Though Janet wanted to be of assistance to Jackie in planning the state funeral, there really was nothing she could do. The deeply grieving former First Lady had so much assistance from the White House, the military authorities, as well as Jack’s immediate family, Janet had to abandon her maternal urge to be of help. She also had to push aside any hurt feelings of being completely excluded from the process. She would just do whatever she could for Jackie, even if that only meant—as it did—standing at her side.
“It’s a blur,” Janet Auchincloss would tell Janine Rule—daughter of her loyal assistant, Adora—many decades later when speaking of those awful November days of ’63. She said that she sometimes sat down and purposely tried to remember it, but she couldn’t. It was as if she’d blocked it all. She said, “I have fleeting glimpses of Jackie with the black veil … John-John saluting the casket … Hughdie trying to force back tears in the East Room … Jamie walking to the Capitol beside Sargent Shriver and behind Bobby, Jackie, and Ted … but mostly,” she concluded, “it’s just black. Nothing but black.”
“The day after the funeral we celebrated John Jr.’s third birthday,” Jamie Auchincloss recalls. “Jackie had planned a small gathering in the private quarters of the White House. A table was set up and Jackie brought out ice cream and a cake with three candles on it. Bob and Ethel Kennedy, with a few of their children and my sisters, Lee and Janet, were there. My mother was there as well. We all sang ‘That Old Gang of Mine’ and ‘Heart of My Heart.’ Everyone’s emotions were strained to the limit.”
It all felt hopeless, the future grim. Janet recalled being in the White House residence after the burial helping Jackie pack her things when Mary Barelli Gallagher came over to her and whispered, “It will be difficult for all of us to go back to our lives after this.” Jackie looked at Mary, shook her head in dismay, and said, “Go back to what? There’s nothing for us to go back to, Mary.” Janet shook her head. It wasn’t true, she said. “You have your children, your family,” Janet reminded her daughter. She was still young, she told her, and she had everything to live for. However, Jackie just stared at her mother with a blank expression.
PART SEVEN
RECOVERY
Dead Heads
“You have no respect!” Bobby Kennedy shouted at Jack Warnecke. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“It’s all right, Bobby,” Jackie said, patting him on the arm. “He didn’t mean anything by it. Calm down. It’s fine.”
It was November 30, 1963, and Jackie and her brother-in-law Bobby were in a meeting with Jack Warnecke and his associate Harold Adams. They were at the Kennedy compound discussing the construction of a permanent memorial for President Kennedy. The grave in which he was now buried was precarious at best. “The whole thing was threatening to slip down the hill because of foot traffic,” explained Harold Adams many years later. “The Kennedys had no choice. It had to be moved to a safer, more stable location.”
“I need your help,” Jackie had told Jack Warnecke in a telephone call on November 27. “When can I see you?” Jack told her he was getting his hair cut in Georgetown the next day and suggested that, afterward, he could stop by the White House to see her. When she said she would just meet him at the barbershop, Warnecke recalled, “that told me that there was an urgency to it. The next day, I’m getting my hair cut and in walk Jackie and Bobby, which caused quite a scene, as one can imagine. We then drove over to Arlington [Cemetery]. There must have been a hundred press people there. I thought, ‘Oh God, this isn’t good.’ Both crying, Jackie and Bobby walked right past them to the grave, knelt in front of it, crossed themselves, and started to pray. The three of us then talked about possible ideas for a new memorial. Jackie said she wanted it to be simple and dignified. Nothing ostentatious. No statutes or large buildings. We agreed that the Eternal Flame should be its centerpiece.”
“The first step to designing this new memorial was to educate the family on the history of grave sites for presidents,” added Harold Adams. Adams, a key associate in Jack Warnecke’s firm, was quickly appointed project coordinator for the new grave site. He would also be responsible for compiling the minutes of each meeting relating to it. “We quickly put together a history book on presidential grave sites, especially McKinley and Lincoln since both were assassinated, and gave it to the family to digest. It was clear from the outset, though, that this project was going to be complicated. There would be a lot of Kennedys weighing in. At the end of November, we were all at the famous Kennedy compound, trying to figure it out.”
As well as Jackie, Bobby, Jack Warnecke, and Harold Adams, present were Bobby’s sister Eunice and her husband, Sargent Shriver. As soon as Jack and Harold spread the plans they had drawn up out on the dining room table, Jackie burst into tears and Bobby, who was already emotional, had to comfort her. “It was the first of many meetings where they would become so emotional we would wonder if we could actually work,” recalled Harold Adams. “After they composed themselves, we finally began to talk things over.”
“There’s not enough religious symbolism,” Eunice Kennedy Shriver said, pointing at the blueprint. “There should be angels crying over the grave site, don’t you think?”
“And it should be more modern and ornate,” Sargent added, “and, yes, I agree with my wife. Angels. Definitely, angels.”
Jackie looked at Jack and shook her head. She went over to him and, under her breath, said, “The last thing I need right now is a feud with these people over angels. I need you to bring in all of the experts you can find to help resolve the symbolism issue. I want it simple, Jack. It should not look like something out of a Dracula horror movie.”
Jack said it would be no problem, that there were any number of liturgical consultants he could contact. As they talked it over, the severity of Bobby’s expression did not change. It had become clear during the early stages of the Lafayette Square redesign that he didn’t like Jack. He’d even told his wife, Ethel, that he felt Jack had been a little too familiar with Jackie. Now, with his brother gone, Bobby definitely had his eye on him.
After the discussion of symbolism was temporarily put to rest, Jack held court, outlining other concerns. “As we all know, this hillside is going to slip with the passing of not much time,” he said, pointing to the technical drawing. “There are a lot of dead heads here,” he added, waving his hand over the mechanical of the cemetery. “So we really need to move the grave site away from all these dead heads.”
Bobby bolted to his feet. “What do you mean, dead heads?” he asked, approaching Jack menacingly. Within seconds, the five-foot-nine Kennedy was inches away from the six-foot-three Warnecke, looking up at him and poking him in the chest with his finger. “There are a lot of dead heads here?” Bobby said, exploding. “What is wrong with you? How dare you say that!”
“It’s just an engineering term, Bobby,” Jack said, mortified. “Dead heads are mechanical devices put into the hill to hold it up. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.…”
Bobby told Jack he needed to be more sensitive, at which point Jackie got between the two men and tried to defuse the situation. “It’s all right, Bobby,” she repeatedly said while patting her brother-in-law on the arm. “Jack didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just a construction term.”
“Well, it’s not right, Jackie,” Bobby said, unwilling to let it go. “In fact, nothing about this Warnecke guy is right,” he concluded as he stormed from the room.
All Her Courage
Sunday, December 1, 1963.
The shrill ringing of a telephone in the middle of the night roused Janet Auchincloss from a deep, predawn sleep. She reached groggily for it. It was Jackie. Janet was so alarmed to hear her voice, she caught her breath in surprise. Given what they had all just been through, it was understandable that she would be on edge. Jackie, her voice flat and devoid of expression, said without preamble that she needed a favor. She had just spoken to Richard Cardinal Cushing about a plan in which she wanted to enlist her mother.<
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“I want to bury my babies next to Jack,” Jackie said. “I need you to get my baby girl and bring her to Arlington.” She also said that she’d asked Cushing—of the Archdiocese of Boston and a close friend of the Kennedys—to “go and get Patrick.”
Janet wasn’t sure she understood. Jackie had never before mentioned anything about disinterring her deceased infant children. Her immediate reaction was that the timing couldn’t have been much worse. Hadn’t they all been through enough? She wanted to ask Jackie if she was certain, but before she could finish the question, Jackie cut her off. She explained that in planning Jack’s state funeral, she’d learned that the body of Abraham Lincoln’s son Eddie, almost four years old when he died, had been exhumed from his grave and moved to a new resting place next to his father’s in the Lincoln Tomb at Oak Ridge Cemetery. She now wanted her late children—the daughter stillborn at seven months back in 1956 and Patrick, who’d passed away just a few months before—to be laid next to Jack.
Janet could tell from Jackie’s resolute tone that there was nothing more to say other than the words that finally came forth: “Yes, Jacqueline. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” They spoke for a few more minutes with Jackie giving specific instructions and telling her mother of the arrangements she would make for her trip. After hanging up—as she would later recall it—Janet rolled over and tried to rest. But after such a troubling phone call, she found herself constantly awakening from a fitful sleep. With the passing of hours, another day was about to dawn. The worst ever, she suspected, and considering recent events, that was saying a lot. She rose, showered, and dressed slowly in a cream-colored skirt and long-sleeved white cashmere sweater. She then wrapped a matching scarf around her head. After examining herself in the mirror, she put on a heavy wool pinch-waist beige coat with broad, square padded shoulders and a half belt in back. It had been designed for Jackie by Oleg Cassini, and Jackie had given to it Janet as a birthday present the year before last.
“Come, Jamie,” Janet called out as she slipped on kid leather gloves. “It’s time to go.” She’d earlier decided that since sixteen-year-old Jamie had to return to Brooks boarding school in North Andover, Massachusetts, she would drop him off on the way. Once again in front of the mirror, she donned a bold pair of oversized sunglasses just as Jamie came bounding from his bedroom, suitcase in hand.
Mother and son got into a car waiting for them at the front entrance of the O Street house. “Washington National,” said Janet tersely to the uniformed driver. On the way to the airport, she was quiet, not wanting to talk. Instead, she stared straight ahead, avoiding the steady gaze of her son. Jamie studied her with concern. He knew a little about what was going on—just what his mother could explain without going into great detail. “Mummy knew what she had to do and she was determined to see it through,” Jamie Auchincloss would recall many years later. “The sun was barely rising as we drove along. It was cold outside, so the windows were up. It was dark. Silent. Just the hum of the motor. As I watched the scenery slip by, my mind was racing. I knew enough about what was happening to know that Mummy probably would have been upset if Jackie had sent a secretary to take care of it. It was something Mummy would have felt was the specific responsibility of the mother of the widow, or the mother-in-law of the martyred President. This was a personal mission, a mother’s duty—and she would have to call on all of her courage to get through it.”
Finally at Washington National Airport, Janet and Jamie were greeted by Edwin J. Zimny, the stocky and bespectacled forty-seven-year-old commercial flight instructor and owner of Zimny’s Flying Service of Lawrence, Massachusetts. A pilot with World War II experience, he customarily flew members of the Kennedy family on trips up and down the East Coast. Zimny was to take Janet and Jamie in his Aero Commander 680, a light, twin-engined, propeller aircraft, from Washington to Newport, Rhode Island, with one stopover in North Andover. Once at the airport in Andover, Janet got out of the plane with Jamie. On the runway, she embraced him, holding him tightly, kissing him on the cheek. After one more embrace, Janet walked back toward the plane. The pilot then helped her on board.
The rest of the flight to Newport would take less than an hour. Once they landed, Janet shook the pilot’s hand and thanked him, having no idea that she would never again lay eyes on him. In six months, Edwin Zimny would be dead, tragically killed while piloting JFK’s brother Ted to a campaign speech in the exact same plane in which he’d just transported Janet. Ted would be critically injured in the crash.
Once in Newport, Janet rendezvoused with John F. Hayes Jr., director of the family-owned and -operated O’Neill-Hayes Funeral Home. The two then were driven by hearse to St. Columba’s Catholic Cemetery in Middletown. Soon they found Section 40, and not much later, a small slate grave marker on which was etched the words: “Daughter—August 23, 1956.”
Janet stood before the grave, tightening her wool coat around her slim shoulders and bracing herself against the chilly wind blowing in from the bay. As she did so, memories of the past played vividly in her mind, jolting flashbacks of an awful time seven years earlier when Jackie, seven months pregnant, lost the child that was buried in this plot, little “Arabella.” Janet watched as John Hayes carried a small coffin from his hearse and laid it on the ground right next to where she was standing. Then two gravediggers began shoveling away the dirt in search of a small wooden coffin they knew had to be about six feet below the surface. When they reached it, the two men attempted to lift it from the yawning hole.
Janet lurched forward, gaping into the opening in the ground. Then, much to her horror, the bottom of the coffin gave out, having rotted away over so many years. Gasping, Janet turned her head. Somehow, though, she would see it through; she was just that determined. Continuing to steel herself, she watched as the gravediggers shoveled the remains into the new coffin. As this occurred, Janet would later confess, her heart clenched achingly in a way that she’d never before experienced. Finally, the work done, John Hayes nodded his approval and the new casket was closed. Janet drew a deep breath and bowed her head. Then she and Hayes were driven back to his funeral home, where the coffin was deposited.
Janet spent the night at Hammersmith Farm in Newport. Before retiring, she telephoned Jackie to tell her that the deed had been done. She said she would be arriving in Washington in the morning with the baby’s remains.
“Make Straight Paths for Your Feet”
At twilight on the morning of December 3, Janet walked up the steps of the Episcopalian Trinity Church in Newport. Built in 1725, this large, white wood-and-brick structure with its soaring five-story spire and tower had been one of her places of worship ever since marrying Hugh. She tried to open the front door; it was locked. She then looked around the corner and up at the enormous clock below the steeple and realized that it was only six in the morning. She stood in place, wondering what to do. Waiting for just a few moments, she then walked around to the side of the building to a small cemetery. After opening a small gate in the nineteenth-century cast-iron fence, she let herself into a burial ground dotted with gravestones dating back as far as the eighteenth century. She sat on a cement bench to collect her thoughts.
The night before, she’d not been able to sleep, finding it impossible to get over what had happened at St. Columba’s Catholic Cemetery. She felt she needed guidance. Therefore, as a brilliant sun began to rise in a Newport sky, she started to pray. A priest who was walking from the rectory to the church to open its doors took notice of her and went to sit by her side. “I told him what had happened, the terrible thing I witnessed with my grandchild,” Janet would later remember to one relative, “and that I didn’t know if I would be able to get through the rest of what was to come. He understood. We then prayed together.” Janet said that the priest placed both his palms on her head. “Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees,” he intoned, “and make straight paths for your feet.” She remembered, “In that moment, I was filled with such a sense of peac
e. I knew then that I would find the power to continue. I knew what I had to do.”
That evening at close to midnight, Janet—by now her face pale, drawn, and etched with fatigue—found herself on the tarmac of Newport’s Quonset Naval Air Station. After walking slowly across the landing strip, she was greeted by Jack’s youngest brother, Ted Kennedy. Also present was Richard Cardinal Cushing. At Jackie’s earlier request, Cushing had watched as the small casket of the infant Patrick was exhumed from his burial spot at Holyhood Cemetery near Brookline. Now Janet watched as the baby’s coffin was carried onto the Caroline aircraft, followed by his sister’s casket. She, Ted, and Father Cushing then boarded the plane. Ted sat alone in the front of the cabin while Janet and the priest sat in the back. Between them, in the narrow aisle, were the two coffins lined up in a row. No one spoke on the flight to Washington; “Not one word was uttered,” Cushing would later recall.
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