These Few Precious Days

by Christopher Andersen

  To the White House press corps, there was no more familiar sight than John waiting impatiently on the South Lawn for his father’s helicopter to land. The president then climbed down the helicopter steps and stretched out his arms to greet his son—only to have John dash straight past him toward the chopper.

  By early 1963, whenever Marine One landed to whisk the president away, John would plead, “Daddy, please don’t leave me.” It wasn’t long before Jack started taking the boy with him to Andrews Air Force Base, then kissing him goodbye before he was choppered back to the White House.

  There were times when Jack couldn’t take the boy along to Andrews, and on one of those occasions the president reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny plastic plane. “Here’s a toy airplane for you until I get back,” he told John. “You fly this one, son, and as soon as you grow up Daddy’s going to buy you a real one.”

  As much as John liked his plastic plane, his favorite plaything was the toy helicopter he got for Christmas. White House photographer Cecil Stoughton guided John’s hand as the boy wrote his name on the toy. “It was,” Stoughton said decades later, “his first autograph.”

  Even when there were no helicopters around, John amused himself by pretending to be one. Arms extended and imitating the sound of a rotor, the boy spun around until he toppled over, giggling, from dizziness. Soon the president had a new nickname for his frisky son: Helicopter Head.

  There were quieter, more private moments between JFK and his son. Jack would take John to the hangar where Marine One was parked and, said Maud Shaw, sit “patiently inside the helicopter, putting the helmet on John and showing him how things work, moving gadgets for him just like a big boy.” Soon “Captain John” was in the pilot’s seat, confidently issuing orders to the president—orders that JFK convincingly pretended to obey.

  On the afternoon of March 28, 1963, Jack summoned Stoughton to the West Wing. When Stoughton arrived, his boss was already on the terrace outside the Oval Office. Caroline and John, wearing the matching red winter outfits their mother had picked out for them, were dashing between Daddy’s legs, “laughing and giggling,” Stoughton recalled. “Nothing got to John and Caroline like the Tunnel Game. The President would squeeze his knees together and trap them, then give them a pat on their behinds as they squirmed through. They were in hysterics by the time he was finished with them.”

  Later JFK sat on the steps with his son for a few minutes, playing with a toy palomino pony John had been given for Christmas. Then the president walked Caroline and John back toward his office. Before they went inside, the trio turned around and posed for Stoughton. Jack, clutching both children’s hands, grinned broadly.

  Suddenly Stoughton’s job—and those of photographers like Jacques Lowe and Stanley Tretick—had gotten a little easier. “Mrs. Kennedy seemed a little more relaxed about having the children photographed,” said Stoughton, whose photographs captured a father clearly besotted with his children. “He was enjoying his kids … but he really came to understand them and he played with them in that marvelous way that some people have and others don’t.” To Stoughton, it seemed JFK “was enjoying them even more now, if that was possible. Obviously, he was excited about the new baby, although at the time none of us knew about it.”

  Jackie knew that her husband was hoping for another boy, although he would never admit it. Certainly his bond with Caroline was stronger than it had ever been. He also was counting on her to help Maud Shaw keep John in line. “Now, Buttons,” he told Caroline, “you’re the big sister. You outrank John, so don’t let him forget who’s boss.”

  It wasn’t easy. “A lot of the time,” Evelyn Lincoln recalled, Caroline “talked about her brother misbehaving. That was a favorite topic of hers.” Rose Kennedy’s secretary, Barbara Gibson, recalled that Caroline was “always after him, ‘John, do this’ and ‘You’re not supposed to do that, John.’” After one particular sleigh ride at the White House, Caroline dashed off a note to Grandma Rose complaining that her brother was a “bad, squeaky boy who tries to spit in his mother’s Coca-Cola and who has a very bad temper.”

  THAT TEMPER WAS IN EVIDENCE whenever John, who had a tough time pronouncing “Caroline,” felt he was being upstaged by “Cannon.” One week Caroline pestered half the White House staff with the riddles she had learned from friends at school. It was only a matter of time before John piped up with, “Miss Shaw, I know a riddle, too.”

  “Yes, John,” she said, “and what’s your riddle?”

  John thought for a moment before shouting, “Um … apples, giraffes, and alligators!”

  Miss Shaw gave it some thought. “I’m afraid you’ve stumped me,” she answered. Delighted, John ran to tell Caroline the news.

  Only one thing troubled JFK about his son’s upbringing at this point. The saga of PT‑109 and Kennedy’s own World War II exploits notwithstanding, he told Stoughton he was worried about what impact all the parades, wreath-layings, color guards, and twenty-one-gun salutes were having on his son. “I’m concerned about John’s fascination with military things,” JFK said. “He’s right there when he sees guns, swords, or anyone wearing a uniform.”

  “Why don’t you just stop letting him watch the parades?” Stoughton asked.

  That, of course, was not about to happen. “I guess we all go through that phase,” the president mused. “John just sees more of the real thing.”

  This sudden concern on JFK’s part may have been a direct result of his staring down the barrel at Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis. “Like a lot of men of his generation who had been to war,” journalist Theodore White observed, “Kennedy hated to see it glorified.” Ironically, it was Jackie who made sure John got a ringside seat for the marches and military ceremonies. “She’d come outside and stand behind the bushes and hold him up,” Baldrige said, “just so he could get a clear view.”

  NOW THAT SHE WAS WELL into her second trimester, Jackie cut her official schedule down to only one evening event for the entire month of March 1963—a state dinner on March 27 for thirty-three-year-old King Hassan II of Morocco. Hassan, who wore his white dress uniform, presented JFK with a gold sword encrusted with diamonds. Jackie, dressed for the occasion in a floor-length white silk gown embroidered with colored gemstones, was enthralled with the dashing monarch and would later write a five-page letter to him in French promising to visit Morocco.

  In the meantime, the Kennedys provided their visitors with one of the more memorable evenings at the White House. At dinner JFK pointed out in his toast that Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States, and he read George Washington’s thank-you letter to the Morocco’s ruler.

  JFK’s Harvard classmate and friend Alan Jay Lerner had imported the entire cast of his hit Broadway musical Brigadoon to entertain that evening, and Tish Baldrige had prepared for every eventuality. Because of the limited space in the East Room, taped music was used in lieu of the Marine Band. When the president expressed concern that the tape might break, Tish reassured him that a backup tape would be running at the same time.

  All went smoothly until the halfway mark, when an extra spotlight was turned on and blew a fuse, thrusting the East Room into total darkness. A dozen Secret Service agents drew their guns and rushed to every exit and window. The president, unable to see his hand in front of his face, leaned in the direction of his guest of honor. “Your Majesty,” he whispered reassuringly, “it’s part of the show, you know.”

  Once the lights came back on two minutes later, the first lady glanced over at her husband—and winked. She knew it wasn’t the first time the president had been called upon to calm his guests. The year before, Metropolitan Opera singers were performing Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte for the children of diplomats when the feathered turban worn by one of the stars touched a wall sconce and burst into what Baldrige described as a “towering mass of flame.” A fire extinguisher took care of the problem within seconds, but even though the president threw his arms around the terrifi
ed children, they kept crying. So, Baldrige said, JFK “burst out laughing … [and] with the sight of President laughing and laughing, well, they started laughing too, and soon the whole room was laughing.”

  By April 1, the Kennedys had moved out of Glen Ora, and Wexford, their new Virginia hideaway at Rattlesnake Mountain, was nearing completion. Her supply of large yellow legal pads always at the ready, Jackie spent the next few weeks jotting notes about everything from plumbing fixtures and doorknobs to room colors, draperies, furniture, and landscaping. From this point on, Jackie, aware that the name “Rattlesnake Mountain” might give her husband’s detractors some ammunition in the coming 1964 elections, called the site Atoka after the hamlet where it was situated.

  While construction continued apace in Virginia, Jackie looked around for another spot secluded enough to serve as a weekend retreat. For whatever reason, Jackie and Jack had both shied away from using FDR’s old Navy-operated refuge, Shangri-La—which Dwight Eisenhower later renamed Camp David after his grandson—convinced that the 125-acre compound would not be to their liking. “Jack always said, ‘It’s the most depressing-looking place,’” Jackie recalled, “which it is—from the outside.”

  For two years, JFK’s naval aide Taz Shepard kept “pestering and pestering him to go there,” Jackie said. “And Tish used to say to me, ‘The Navy’s so hurt and demoralized he won’t go there.’” Another strong advocate for Camp David was Clint Hill, who tried for years to persuade Jackie to give Camp David a try.

  On the spur of the moment in March 1963, they finally went—and Jackie was surprised to discover Camp David offered everything they had been looking for in the way of a family retreat. Laced with hiking and riding trails winding through the scenic Catoctin Mountains, Camp David boasted a swimming pool, a bowling alley, skeet shooting facilities, and both a driving range and a putting green.

  The main residence, a rambling timber-and-stone structure called Aspen Lodge, was surrounded by several luxuriously appointed guest cabins with names like Hickory, Rosebud, and Dogwood. Once Jackie explored the premises, she was pleased—and perhaps a little embarrassed—to discover that, without her having to ask, new stables had been constructed specifically for Macaroni and Sardar.

  Through the spring of 1963, as they waited for Wexford to be completed, the first family spent nearly every available weekend at Camp David. From this point seventy miles northwest of Washington, the inveterate history buffs embarked with Caroline and John on tours of great Civil War battlefields. One weekend, they piled in Jack’s white Lincoln convertible and drove to Gettysburg. The next, they were off to Antietam by helicopter.

  Sticking to her decision to stay off horses during her pregnancy, Jackie spent the first week of April with her husband and children at the White House. On April Fool’s Day, the president took a break from hammering out the details of a proposed Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Russians and went looking for his children on the White House grounds. He wandered down to the children’s playground and found Caroline and John picnicking in the noonday sun. Three days later, with the orange-red tulips outside the South Lawn already in bloom, Jackie invited several children from the White House school to swim with Caroline and John in the South Lawn fountain. When John refused to come out, the first lady kicked off her shoes and waded into the fountain to retrieve him.

  Such happy family scenes were repeated in Palm Beach, where the Kennedys would once again spend the Easter holiday. Jackie flew out first, and when JFK arrived in Florida the next day aboard Air Force One she rushed up to greet him with hugs and kisses. “She thought they were way out of camera range, so it wasn’t for our benefit,” said one reporter. “There was obviously a genuine warmth between them that we hadn’t seen that often before—they were such private people … A lot of us got the feeling something was up.”

  Wearing the sleeveless Lily Pulitzer dresses JFK had bought for them on Worth Avenue, Jackie and Caroline showed John how to color Easter eggs; later, Mom and Maud Shaw stashed them around the house for the children to find. The first family was photographed coming out of pre-Easter services at vine-covered St. Edward’s Church. But for the second time since the family patriarch suffered a stroke, they also attended a private mass with Joe at the ambassador’s estate, La Guerida.

  The president never attended one of the famous Easter egg rolls on the White House lawn, but he and Jackie did take their children to an Easter egg hunt at the Wrightsman estate that morning. John found a gold egg, which he proceeded to carry around with him for the rest of the day.

  That afternoon, JFK was relaxing on the deck of the Honey Fitz with Red Fay when they spotted a catamaran with Pattycake emblazoned across its stern. “Let’s have some fun,” he told Fay. Ten minutes later the president was at the tiller, steering the catamaran into open water while Pattycake’s beaming owner looked on.

  Jackie’s pregnancy remained a tightly guarded secret, but she was starting to make coy remarks here and there: “My bust is bigger than yours, but then so is my waist,” she told a bewildered Tony Bradlee over dinner. At the same dinner party, Jackie abruptly switched gears and began teasing her husband about his fondness for Ben Bradlee’s wife. “Oh, Jack, you know you always say Tony is your ideal.” The president went along with the joke—“Yes, that’s true”—before looking into his wife’s eyes and suddenly turning serious. “You’re my ideal, Jacqueline,” he said.

  The occasional obtuse hint aside, Jackie managed, in every sense of the word, to keep her condition under wraps. So it came as a jarring surprise to the Washington press corps and to the nation when Jackie made the official announcement from Palm Beach on April 15, the day after Easter. A simultaneous statement from Pierre Salinger further explained that, on the advice of her doctors, Jackie was canceling her official schedule.

  Only once before—when Grover Cleveland’s daughter Esther was born in 1893—had the wife of a president given birth while her husband was still in office. (Esther retained the honor of being the only baby actually born in the White House.) Esther Cleveland was now sixty-eight years old, married to a retired British army officer and living in Yorkshire. The press wasted no time hunting the hapless woman down and peppering her with questions.

  One of the first congratulatory notes Jackie read in Palm Beach was from Roswell Gilpatric, the patrician New York lawyer who now served as defense secretary Robert McNamara’s deputy. The first lady made no effort to conceal her affection for the fifty-seven-year-old, Yale-educated Gilpatric, and their flirtatious behavior over the past two years had not gone unnoticed by the president or Madelin Gilpatric, the third of Ros’s five wives. “They were certainly very, very close,” said Madelin, who would file for divorce in 1970 over her husband’s unflagging devotion to Jackie. “Just say it was a particularly close, warm, long-lasting relationship.”

  NOW THAT SHE WAS CLEARING her calendar (“No more ladies’ lunches!”), Jackie looked forward to a few more days in Palm Beach before moving on to spend the summer in Hyannis. She went ahead with plans to be at the White House for the state visit of Luxembourg’s Grand Duchess Charlotte, in part because Caroline had been teaching her brother how to bow for their royal visitor.

  To guarantee success, Maud Shaw promised both children cookies and ginger ale as a reward after they greeted the grand duchess. Unfortunately, just as Jackie was introducing her son to the grand duchess, John threw a major tantrum. He fell to the floor and remained there, motionless.

  “John,” Jackie said, “get up this minute.”

  The boy refused to budge.

  Jackie turned to an aide. “Would you ask Miss Shaw to come in?” she sighed.

  The chagrined nanny came to Jackie’s rescue, scooping John up and whisking him away. “Now what on earth did you do that for?” she asked John. “That’s not being my big boy, is it?”

  “But Miss Shaw,” he tried to explain, “they didn’t give me my cookie.”

  Caroline, in the meantime, rolled her eyes with mortificat
ion, then executed a perfect curtsy. Later, she enjoyed her reward in front of her brother. “You were very naughty, John,” Caroline said with a wag of her finger. “That’s why you don’t get a cookie.”

  Nureyev and Fonteyn almost put JFK to sleep, but he was eager to see the dance recital Caroline’s White House kindergarten class staged that May. Caroline’s mom came up with the concept—a tribute to White House chef René Verdon—and even designed the costumes: paper toques blanches and leotards. Jack’s “Buttons” stepped boldly out front while a chorus line of youngsters danced holding serving trays from the pantry. For part of the show, Jackie rested her head on the president’s shoulder. When the curtain came down, he led the packed house in a standing ovation.

  Jackie had plenty of time to devote to her children, but she stuck to her pledge to sharply curtail her schedule. The fact that she was not the only pregnant Kennedy further complicated matters for Tish Baldrige. When a thousand Sacred Heart alumnae showed up for a White House tour, Tish scrambled to find someone to greet them.

  “I promised them a Kennedy wife,” she told JFK over the phone. Ethel was eight months pregnant (again) and felt too uncomfortable to leave Hickory Hill. When Jack suggested Joan, Tish reminded him that she, too, was pregnant—“two months along and suffering from morning sickness.”

  With Ethel, Jackie, and Joan all pregnant at the same time, the president had no choice but to do the job himself. “I know you wanted to meet one of the Kennedy wives,” he explained, “but they’re all expecting babies, as you may know … My sisters may all be expecting as well,” he cracked, “I don’t know. Don’t quote me on that.”

  Around the same time, Alan Jay Lerner and singer Eddie Fisher (both fellow patients of Max Jacobson) teamed up to produce a forty-sixth birthday extravaganza for their friend the president. Like the previous year’s memorable Madison Square Garden party, this one at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria was a celebrity-packed Democratic Party fund-raiser. Unlike the previous year, Jackie was there.