Clare Boothe Luce, John F. Kennedy, and the gold Good Luck coin

Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987) was one of the glamorous women of the 1930's and 1940's. She was in the news a lot during that period and later.

In September 1942 Clare gave a "gold coin" to US Navy Lt. John F. Kennedy.

I used to live near Palo Alto, California, and I heard of her when the proposed sale of a local Roman Catholic church appeared in the news. Clare had paid to build the church as a memorial to her daughter Ann who was killed in a car accident near there in 1944.

Clare was an extremely attractive blonde lady. She was a minor film actress, then married a wealthy playboy and divorced him. She wrote the hit play "The Women" and several film scripts. She married Henry Luce, the founder of Time and Life Magazines. During World War II, she was a war correspondent and a Republican Member of Congress. In the early 1950's she was the US Ambassador to Italy, and later became a conservative Republican.

She would make a good subject for a television "mini-series".

There are at least two biographies written about her:
Henry & Clare: An Intimate Portrait of the Luces by Ralph G. Martin (1991).
Rage for Fame by Sylvia Jukes Morris (1997). This one only goes up to 1942.
Neither of these books mentions the coin.
Morris plans to publish the second part of her biography of Clare in 2014.

In September 1942 Clare gave a "gold coin" to US Navy Lt. John F. Kennedy just before he shipped out to the Pacific war zone. The coin was meant to be a "good luck" coin and had belonged to Clare's mother.

Clare knew Joseph Kennedy, John's wealthy father, and was supposedly one of his girlfriends.

Kennedy, a polite lad, wrote Clare a thank you note and added that he would wear the coin with his military identification "dog tags". In his letter he called the coin a "St. Claire medal" and stated the he would wear it rather than the standard Roman Catholic St. Christopher medal.

Kennedy's four-page letter is on many websites, including the US Library of Congress here:
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mccfield(DOCID @lit(mcc/080))

Clare must have made an impression on young John for him to wear her coin.

After his August 1943 PT-109 boat accident, he sent another letter to Clare with a "Japanese bullet" and told her, "With it goes my sincere thanks for your good-luck piece, which did service above and beyond its routine duties during a rather busy period".

Kennedy gave the coin to Eroni Kumana, a Solomon Islands native who helped rescue him and his crew. Supposedly Eroni still had the coin in 1963.

The Clare Boothe Luce gold coin is mentioned in the book JFK: Reckless Youth by Nigel Hamilton (1992), along with it being given to Eroni.

There is no description of the coin in the Kennedy thank-you letters or any of the several Luce and Kennedy biographies which I have read.

It would almost certainly be a US coin as the letter would have mentioned a foreign coin.

There is a public domain US Navy photograph of John Kennedy in his PT boat which is on several websites, including the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library at:
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/6uFr51bTGkStW-CCqCVdvw.aspx


Lt. John Kennedy on PT-109 in 1943

In this picture Kennedy appears to be wearing something round on a chain around his neck.

If this is the coin it appears from the size to be a double eagle ($20) mounted on a bezel.

My belief is that the coin is a St. Gaudens double eagle.

 

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Thank you for this writeup Willie! Interesting topic, and a fun read.

 

Very Fun, Good job!

 

Now there's one holed coin that would definitely sell for more than melt! What a great provenance.

Great story WillieBoyd, thanks for sharing.

 

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Looks like the above link got turned into a smiley.
Hope this works:

memory.loc link

 

Sylvia Jukes Morris' second part of her Luce biography, Price of Fame, came out in June 2014.

Eroni Kumana, still living in the Solomon Islands, died on August 2, 2014 at age 93 (RIP).

The fate of the Luce-Kennedy gold coin remains a mystery.

 

And this just in:

Solomon Islands strikes JFK commemorative $1 Coin

By Solomon Times /Pasifik - January 10, 2017

BULLION Exchanges and the Royal Australian Mint have announced an exclusive 1 oz. Silver JFK Commemorative $1 coin honouring the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963) – the 35th President of the United States.


Solomon Islands Dollar 2017 - John F. Kennedy

The design of the coin pays tribute to the act of endurance, heroism and leadership shown by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy in 1943 during WWII in the Pacific, specifically the Solomon Islands.

The Royal Mint says there are several bullion features which make the John F. Kennedy JFK Solomon Islands $1 Coin a highly desired collectible coin on the marketplace. This $1 coin is legal tender of the Solomon Islands.

“This remarkable silver coin is made of the purest .999 silver with a frosted finish, has a limited mintage of 15,000 pieces, a denomination of $1 dollar and an impressive coin diameter of 40.00 mm, allowing every detail of the coin to look stunning,” said the spokesman.

 

Without more data it is impossible to say what it might be. Remember to the non-numismatic public anything round, metal, and of the appropriate size is a "coin".