Jackie, Janet & Lee

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  After saying good-bye to her guest, Janet knew that there would be more condolence calls and, though able to compose herself for Mrs. del Valle Jones, she felt she needed time to be alone. “Before I go to the White House, I think I have to go to church,” she said, as four different phone lines rang throughout the house. “It’s a madhouse here. I can’t think.”

  “No, Mrs. Auchincloss, wait, wait!” exclaimed Adora Rule. “What shall we tell people?”

  “The truth,” Janet said. “I don’t think we have any choice. The President is dead.” Then she paused as if she couldn’t believe the statement she’d just made. She repeated it, trying to convince herself of its truth: “The President is dead.” The two locked eyes. Janet quickly turned away and went upstairs. A few moments later, she returned wearing her hat and coat, and she left the house without saying anything more to anyone. Janet then walked down the street to Christ Church, the historic Episcopal church she and her family still attended every Sunday. She expected to be alone with her thoughts and prayers. However, much to her surprise, the church was filled with parishioners already praying at a special service. Janet took a seat in the last row, bowed her head, and joined in their prayers.

  After the service, Janet walked alone back to her home along the quaint brick-lined street. She found the stillness and quiet on her block to be peculiar; it was as if the whole world had suddenly come to a standstill. It was unseasonably warm, too—maybe sixty-five degrees—almost too warm for her heavy wool coat. The sky was a piercing blue, unblemished by even one cloud. Not a leaf seemed to move on any tree, the air was just that still. She was baffled. “Such a strange day for winter,” she would later remember thinking.

  Janet had feared that her short walk home would be interrupted by strangers recognizing her and offering sympathies. However, there was not one person in sight. As she approached her home, she began to hear an awful racket, the sound of grinding machinery. She wasn’t sure what it was until she got closer and saw tow trucks in front of her house hoisting automobiles from the ground. She stood and watched for about twenty minutes as four cars were towed away, each quickly replaced in its spot by either a sleek black Mercury Monterey or a similarly dark Country Squire station wagon, vehicles customarily used by high-level government employees. All around her, she suddenly noticed men in black suits with automatic weapons, speaking urgently into walkie-talkies. It was as if they’d come from out of nowhere. Two such men stood in front of a home across the street from her own, crushing their cigarette butts out on the sidewalk. Janet watched as her neighbor, an elderly woman, came trundling down the steps of her house and began wagging her finger at the agents while pointing to the ground. All of it just seemed so surreal.

  Secret Service—High Alert

  As soon as Janet returned to her O Street home, she was told that Maud Shaw, her grandchildren’s nanny, was on the telephone. She raced to speak to her. The two women then began to commiserate over the tragedy, “our conversation interrupted from time to time because neither us was able to stop crying,” Maud would recall.

  Maud said that a Secret Service agent had told her that Jackie didn’t want Caroline and John-John to be at the White House when she returned to it. The First Lady wanted time to compose herself before she saw the children, or so Maud said she was told. Because Maud now knew she needed to get the young Kennedys out of the White House, she wondered if it would be all right to bring them to the Auchincloss home. Janet was a little surprised. She thought the best place for them was probably at the White House, their own home, but she agreed anyway. She was happy to have a purpose, something to do. “Of course,” she exclaimed. “Bring them over to me.” She said that anyone who wanted to seek sanctuary could find it at her home. “This is the place for you all,” she told Maud. “Come, stay here.” Maud said she was a going to pack a suitcase for the children and have them at O Street as soon as possible. When she hung up, Janet realized that she’d forgotten to ask if the children knew of their father’s murder. Should she be the one to tell them? What would Jackie want? If only she could talk to her daughter to find out.

  As Janet sat and wondered about how to handle the children, Maud Shaw was at the White House packing them up. She told Caroline and John that they would be staying with Grandmère and Granddad—which is what they called Janet and Hugh—and quickly managed to get them into a Country Squire with their Secret Service agent, Tom Wells. Then, with another vehicle of agents following, they drove to Janet’s home.

  Suddenly, two cars screeched to the curb in front of the house. All four doors of the second car opened at the same time and out of it came four men in black suits, each with a rifle. They ran up the steps and began pounding on the door. The butler let them in and they raced past the staff and began scrambling throughout the house to secure it, hollering at one another into their walkie-talkies and telling each other that it was “all clear.” As they tore about the house, they began closing all of the heavy brocade drapes so harshly they almost pulled them from their rods. The agents went into the kitchen and scared poor Nellie Curtin, the longtime family cook, half to death with their rifles, which they just stacked on the kitchen table as if it was nothing unusual. “Why are you acting this way?” the butler, James Owen, asked them, upset. “Because we don’t know what’s happening,” an agent told him. “All of you could be in danger. We are on high alert. Just be glad we are here to protect you!”

  Then two other agents hustled Miss Shaw and the children, both of whom were wide-eyed and confused, into the house. It was all so hectic and upsetting, what with the phones also ringing off the hook and staff members scurrying around trying to manage things. Maud took one look at Adora and said, “God help us all. It’s the end of the world.”

  At about four in the afternoon, Jamie landed at the airport in Washington. Walking through the terminal on his way to the car that Janet had sent to retrieve him, he noticed the dailies being delivered to newsstands. Seeing the headlines for the first time—such as “President Kennedy Assassinated”—in the Washington Times and Washington Post was more than he could bear. He broke down and began to cry. He and his brother-in-law had a personal relationship born not only of great respect, but also no small measure of fascination. For instance, Jamie was always astonished by the fact that Jack would change clothes five times a day, never satisfied with anything he was wearing. Jamie also couldn’t help but laugh whenever he would recall how impressed Jack was by the way he took care of the menagerie of animals at Merrywood and Hammersmith. “Great kid, that Jamie,” Jack would say. “Great kid with ducks.” Jamie liked to muse that this presidential quote would likely be the epitaph on his tombstone: “Great kid with ducks.”

  The last time the brothers-in-law saw each other was at a cocktail party for “The New England Salute to President Kennedy” dinner at Boston’s Copley Hotel back on October 19. “Would you like me to introduce you to some of my friends?” JFK asked Jamie. “With your permission, may I take a liberty and introduce you?” Jamie asked him. Jack smiled and agreed. Then, Jamie, with the President standing directly behind him, walked up to a distinguished-looking gentleman and said, “Sir, I’m James Auchincloss. And you are?” The man said, “I’m Philip Hoff, governor of Vermont,” to which Jamie responded, “Nice to meet you.” Then, stepping grandly aside to reveal the President, he announced, “And this is my friend Jack Kennedy. He also works for the government.” It was a funny moment, one that Jamie would never forget. Driving back to Brooks School in North Andover that night, he had a weird premonition: “I think that will be the last time I ever see Jack alive.” And it was.

  Jamie’s driver finally found him and helped him to the car. When he got to the house, Jamie raced up the front steps and tried to open the front door but, of course, it was safely locked. He rang the doorbell; Janet answered. Mother and son then embraced in the doorway before Janet let him into the house.

  By early evening, Janet knew she needed to get to the White House to be with
Jackie. She decided to leave the children in the care of her capable staff and her son. “Make sure that they are bathed when I return,” she told the help. She gathered both children in her arms. “Uncle Jamie is here now,” she said just as he walked into the room and tried to force a smile. “Bad Boy James?” Caroline asked, using a favorite nickname for her uncle. (It was given to him because he used to sneak into her bedroom and steal her Zwieback teething cookies as a running joke between them.) “Yes, Bad Boy James,” Janet said, holding her tightly. “He’ll play with you now. Grandmère loves you both.” Then, turning to her son, Janet said, “Make sure all of the radios and televisions remain unplugged.” He told her not to worry. “We’ll play cards,” he said. “It’ll be fun, right, kids? You want to play War? Or Go Fish?”

  “As I was saying good-bye to Mummy, we lost track of Caroline for just a second,” Jamie Auchincloss recalled. “I ran to find her and saw that she’d stumbled into the kitchen to ask for a glass of milk. Just as I got there, the Secret Service agents scrambled to block her view of their rifles, which had been placed openly on the kitchen table. Marie got Caroline some milk and we got her out of there fast.”

  “A Silly Little Communist”

  Slowly cutting through the densest of traffic in their chauffeur-driven vehicle, Janet and Hugh made their way to the White House. It was such a laborious drive because the streets were so crowded with automobiles that, maybe not so surprisingly, all seemed to be headed in the same direction—to the White House. Once at their destination, Janet and Hugh found their friends Ben Bradlee and his wife, Toni. With nothing to do but wait for Jackie, the four of them, along with Nancy Tuckerman, tried their best to make small talk and force down ham-and-cheese sandwiches. They soon learned that Jackie would be landing in Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, and that she would then be accompanying the President’s body to the Naval Hospital in Bethesda. At that point, it was a mad rush by all—the Auchinclosses, the Bradlees, Nancy Tuckerman, and Jack’s sister Jean Kennedy Smith—to a waiting automobile, and then a ninety-mile-per-hour race through the streets of Washington to Bethesda. One there, they were all quickly ushered into a suite at the hospital.

  Janet’s eyes swept the room and, as she turned her head to the left, she finally saw her daughter. That’s when she had a shock like none she’d ever experienced. It hit her hard, the details still fresh in her mind a year later when she recounted them for her oral history with the JFK Library. There was Jackie, standing alone, in her pink wool suit covered with ugly splotches of dried blood. She had a haunted look in her eyes. Her hair was mussed; there was blood streaked on her cheek. A stunned Ben Bradlee was the first to reach out to her. They embraced. “Here’s your mother,” he said as a Janet took a hesitant step forward. “Mummy,” Jackie managed to say. She then fell into her mother’s arms and began to cry softly. Or was she crying? Janet would later say she wasn’t sure.

  Janet held her daughter in her arms. As she tried to comfort her, Janet then made the strangest of statements to her daughter. “Oh, Jacqueline,” she said through her own tears, “if this had to happen, thank God he wasn’t maimed!” Jackie recoiled and stared at her mother. Everyone else in the room also seemed stunned by Janet’s odd remark. Later Janet would confess that it was a comment made out of sheer shock and disbelief. She truly was not conscious of the words coming from her mouth, unable to even begin to comprehend the moments as they unfolded before her. A few minutes later, she said, “I hope you will never live anyplace but in this country because Jack would want that.” It was as if she was already thinking ahead that Jackie might hold Jack’s murder against the United States and maybe want to leave it for Europe. Jackie just looked at her with a strange expression, as if to say, “What in the world…?” Why, she must have been wondering, were they discussing these sorts of plans in this horrible moment? Finally, after a beat, Jackie just said, “But of course I am going to live in Georgetown, where Jack and I were.”

  After a while, Bobby Kennedy walked over to Jackie and, in a voice barely audible, told her that Jack’s murderer had been arrested. He gave her a few more details. Jackie, still dazed, then reached out to Janet again. In a faltering voice, she said, “He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights—it had to be some silly little Communist.” Janet embraced her tightly as Jackie stood stiffly in her arms. Jackie seemed to be crying but, again, Janet would later say she just couldn’t be sure. As Janet held her daughter, she tried to recover from the sight of so much blood on Jackie’s clothing, but it was difficult. Trying to compose herself, she began to do what she did best, which was to outline a plan to at least try to control the uncontrollable. “Will you stay with me tonight?” she asked Jackie. “You know, the children are at O Street now,” she added. Jackie suddenly pulled away from her mother. “What are they doing there?” she asked, alarmed.

  “Jackie, I had a message that you had sent from the plane that you wanted them to come there and sleep there,” Janet said. Why, one wonders, didn’t she just tell her that Maud Shaw had asked her what to do about the children, and that she had suggested bringing them to O Street? Again, she would explain that she was just in shock, that she didn’t even know what she was saying, or why she was saying it.

  Jackie was perplexed. “But I never sent such a message,” she said, trying to figure out what was going on.

  “You don’t want them there, then?” Janet asked.

  “No,” Jackie said, emphatically. Now she was on the verge of becoming upset. “The best thing for them to do would be to stay in their own rooms with their own things so their lives can be as normal as possible,” she concluded. Janet promised that she would see to it that the children were returned to the White House immediately; she then told a Secret Service agent to go back to O Street and get Maud and the children and bring them to the White House. “But how shall we tell the children what happened?” Janet then wanted to know. Jackie considered the question. “Miss Shaw should do exactly what she feels she should do,” she said. “She will have to judge how much the children have seen or heard. She will just have to use her best judgment.” Janet then reached out and took Jackie in her arms once again and said that she would talk to Maud Shaw.

  “Will you stay at the White House, Mummy?” Jackie wanted to know. In Janet’s eyes, Jackie now seemed like a vulnerable little girl. “Will you sleep in Jack’s room?” she asked in a tiny, fragile voice. “Anywhere you like,” Janet answered. She was “touched,” she would later recall of the moment, and realized that her eldest child didn’t want to be alone. “Would Uncle Hughdie stay, too?” Jackie asked. “Of course,” Janet answered. “We love you, Jacqueline.”

  “Let This Cup Pass…”

  Once she got back to the White House, Janet Auchincloss raced up to the second-floor residence and found Maud Shaw alone in one of the bedrooms, crying. Seeing her, Janet just blurted out the words: “Mrs. Kennedy wants you to tell Caroline and John that their father is dead.” The stout, gray-haired, and bespectacled Maud looked stricken. She immediately said no, she didn’t want to do it—“Let this cup pass from me,” she exclaimed, quoting Jesus Christ before the crucifixion. However, Janet insisted. Maud was just as adamant; she really didn’t want to do it.

  Janet would later say she wondered if maybe she shouldn’t have been the one to tell the children of their father’s death. It actually made more sense to her that she be the one to do it, not Maud. Or, better yet, what about Jackie? However, Jackie had already given her instructions. Janet told Maud that she had no choice, that she was to tell the children the news and to please stop debating with her about it. At that, Maud began to beg. “Please, please, can’t someone else do it?” she asked. “No,” Janet said abruptly. “Mrs. Kennedy is too upset,” she added. With that, she turned around and stormed off, leaving the crying nanny alone with her misgivings. She’d always thought Maud was a little odd, anyway. This tense conversation had been upsetting, though. She couldn’t understand why
the nanny, who had been reliable for so many years, would make such a fuss about such a specific instruction, especially during an evening that was already so difficult. She was disappointed in her.

  As Janet tried to collect herself, she wandered about the White House, her mind racing, as she would recall it, with painful thoughts about Jack’s murder and how such a thing could ever have occurred. She tried to distract herself by going from ornate room to ornate room, examining the décor and admiring Jackie’s work at having restored the old dwelling. Janet may have also done so with an eye toward saying good-bye to the place because she knew she’d never freely walk these hallowed halls again. She was proud to have been so close to the seat of power, and prouder still of Jackie. It had taken Jackie a year or so to warm up to her role, but by the time she gave her much-talked-about tour of the remodeled White House to a national television audience in February of ’62, Janet knew that Jackie had found her rightful place in the Kennedy administration. “She didn’t fight her destiny,” Janet would say of her daughter, “she embraced it.”