Malcolm Kilduff - Later Career

Later Career

Kilduff continued to serve as Assistant Press Secretary for the Johnson administration until 1965, when he resigned to start a public relations agency.

He later worked as editor for The Beattyville Enterprise newspaper in Beattyville, Kentucky. After his divorce from his first wife, Bonnie, Kilduff had met and married a Beattyville native, Rosemary Porter Kilduff, who had worked in Washington, D.C. as an aide to U.S. Sen. Vance Hartke. Upon her retirement from government service, the Kilduffs moved back to her childhood home in Beattyville, on a hill overlooking the town's east side and the nursing home where he eventually died. While editor of The Beattyville Enterprise, Kilduff won a number of Kentucky Press Association awards. Rosemary was also a columnist for the paper and was also an award-winning journalist. One of her columns, dealing with methods of forecasting the weather in mountain folklore, became the impetus for the town's annual fall festival, the Woolly Worm Festival, held the third weekend in October.

In Beattyville, Kilduff was active in the Kiwanis Club, the Natural Bridge Park Association and the Buckhorn Scenic Trails Association. He was also an admitted recovering alcoholic and often spoke to students and civic groups not only about his experience with President Kennedy, but of his experiences with alcoholism and his recovery.

Rosemary Kilduff preceded her husband in death and is buried in the Proctor Cemetery in Lee County, Kentucky, across the Kentucky River from Beattyville.

Kilduff died in retirement at a nursing home in Beattyville at age 75. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.