Pozen was a young suburban mother living in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Her husband was a lawyer at the Department of the Interior, and she was a stay-at-home mom, typical of that time. The only unusual part of her life, some would call it extraordinary, was that when she took her six year old daughter, Agatha, to school, she drove her Country Squire station wagon through the southwest gate of the White House. The guards knew the car and would wave her through. Fifty years ago, that’s how security worked at the Executive Mansion.
Jacqueline Kennedy had organized a school upstairs in the family residence for her daughter, Caroline, and 12 other children. Sometimes when Agatha forgot her lunch, Liz would drive back, take it upstairs and more than once ran into the President as he was coming down.
The First Lady tried to find ways to make her children’s lives as normal as possible. So that fall, she and Liz agreed that it would be a great idea for Caroline to have a sleepover at Agatha’s house, just like two little girls anywhere else. It was difficult to find the right time, given the hectic calendar of the nation’s First Family, but the two mothers zeroed in on what they thought was the perfect weekend – when the President and First Lady would be away in Dallas.
Just after school let out on that Friday afternoon, November 22nd, Liz was driving up Connecticut Avenue with a lone secret service agent following in an unmarked car. The two girls were giggling in the back seat, eager with anticipation of the sleepover. Then the bulletin came over the classical station Liz was listening to, forever changing their lives and the course of the world.