It was the only time Alice ever saw him cry. She'd gone down to do the laundry. When she returned, she found him at the kitchen table, his forehead flat against the fornica top, his arms dangling at his sides, his body silently convulsing. She dropped the laundry and knelt beside him.
"Phil . . . Phil . . ." He kept on shaking. The TV was on. Walter Cronkite. There were tears in his eyes too. It was November 22, 1963.
Phil loved Kennedy. He was civil rights, he was the Peace Corps. He was Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" in Madison Square Garden. He was the son of a movie morgul; a football player, a war hero. "That Was the President." When Phil finished writing the song, he fell into bed. Unable to sleep, he stared at the ceiling.
"What's wrong, Phil?"
"I think I'm going to die tonight, Alice. I think I'm going to die."
From: Death of a Rebel by Marc Eliot, 1979, p. 77.