When Jack and Dr. Drorbaugh left Jackie’s room, they found her mother and stepsister rushing toward them. The baby was being wheeled down the hall. “No, no, let me see him,” Janet said as she hurried to them. She leaned over the incubator and saw the struggling infant with a tangle of tubes attached to him. He appeared so fragile, the sight took Janet’s breath away. She suddenly looked faint. Jack reached for her and held her tightly, telling her not to worry. Jack then also hugged Janet Jr. before rushing out of the hospital. Janet turned to go into Jackie’s room, but hesitated for a moment. Finally, she steeled herself and with Janet Jr. at her side, walked into Jackie’s room, closing the door behind them.
When mother and daughter emerged from Jackie’s room about thirty minutes later, Janet looked shaken, so much so that she was seen steadying herself against a wall. Lt. Barbara Goodwin, who was Jackie’s three-to-eleven night nurse, told Janet the next couple of days would be critical. She then said that the medical staff had done all they could over the last few months to prepare for any emergency, with precautions such as the selection of three healthy military men with the same blood type as Jackie (A1 Rh positive) in case any transfusions were necessary. “But Jackie and I have the same blood type,” Janet said. “Why didn’t anyone ask me?” Goodwin said that she was surprised that no one had thought to do so. If Jackie needed blood, Janet said, she wanted to be sure to be first on the list. She didn’t want her daughter to have a transfusion from a stranger when her own mother was available. The nurse agreed to let Janet know if such a procedure became necessary.
Janet Sr. and Janet Jr. then went to the nursery to see Patrick in his incubator. There were eleven other babies in the nursery with him, all born in recent days and being cared for. Mother and daughter stood arm in arm for about fifteen minutes in silence, watching the baby as he struggled for breath. Suddenly, at a little before six that evening, there was a burst of activity, with doctors and nurses racing about and Secret Service agents barking commands at one another. It had been decided that Patrick would be taken by ambulance to Boston Children’s Hospital. “I must call Lee,” Janet told her daughter, her face grave. “You go, make sure Patrick is okay.”
While Janet Jr. was seeing to the baby’s ambulance departure, her mother asked Lt. Goodwin if she could use a telephone. She wanted to contact Lee, who she had heard was, again, on the Christina, docked in Athens with Aristotle Onassis. It was true. Just a month after renewing her vows to Stas, Lee and Onassis were together again. It wasn’t easy making a long-distance telephone connection to the yacht, however, causing a stressed Janet to slam down the phone at the nurse’s station several times in exasperation before finally reaching Lee. The specifics of their conversation are not known but, obviously, Janet told Lee about Patrick. Janet then called Adora Rule. “I was at Hammersmith waiting to hear from Mrs. A.,” Adora recalled. “I was so nervous and upset because the television news was all about Jackie and Patrick and the fact that the infant was sick.”
“How is the baby?” Adora asked Janet as soon as she heard her voice on the line.
“I need you to make Lee’s travel arrangements,” Janet said, ignoring the question.
“Well, where is she?” Adora asked.
“Where do you think she is?” Janet shot back.
“I knew what that meant,” Adora recalled. “I didn’t know how Mrs. A. knew the princess was with Onassis, and I didn’t ask. I just told her that I would arrange for her trip back to the States. I then called Lee. She was crying when she picked up the phone, already having heard the news. She was frantic to be with Jackie. I felt that after what she’d been through with her baby, Christina, this situation was going to be particularly hard on her.”
“Cut to the Bone”
The next morning, Thursday, August 8, Janet awakened and showered in the small quarters that had been given her at Otis. She then had a light breakfast before walking down the hallway to check on Jackie. Lt. Nancy Lumsden was taking Jackie’s vitals when Janet walked into the room. “She’s doing well,” Lt. Lumsden observed. Jackie was certainly weak, but seemed better than she had the day before.
Shortly after, Jack was in Jackie’s room giving her the encouraging news that Patrick seemed to be improving! She was relieved. The President then went back to Boston Children’s Hospital, where he met up with his mother-in-law. She later recalled, “I remember him saying to me in the hospital in Boston that day, when Patrick was in the little incubator … I remember him saying to me—well, I’m going to misquote him because I can’t remember the words now, but I remember him saying—‘Oh, nothing must happen to Patrick because I just can’t bear to think of the effect it might have on Jackie.’ I could see the effect it might have on him, too.”
Things changed quickly. Later that same afternoon at Otis, after a brief telephone conversation with Dr. Drorbaugh, Jack pulled his mother-in-law aside and informed her that Patrick’s condition had suddenly deteriorated. He told Janet that he was about to take a chopper back to Boston. Of course, Janet insisted that she accompany him. As soon as they got to the hospital and saw little Patrick, they both realized he was in even greater distress. Jack and Janet then had a meeting with the team of worried doctors about how to best proceed.
Janet said she wanted to call Dr. Samuel Levine, professor emeritus at Cornell University Medical Center and consultant pediatrician at New York Hospital, who three years before had treated Tina when Lee gave birth to her prematurely. The baby had made it. “He can do wonders,” Janet said. “We should definitely bring him in.” It was also decided, in the meanwhile, to place the infant in a hyperbaric chamber in the hope that its pressurized oxygen would assist in his breathing. This was a treatment not ordinarily done for infants in Patrick’s condition, but it was a last resort. Jack agreed on both counts, contacting the doctor Janet had recommended and approving the chamber as a treatment. He personally called Dr. Levine and arranged for him to be flown immediately to Boston from New York. Then, as Janet later recalled, “We went down [to] the iron lung room, which they tried as a last resort to help his breathing.”
While Patrick was being treated in the chamber, Dr. Levine arrived. Janet and Jack greeted him warmly, thanking him for coming. With the baby in the hyperbaric chamber, Dr. Levine wasn’t able to do a physical examination of Patrick. Janet just wanted to make sure he agreed that the “iron lung” treatment was advisable. He said he agreed that it was the baby’s only hope.
That night, Janet and Jack stayed at Boston Children’s Hospital, not retiring until after midnight. At about two, the President was awakened with the news that Patrick was likely not going to make it. By this time, Bobby and Ted Kennedy had arrived at the hospital with Dave Powers, Jack’s assistant. Powers suggested that they wake Janet, but the President felt there was no need to disturb her; there was really nothing she could do, he said, and she was already worn out.
At just a little after four, Janet bolted up from her bed, suddenly awake. She raced down to see the baby, and there she saw Bobby and Ted comforting Jack. “Oh my God,” she said as she braced herself against the wall. Patrick had died. She watched as a sobbing Jack walked away from his brothers in order to be alone. “That was the one time I saw him where Jack was genuinely cut to the bone,” Janet would later say. “When Patrick died, it almost killed him, too. This was such a dark time for our family, such a dark time. The doctors released Patrick from the lines and tubes, and President Kennedy was able to hold his son in his arms, for the first and last time.”
On Saturday, August 10, a bereft Lee Radziwill arrived in Boston just in time for baby Patrick’s funeral. Unfortunately, Jackie, still in the hospital, could not attend the Roman Catholic service, which was held in the chapel of the residence of Kennedy family friend Richard Cardinal Cushing. Bobby and Ted along with their wives, Ethel and Joan, stood next to Jack, who was also supported by a number of his other siblings. Janet Sr., Janet Jr., and Lee stood with Hugh and Jamie, both of whom had flown in for the service
. “When the casket was closed, Jack was so overwhelmed, he just folded himself over it and wouldn’t leave,” Janet recalled years later. “My heart broke in that moment. I just will never forget it. We then buried the baby [at Brookline’s Holyhood Cemetery]. All I could think about at that moment was Jackie. What was this going to do to Jackie?”
That night, Lee spent many hours with Jackie, just the two of them, alone in her room—Jacks and Pekes. Occasionally, when the door would open for a doctor or nurse to enter, Clint Hill would take a peek inside. He realized that Jackie was in much better spirits. “Her sister seemed to help her maybe more than anyone else could,” he recalled. “Of course, I had been around the two of them quite often over the years, all over the world, actually, so I knew how close they were.”
Lee would sleep in Jackie’s room that evening, on a chair next to her bed. Lt. Goodwin—the three-to-eleven night nurse—had tried to encourage her into one of the guest rooms, but she wouldn’t hear of it. “She’s my sister and I’m not going anywhere,” Lee insisted.
At about three in the morning, Janet—who had tried to get some rest in one of the bedroom suites—slipped down the hall into Jackie’s room. By this time Lt. Nancy Lumsden had relieved Lt. Goodwin and was in Jackie’s room, checking her vital signs. “I want to thank you for your care of my daughter,” Janet said. She added that she was sorry she’d snapped at Lt. Goodwin out of frustration a day earlier while trying to telephone Lee. She asked Lt. Lumsden to apologize to her for her since she likely would not see her again. After chatting a while, Lt. Lumsden offered to take Janet back to her suite. However, Janet said she wanted to stay in the room with her two daughters.
A few hours later, as the sun rose, Lt. Goodwin entered Jackie’s room to check on her. There, she found Lee curled up in Jackie’s bed with her. Janet was sound asleep in a chair. Jackie was sitting up and gazing at them both with a sad but loving smile.
JFK’S “Two Janets”
Shortly after the death of Patrick, “the two Janets”—as Jack Kennedy sometimes called his mother-in-law, Janet Sr., and her daughter Janet Jr.—sat on the porch of President Kennedy’s home at Hyannis Port enjoying a lunch of clam chowder and sourdough bread. The younger Janet was downcast. Of course, everyone was sad in these days after little Patrick’s death.
Janet—who had turned eighteen back in June (and graduated from Miss Porter’s at that time)—had always been a sensitive girl. Especially during the last year as she approached adulthood, she put herself through a lot with her own constant comparisons to her glamorous half sisters, Jackie and Lee. “Janet was unhappy,” her mother would recall about a year or so later. “She lacked self-confidence because she was a little overweight at the time and self-conscious about it. I’m not sure that she didn’t have some complexes about having older sisters who were so good-looking and had exciting lives.”
In truth, Janet was a lovely young woman. She wore her dirty blond hair in a short bob, parted smartly on the right side. She had delicate features, her hazel eyes soft and set wide, her nose slim. Actually, as she got older, she began to favor her father more than she did her mother. Always shy and retiring, she was timid. However, she was such an openhearted girl, someone eager to lend a helping hand and be available to those she loved for whatever it was they might need from her. Jack, who always had a warm spot in his heart for Janet, had a clear understanding of her fragilities and insecurities. “Look at the women in her family,” he told Yusha. “That can’t be easy.”
For the last few months, Janet and her mother had been planning her debutante party, a big coming-of-age celebration at Hammersmith just like the ones Janet had previously hosted for Jackie and Lee. Janet’s good friend Effie Taylor—who was the daughter of Mrs. John Crawford III, another friend of Janet’s and president of the Denver Art Museum Volunteers—was also hosting a party the night before Janet Jr.’s ball. Therefore, many young women were coming from far and wide to attend both events, scheduled for Saturday, August 17.
After baby Patrick died, Janet Jr. couldn’t imagine going through with the party. “She was frightfully upset about it all,” Janet would recall, “and heartbroken for Jackie and the President.” Janet Sr. wasn’t so sure that the party should be canceled, though. She felt that maybe it was just what was needed to take all of their minds off the tragedy. The subject came up while the “two Janets” were having lunch with the President. As the waitstaff served them, Janet Sr. outlined the reasons she believed the ball should go on as planned. “There’s so much sadness right now, we all need a lift,” Janet said. She wanted to know if Jack agreed.
Besides the death of his son, on President Kennedy’s mind this day would probably have been the fact that the situation in Vietnam looked more grim than ever as Communist guerrillas continued to make inroads in the Mekong Delta; atmospheric nuclear tests had been named as responsible for doubling the levels of strontium-90 in the nation’s milk supply; and his approval rating had plummeted from 76 percent to 59 percent because of his strong position on civil rights. Still, Jack somehow managed to indulge his relatives by marriage and listen attentively. “Look, you have to have the party,” he told Janet Jr. “This is the kind of thing that has to go on. You can’t let all of those people down.”
In the end, Janet’s debutante ball would go on as scheduled. UPI issued a press release on August 13 saying that the plans for the party on the 17th would not be canceled, “because Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy want it that way.” The ball was a big success despite a rainstorm that day; “Oh, my! The girls danced and danced and danced all night long,” Janet Sr. later told the press. “It made me wish I was young again! Such a lovely, memorable evening, which I know my daughter will carry with her for the rest of her life.”
Lee’s Conflict
On August 16, 1963, Lee Radziwill returned to Athens to be with Aristotle Onassis. Things had changed, though, as she feared they would when she made the decision to renew her vows to Stas. Ari wouldn’t come out and say it, but she could feel she was no longer a priority in his life. True, he had told her she would always come first, but that was before she remarried Stas. It had just been a month and a half, and she had done everything she could think of to make Ari feel that he was still the man for her. However, he was distant and aloof. He had even taken to disappearing for days on end. She knew he was with Maria Callas. That hurt. But what else could she expect?
“By this time, I would say that Lee was who she would be for a long time to come, a deeply conflicted person,” said Taki Theodoracopulos. “After she got back to Greece from seeing to Jackie in America, Onassis installed her at his sister’s house in Glyfada for a week, where she often stayed. He promised to join her at his sister’s by the end of the week. After about six days alone, she called me and told me that she was going nuts. She wanted to have dinner to take her mind off things. We did just that, right by the sea next to my house.”
“So where’s your boyfriend?” Taki asked her, speaking sarcastically of Onassis.
“I don’t have the vaguest fucking idea,” Lee said as she picked at the strawberries on her ice-cream dessert.
“What in the world are you doing, Lee?” he asked, concerned about her.
“Please. Can we not discuss this, Taki?” Lee asked, pain and confusion evident on her face. “I love you as a friend,” she said, “but I can’t bear to talk about this right now.”
“I don’t think she knew what she wanted or where she was going,” Taki would say. “My heart went out to her. You couldn’t be with Onassis if you were a confused, broken person. You needed all your strength and resolve to be with him because he could put a woman through a lot. So I was worried about her.”
On August 22, Lee and Ari attended the opening of the Athens Hilton in Greece. Nicky Hilton was responsible for the grand event. (Nicky, whose father, Conrad, was founder of the wildly successful Hilton Hotel chain, had previously been Elizabeth Taylor’s first husband.) He and his beautiful wife, Trish, stood at the head of
a long receiving line of executives, greeting all of the guests as they arrived, including Lee and Ari. Nicky’s friend Bob Wentworth, who was along on this junket as public relations representative for the Hilton organization, said, “What I remember most about that night was what a striking couple Lee and Ari made. When they walked in, he in his tux and she in her long, shimmering gown, there was something magical about them. Everyone oohed and aahed and cleared the way for them as if in the presence of true royalty. Trish, who was wide-eyed, said, ‘My God, she’s absolutely gorgeous. Isn’t she a princess or something?’ I answered yes, and told her that she was married to Prince Stanislaw Radziwill. She wondered where the prince was, and why the princess was with Onassis. We then noticed that every time he put his arm around her, Lee pulled away a little and seemed uncomfortable. It was as if she wanted to be with him in public, but then again, she didn’t. Nicky and I walked over to talk to them.”
Jackie, Janet & Lee Page 18
