The Good Son_JFK Jr. and the Mother He Loved

by Christopher Andersen

  Koulouris was eventually sentenced to six months in jail for nearly causing a collision between his speedboat and the Onassis seaplane. Jackie and John were both on board. In what amounted to an eerie preview of Princess Diana’s life and death nearly three decades later, Jackie and Ari were often chased through the streets of London and Paris by swarms of photographers on motorcycles. “They are reckless, and someday they will kill someone,” Jackie told Kitty Hart. “But it’s not going to be me. I’m always telling the driver to slow down. A few pictures aren’t worth getting killed over.”

  Notwithstanding Jackie’s many brushes with the paparazzi abroad, no one irked her more than Ron Galella. The relentless New York photographer stalked Jackie and her kids on their home turf, turning their lives, John later said, into “one big and extremely annoying game of hide and seek.”

  Jackie proved more than a match for Galella, whose modus operandi involved leaping out from behind a car or bush, then making odd grunting noises as he snapped away. One Christmas, she would testify in one of two trials, he hired a man in a Santa suit to corner her outside her apartment—“pushing, trying to get next to me, pushing, scuffling . . .” The National Enquirer had hired Galella to take the picture of Jackie and Santa for the cover of its holiday issue. Instead, Jackie swiftly maneuvered past both of them and darted down the block. “She’s fast,” Galella allowed, “and Santa was slow.”

  Not one to give up easily, Galella hoped a photo of Jackie and the kids sledding in Central Park would meet the tabloids’ holiday cover needs. Before he could capture the moment on film, two members of the family’s Secret Service detail bulldozed him into a snowbank.

  On Mother’s Day, Jackie returned to 1040 Fifth after having brunch with John and Caroline. As they walked from their limousine to the building’s canopied entrance, the photographer pounced. Quick-thinking Jackie swiftly thrust the Mother’s Day flowers John had given her in front of her face, blocking Galella’s camera and ruining the shot.

  Even Jackie acknowledged that Galella had a certain . . . flair. On Capri, she would later tell a judge, he dressed up in a “white sailor suit with a little white sailor hat. He yelled at me, ‘Hiya, Jackie. Are you surprised to see me here? How do you like me? I’ve joined the navy!’ ”

  Then there was the dinner with Ari and architect I. M. Pei at a Chinese restaurant, when Galella popped out from behind a coatrack, and the time Jackie managed to ditch Galella in front the ‘21’ Club by pretending to get out of her car, then hopping back in and speeding off.

  Jackie was in no mood to play games when it came to John and Caroline, however. In the late summer of 1969, Jackie was leaning against a tree in Central Park watching Caroline take one of her weekly tennis lessons when Galella leapt onto the court and started taking pictures. “I’m not making you nervous, am I, honey?” he asked, crouching down in front of her.

  “Yes, you are,” Caroline replied, turning toward her mother with tears in her eyes. At that point, Jackie sprinted across the park with Galella in hot pursuit. Galella kept shooting, and even caught Jackie running past a police car with two officers dozing inside. Confident that she had successfully lured Galella away from Caroline, she put on speed and lost him in her tracks.

  That fall, Caroline transferred from the Convent of the Sacred Heart to Brearley, an exclusive girls’ school on New York’s Upper East Side. At a school carnival, Caroline was mortified when Galella suddenly materialized and began bobbing and weaving around her, making his weird grunting noises.

  Galella struck again thirteen days later, when Jackie and John were bicycling through Central Park. Mother and son were merrily pedaling along when the paparazzo leapt in their path, causing John to swerve. “Smash his camera!” Jackie ordered the Secret Service agent who accompanied them. “And arrest him for harassment.”

  Once the criminal harassment charges against Galella were dropped for lack of evidence, he sued Jackie for $l.3 million, accusing John’s mother of assault, false arrest, malicious persecution, and “interference with my livelihood as a photographer.” She countersued for $6 million, later testifying that Galella’s “reign of terror” had left her feeling like “an absolute prisoner” of Galella.

  To shore up her claim that Galella’s actions were causing her entire family “grievous mental anguish,” Jackie enlisted John’s help. “Mr. Galella has dashed out at me, jumped in my path, discharged flashbulbs in my face, trailed me at close distances—generally imposed himself on me,” John said in a written deposition that had clearly been prepared by his mother’s legal team. John added that incidents like the one on his bicycle left him feeling “threatened.”

  Ari financed Jackie’s legal pursuit of Galella, but he warned her that the case could backfire if she began to appear like a spiteful, imperious celebrity persecuting a hardworking photographer. Besides, Galella allowed only the most flattering pictures of Jackie to be published—his candid photographs of her were among Jackie’s all-time favorites.

  The case dragged on for years and would cost Jackie $300,000 in legal fees before U.S. District Court judge Irving Ben Cooper ordered Galella not to come within 150 feet of Jackie or within 225 feet of John and his sister. On appeal, those distances were reduced so that he was allowed to come within 25 feet of Jackie and within 30 feet of the children.

  * * *

  EVEN THOUGH HE had to dodge a pushy photographer from time to time, John was none the worse for wear. At Collegiate, he continued to scrape by at his studies and to excel at sports. By now most of the teasing had stopped (“They just got bored with me, I guess,” he later said), and John’s naturally respectful, unspoiled demeanor and generally sunny disposition earned him points with peers and faculty alike.

  Between weekends at Hammersmith Farm and Hyannis Port—not to mention languid summer idylls on Skorpios—John realized even then that he had little to complain about. “It was a wonderful time,” he later said. “Let’s face it, I was a very, very lucky little boy.” As for his relationship at the time with his stepfather: “Mr. Onassis was very nice to me. I was just this little kid, but he took the time to tell me things, to listen to what I had to say. I liked him a lot, and I like to think he liked me, too.”

  As lucky as he may have felt he was, the fact remained that JFK Jr. had already been to too many funeral masses for a boy his age. He added another to his list on November 18, 1969, when Grandpa Joe Kennedy died at the age of eighty-one. Just days before his ninth birthday, John marched to the front of Hyannis’s St. Francis Xavier Church and confidently recited the Twenty-Third Psalm before seventy mourners who had come to pay their respects to the Kennedy patriarch. Caroline, wearing a large white bandage on her forehead after falling off a horse in New Jersey, was impressed. “John did an awfully good job,” she was overheard telling a cousin. “I was sure he’d mess it up.”

  Two days later, John and nearly all his Kennedy relatives were back at St. Francis Xavier Church. This time, John served as an altar boy at a Mass commemorating the sixth anniversary of his father’s assassination. Ari had not attended Joe Kennedy’s funeral Mass, and John voiced surprise that the man he still called “Mr. Onassis” was once again nowhere to be seen.

  Jackie and the children spent Christmas that year with the Radziwills at their Queen Anne mansion in England’s Berkshire Hills. They decorated the tree, dined on goose and mince pie, drank eggnog, sang carols, and opened gifts. Ari, however, was not part of this festive holiday scene, either. Instead, he remained behind in Greece, cooking up deals and, it was rumored, trysting with his old flame Callas.

  Although cracks in the relationship had already begun to show, it was a single indiscretion that signaled the beginning of the end for the Onassis marriage. In February 1970, five of the highly personal letters Jackie had written to Roswell Gilpatric—four written while she was married to Jack as well as the note she dashed off during her honeymoon with Ari—fell into the hands of Manhattan autograph dealer Charles Hamilton.

  Ar
i didn’t mind being portrayed as an uncouth cretin, a pirate, a dirty old man, or even a crook. But the idea of being cuckolded in public—and by a woman who had just spent $60,000 (nearly $500,000 in 2014 dollars) on two hundred pairs of shoes—was a blow to his manhood. “My God,” he told Costa Gratsos. “What a fool I have made of myself.”

  By way of retaliation, on May 21, 1970, Ari dined openly with Callas at Maxim’s in Paris—and made certain photographers were there to capture the moment. Like everyone else, John saw the story splashed across the front pages of the New York Post and the Daily News. But he also had a ringside seat for his mother’s characteristically swift and inspired reaction.

  On the morning of May 22, Jackie phoned Ari with the news that she was headed for Paris. The very next night, Ari was back at Maxim’s—only this time with Jackie, and sitting at precisely the same table he shared with Callas just twenty-four hours before.

  “For Jackie it wasn’t so much a supper,” said Ari’s aide Johnny Meyer, “as a sock in the eye for Maria.”

  Three days later, Jackie was in Athens spending thousands on hand-woven rugs and stopped to sip ouzo at a bistro. She was quickly spotted by reporter and asked if the rumors of the Ari–Maria Callas story were true. “Oh my God,” Jackie said, smiling, “what will they think of next!”

  Unbeknownst to Jackie, at that moment paramedics in Paris were frantically working to save Callas, who became so despondent over the photo of Jackie and Ari at Maxim’s that she tried to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping pills. The diva survived, and would soon be back at Ari’s side.

  Less than three weeks after hosting a forty-first birthday party for Jackie in New York, Ari helicoptered to the Aegean island of Tragonisi and surprised Callas as she sunned herself on the beach. Strolling up to her with a poodle in his arms—his gift to the dog-loving opera star—Onassis then kissed Callas under a beach umbrella. They both made certain that the entire touching scene was captured on film. Once again, Jackie raced to Ari’s side to squelch rumors.

  If nothing else, John’s mother was determined not to be made an object of pity. She had an image to uphold—an image that was still rooted in the myth of Camelot. Once the portraits of JFK and Jackie were completed, first lady Pat Nixon contacted Jackie and asked if she was interested in attending a public unveiling.

  Jackie declined, saying that she didn’t “have the courage to go through an official ceremony and bring the children back to the only home they both knew with their father under such traumatic conditions.” Describing the press and the attention as “things I try to avoid in their little lives,” Jackie went on to explain that a public unveiling would “be hard on them and not leave them with the memories of the White House I would like them to have.”

  Jackie eventually caved in, agreeing to bring the children along for dinner with the Nixons on February 3, 1971. President Nixon sent Air Force One to New York to pick them up, and on the flight down to Washington, Caroline bet her little brother that he couldn’t get through dinner without spilling his milk or having his shirttail come untucked—something, John said years later, “that used to happen with great frequency.”

  Pat Nixon greeted her guests at the front door, and Jackie was surprised at how warm and engaging she was—especially with the children. While the two first ladies chatted, Nixon daughters Tricia and Julie showed John and Caroline their old rooms. Although both rooms had been redecorated to suit the new occupants’ tastes, Jackie said Caroline’s face “just lit up” when she walked into her old bedroom.

  After touring the “High Chair Room,” where Maud Shaw used to preside over their meals, and the solarium that once housed the little “White House School” Caroline had attended with the children of family friends and White House staffers, President Nixon took John and Caroline to the Oval Office. Caroline remembered it well, and reminded John that he used to hide beneath his father’s desk. John really didn’t remember that, although he seemed vaguely aware that this room was where “Daddy used to work.”

  The visit turned out to be memorable for John, mostly because of the bet his sister made with him on the flight down. Years later he recalled that he managed to get through most of the dinner “and my shirttail was in and the milk was upright.” But once dessert arrived, “something caught my attention,” he said. The milk went flying—right into the president’s lap. “He just didn’t even blink,” John said, impressed at how comfortable Nixon appeared to be around young children. Acting as if nothing had happened, the president “just kind of wiped it up.”

  Once she returned to 1040 Fifth, Jackie wrote Pat an effusive thank-you note. “Thank you with all my heart,” Jackie said, pointing to the fact that this marked her first White House visit with the children since Dallas. “A day I always dreaded turned out to be one of the most precious ones I have spent with my children.”

  What touched the Nixons most, however, was the thank-you letter John wrote them, misspellings and all.

  I don’t think I could rember much about the White House but it was really nice seeing it all again. When I sat on Lincolns bed and wished for something my wish really came true.

  I wished that I have good luck at school.

  John was especially fond of the Nixons’ dogs—Vicky the French poodle, a Yorkshire terrier named Pasha, and King Timahoe, an Irish setter. “They were so funny,” John wrote. “As soon as I came home my dogs kept on sniffing me. Maybe they rember [sic] the White House.”

  JFK’s Senate friend-turned-campaign nemesis made another thoughtful gesture when he decided not to upstage Jackie at the September 8, 1971, opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Instead, he turned over the presidential box to Jackie and the Kennedy family. According to her brother Jamie, “whatever bitterness there had been during the 1960 presidential campaign was completely a thing of the past. In the end, she was very fond of Nixon.”

  By then, John had already experienced one of the most memorable summers of his young life. That July, he joined his cousin Tony Radziwill at Drake’s Island Adventure Center off the rugged southwest coast of Great Britain. For two weeks, the boys climbed, canoed, sailed, hiked, and camped—an experience that proved so exciting Jackie vowed that each year John would be treated to at least one such adventure.

  One of John’s early guides in this new world of exploration was Peter Beard, the charismatic photographer, African wildlife conservationist, and Lothario. Staying on Skorpios that entire summer, Beard was now able to indulge what had been a lifelong obsession with the Kennedys—especially the Kennedy women. “Peter was Jackie’s biggest fan,” said his friend Porter Bibb, who described Beard’s interest in John’s mother as “almost a fixation with him. What I saw from Peter when he was around Jackie was that he was coming on to her, and I thought she was amused.”

  Beard’s athleticism, intellect, and boyish good looks (“half Tarzan and half Byron,” wrote one wag) greatly appealed to Jackie’s sister Lee. They carried on their affair under the noses of not only her husband Stas and Jackie, but fellow house guests David Frost and Diahann Carroll as well. (Lee and Stas would divorce in 1974.)

  What Beard brought to Skorpios—and into John’s young life—was what Bibb called his “ferocious energy.” With Ari losing interest in her and the children, Jackie now bluntly told friends that she worried John was going to “wind up a fruit” without a man to “show him the ropes.”

  Beard certainly fit the bill, doing “the kinds of things Bobby used to do with John,” Jackie said—water-skiing, swimming, exploring the island’s rocky terrain with John, wrestling with him on the beach. The time was no less magical for Beard, who described Jackie as being “like a dormitory roommate, completely casual. Great meals, fantastic picnics. It was lush—nonstop Dom Perignon and O.J.”

  Beard was also impressed with Jackie’s son, whom he called “a totally inspired person.” Among other things, Beard noted in his diaries that John was already proving himself to be a gifted mimic—a talent
he carried into adulthood.

  The following spring, Beard led Caroline and John on a snake-hunting tour of the Everglades. Unfortunately, word was leaked to reporters, who staked out the hotel where they were staying. Up early, John noticed a photographer who was fast asleep in the hotel. As he walked past, Jackie’s son broke into his own rooster-strut imitation of Mick Jagger singing “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” Startled awake, the photographer reached for his camera, but too late. John had vanished. (Along with his talent for impersonation, John was a rock aficionado who from this point on would be a passionate fan of the Rolling Stones.)

  Ari, predictably, was no fan of Peter Beard. After he suggested to Beard that he might have overstayed his welcome, the handsome interloper merely shrugged. When Beard, always seeking to make an impression, accidentally cut himself and then dipped a pen in his own blood to make a diary entry, Ari left Skorpios in disgust.

  Onassis had plenty of other reasons to be upset. During the small dinner party he hosted on Skorpios to celebrate Jackie’s forty-second birthday, he got word from Las Vegas that his adored twenty-year-old daughter, Christina, had just married Joseph Bolker, a twice-divorced American real estate developer who happened to be twenty-seven years her senior. Ari simply “went ape,” recalled Johnny Meyer. “I’d seen him fly off the handle plenty of times but never like that.”

  Onassis was jolted again by the secret marriage of his archenemy and business rival, Stavros Niarchos, to his ex-wife, Tina. Niarchos’s former wife, Tina’s sister Eugenie, had died under highly mysterious circumstances; at one point authorities indicted Niarchos for “involuntary homicide.” Now Ari and his children feared Tina might meet a similar fate. “Ari was,” said Meyer, “positively apoplectic.” Christina was even worse. “It was a very emotional time,” Bolker recalled. “A lot of yelling and screaming. A really bad scene.”