JFK’s letters to Swedish mistress up for grabs at 25K dollars

NEW YORK - The letters that late John F. Kennedy had written to a Swedish woman during his affair with her are now up for grabs and are expected to fetch up to 25,000 dollars at auction.

According to ABC.com, the letters, which chronicle an affair Kennedy had with Gunilla von Post in the early 50s, when he was still a young U.S. Senator, will be auctioned off on February 22.

The affair had begun well before his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier, but it continued afterwards as well.

The pair met on the French Riviera in the summer of 1953. At the time, he was 36, 15 years her senior.

“I might get a boat and sail around the Mediterranean for two weeks - with you as crew,” the New York Daily News quoted Kennedy as writing to von Post in a letter dated June 28, 1954, just after he was married.

However the plans never went through after Kennedy injured his back, and he wrote to von Post while he was recuperating in Manhattan.

“I am still in the hospital after two months. I was terribly disappointed that at the last moment I was not able to come to Europe, especially when you were going to be in Paris and we could have had such a good time …” the letter read.

He wrote that he was going to see her without fail if she wasn’t “all settled down” by then, and added at the end, “Is there any chance you will be coming to the U.S.?”

Post, who is now 78, had first revealed the affair in a 1997 book, and she also gave an interview to ABC News’ 20/20 that year, describing how her heart went “boom boom boom boom” when she was with Kennedy.

“I was very happy to hear from him, but I said ‘he’s a married man’,” she told 20/20.

The very next year, however, the two got together again in an old castle in Sweden.

“I borrowed him for a week, a beautiful week that no one can take away from me,” she said.

Kennedy’s final letter to von Post is dated August 1955. In it, he waxes wistful about the affair.

“I just got word today - that my wife and 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 and look and the Ocean and think of Gunilla … All Love, Jack,” it stated.

While the on-line bidding for the letters may start at 25,000 dollars, Doug Allen, president of Legendaryauctions.com, thinks the bids will go higher.

“We’ll let the market determine the real economic value of this,” he said.

“My guess is they’ll go for 100,000 dollars,” he added. (ANI)