Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Joan—The Senator’s Wife

  In January 1963, twenty-seven-year-old Joan Kennedy would start a new life as the youngest wife of the youngest senator ever elected in the United States. After Ted won the election and Joan realized that a move from Boston was imminent, she recruited help from Jackie and Ethel in finding a place to live. Both women had gone through the same process when they had to move to Washington with their husbands, so they were eager to help Joan. Jackie was busy with her duties as First Lady, however, leaving Ethel to do most of the searching.

  Ethel jumped at the opportunity to assist Joan, combing newspapers for rentals, speaking to real estate agents, and contacting friends to ask for referrals. By the time Joan got to Washington in December to take a look at potential residences, Ethel had forty places for her consideration. The two sisters-in-law looked at about fifteen of them before Joan made a decision: a four-bedroom, redbrick home at 31st Street in Georgetown. Ethel was at first adamant that Joan should see the rest of the homes. “But this is your house, and you have to live in it,” she said finally, yielding to Joan’s wishes. “I just think you won’t be here long. It’s too small.”

  When Joan finally was moved in, though, Ethel loved the modest surroundings. “Pretty good choice, this place,” she told her sister-in-law at one luncheon there. Joan beamed.

  Joan’s days became filled with the activities of a senator’s wife, doing such things as shuttling electorates down from Boston on sight-seeing trips to Capitol Hill, attending fund-raisers and luncheons with the other—mostly older—wives, and greeting large tours at the White House, one of the responsibilities of the Kennedy wives. She was also chairman of the Hope Ball and worked for the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation.

  Joan’s had become an exciting, unpredictable life. For instance, shortly after moving to Washington, she vacationed at the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach for a few days. Jack was also there and offered to take Joan—whom he referred to as “The Dish”—back to Washington aboard Air Force One. So off went Joan and the President in the private presidential plane, opulently decorated by Jackie. (“You asked for barbecue steak on that plane, and you were served barbecue steak,” said Secret Service agent Marty Venker. “It was barbecued before your eyes—three inches thick.”) After landing at Andrews Air Force Base, sister-and brother-in-law hopped into a helicopter, took off, and landed a few minutes later on the well-manicured lawn of the White House. Jack went straight to the Oval Office, already late for a meeting, while Joan decided to do a little snooping on the second floor in areas of Jackie’s private living quarters where no one ever dared venture.

  Of course, Joan had often been a guest for dinner at the White House and had attended innumerable parties in the entertaining rooms. Jackie often urged Joan to play piano for the entertainment of the other guests. Joan always complied. After a few songs, Ted would jump up and sing “Heart of My Heart” to everyone’s delight. Joan’s playing was always in tune, while Ted’s baritone was always off-pitch.

  On this day, Joan was alone in Jackie’s bedroom, and while she surely would never have dreamt of looking in the First Lady’s dresser drawers or medicine cabinet, she did sneak a look at her enormous clothes closet. “There was no one home,” Joan once explained of her private moment in the White House, “so one of the maids asked me in and showed me around. And there I was, like any tourist, rubbernecking in my very own sister-in-law’s house.”

  Joan quickly became a popular fixture in Washington, so much so that when columnist Art Buchwald complied his Top Ten list of the city’s most beautiful women for The Washingtonian magazine, Joan was right on top. She wasn’t particularly happy about Buchwald’s compliment, however. “I’d like to be noted for something a little more substantial,” she said.

  There were days Ted would spend in Boston, where he would be invited to a political function. Joan would have to drop whatever she was doing, leave instructions for the help, catch a cab to the airport, race for a plane, and be at his side, looking like a fashion plate, in just a matter of hours. Then she would be off to Japan with Ted as guests of the Japanese Council for International Understanding. Standing next to Cary Grant in the receiving line, Joan wold marvel at the fascinating turn her life had taken. Then back to Washington.

  Those nights alone in Washington were problematic. It had been Ted’s decision that they attend few social gatherings on Capitol Hill because he was hoping to change his image. Ted knew that he was in office largely because of his name, and he was determined to prove himself a capable legislator. He didn’t want to be perceived as a young, frivolous person, and he felt that the less of a presence he and Joan had on the party circuit, the better. He said he didn’t want the Washington gossips to have “anything to chew on.” So Ted spent his nights working in the Senate office building next to the Capitol, while Joan stayed at home, bored and alone.

  While Ted did work hard, his effort to refashion his image into that of a serious politician seemed disingenuous to some observers. Their skepticism might have stemmed from the fact that once he became a senator, his philandering became almost as high-profile as any legislation he hoped to pass.

  Most memorable to all concerned was Ted’s prostitute in Belgium. When he first became a senator, Ted took a trip to Europe, leaving Joan at home. While in Antwerp, Belgium, he was invited by the American ambassador to a dinner party hosted by a wealthy couple in honor of the King and Queen. Ted showed up at the couple’s grand eighteenth-century home obviously inebriated and with a hooker on his arm. Hoping to keep Ted’s guest away from the view of royalty, the hostess hurried Ted and his date into a large, opulently appointed sitting room. Unfortunately, the hooker was so drunk that, while sitting on the antique couch and making out with Ted, she accidentally relieved herself, thereby ruining the priceless fabric. Details of this distasteful incident did make their way back to Joan, who was so humiliated by her husband’s actions that she even sent the Belgian couple a note of apology.

  Despite their problems, Joan and Ted always had a passionate life of their own together. He had been her first lover. “Our good times together were so good,” Joan said many years later. “People look at a relationship from the outside and feel they can then be judgmental about it.” She pointed out that “the little moments, the times that are shared with each other,” were the times that kept the two of them together. “That’s why it makes me so mad when people say, ‘Oh, how could you stay with him?’ ” she observed. “What do they know? How dare they?”

  It’s obvious that Ted and Joan shared a history of not only personal disappointments but also marital highlights, such as the births of their children. She felt that he was one of the few people who knew and understood her. “To think it would be easy for her to end that marriage would be to minimize her feelings for him,” said her friend Joan Braden. “No one can understand another woman’s marriage, not really. The history of their relationship was so important to Joan. It gave her an anchor. She loved Ted, faults and all, whether it made sense to do so or not. I’m sure a lot of people can relate to having had such blind adoration at one point or another in their lives.”

  Of course, the fact that Ted was so important to her was the very reason it hurt so much when he wasn’t with her, and when she suspected he was with another woman.

  “Before I confronted my alcoholism as a disease, I had withdrawn into myself,” Joan would say many years later. “Because I looked pretty, people kept telling me I had everything: a fantastic husband, terrific kids, talent at the piano, brains. They didn’t see how much I was hurting inside. Being a senator’s wife and a Kennedy didn’t help me. Many of my women friends later told me they didn’t call because I seemed unapproachable. So being painted as perfect and pretending everything was terrific was a terrible burden.

  “I’m fine when I’m busy,” Joan added, perhaps alluding to Jackie’s advice to focus on things other than Ted and her marriage to him. “But when I’m alone… well, then it’s often not so
good. The darkness sets in.”

  PART FIVE

  Delighted to Be Pregnant

  “Sacred Heart alumnae, a thousand strong, are taking over the White House for a morning tour. And Mrs. Kennedy is out of town. We need someone to greet them. I promised them a Kennedy wife.”

  It was May 1963 and White House Social Secretary Letitia Baldrige was on the telephone with the President, explaining a situation she had termed “a terrible, terrible dilemma.” Jackie, now pregnant again and due in September, was out of town, and there was no one to greet the Sacred Heart visitors.

  “Well, call Ethel,” said the President. “She’s a Kennedy wife, isn’t she?”

  “Impossible,” said Letitia. “She’s eight months pregnant and feeling big as a house. She says she won’t leave Hickory Hill.”

  “Then call Joan,” suggested the President. “What about her?”

  “She has morning sickness, too. She can’t even get out of bed, the poor dear is so weak.”

  “Joan’s pregnant, too?” he asked, his tone incredulous.

  “Yes,” exclaimed Letitia. “Two months. You knew that, Mr. President. We just made the announcement.”

  “Well, I’d like to keep track,” he said with a chuckle, “but I have a country to run.”

  All three Kennedy wives were pregnant at the same time: Ethel with her eighth child due in June; Joan with her third due in August; and Jackie also with her third due in September. “We’re all delighted to be pregnant again,” Ethel had told the press when Jackie finally announced her pregnancy, five months into it. (She had decided to wait until she felt certain all would go well. Nature did its part in helping Jackie conceal her pregnancy—even in her fifth month she did not look as if she were expecting.)

  “Well, what’ll we do?” Letitia asked the President.

  “I’ll be right down.”

  When the President walked into the White House lobby, he was greeted by a thousand former students of Sacred Heart schools all across the country.

  “I know you wanted to meet one of the Kennedy wives,” he told them, “but they’re all expecting babies, as you may know, and unavailable at this time. My sisters may all be expecting as well,” he joked. “I don’t know. Don’t quote me on that.”

  Everyone laughed.

  Letitia Baldrige recalled, “He gave them five minutes of his time, mentioned every cousin, aunt, or niece who had ever attended Sacred Heart, and he said, ‘You ladies are the best-looking group of women in the world. It has been my honor and privilege to come and speak to you. I’ll tell Jackie, Joan, and Ethel what they missed.’ ”

  The Deaths of Infants Arabella and Patrick

  Jackie Kennedy already had two children—Caroline, born on November 29, 1957, and John Fitzgerald Jr., on November 25, 1960—but John’s was a particularly difficult birth and it was thought that the baby wouldn’t survive because of respiratory difficulties. “Anyone who knew Jackie knew that she loved being a mother,” recalls Jim Ketchum, White House Curator during the Kennedy administration. “I saw a mother who spent a great deal of time with her children and who made it very clear that they were a priority, from the way they were watched over by the Secret Service—she always had problems with that—to the way they were taken care of on a daily basis by Maud Shaw when Jackie was busy. More often than not, though, it would be Mrs. Kennedy pushing the carriage on the South Lawn, Mrs. Kennedy taking them on pony rides, Mrs. Kennedy tending to them day and night. Before anything else, she was a mother, and whatever else happened afterward had to take second place with her time and energy. She got everything done, though. Youth had a lot to do with it, I suppose.”

  Jackie had also been dealt the blow of a miscarriage early in her marriage, as well as a tragic stillborn baby. For the perfectionist that she was, the failure to carry any of her pregnancies successfully to term was devastating. Throughout her life, she had been able to work hard, give her all, and ultimately triumph—she had done everything that was expected and had always managed to exceed expectations. But having a baby was something completely out of her control. It wasn’t like mastering a foreign language, or winning a horse-riding competition, or finding the perfect husband.

  The stillbirth was the most difficult for Jackie to accept. It happened in 1956, just after the Democratic Convention. Jackie’s misfortune at that time was compounded by the fact that Jack had chosen to be on a Mediterranean cruise around Capri and Elba during the final months of her pregnancy. Meanwhile, she had gone to Newport to be with her mother at Hammersmith Farm and wait for the baby there.

  On August 23, 1956, a hemorrhaging Jackie was rushed to Newport Hospital. An emergency cesarean was performed and the baby was stillborn. When she awoke, Jackie found Bobby sitting in a chair, staring at her with tears in his eyes.

  It had actually been Ethel’s idea that Bobby go to Jackie. Though Ethel was in the final stages of another pregnancy herself, her concern was with her sister-in-law. “She’s not as strong as she likes us to believe,” Ethel observed of Jackie. “I know the real Jackie, and she’ll be devastated.”

  The first thing Jackie wanted to know from Bobby was whether the child she had given birth to was a boy or a girl. She still didn’t know that the baby was stillborn. Bobby had to break the news to her: The baby was a girl, and she was dead. In fact, he had already arranged for the infant’s burial. Through a flood of tears, Jackie managed to say that she had chosen a name for a girl: Arabella.

  When Jackie asked if Jack knew what had happened to his daughter, it fell on Bobby to deliver more bad news: Jack could not be reached at sea, “but Eunice is trying her best to locate him.” After a couple of days, when Jack was finally located at the port of Genoa, he claimed to be upset about the news but decided not to return immediately. There wasn’t much he could do about it, he said, ignoring the obvious fact that his wife would need his emotional support during this terrible ordeal, and causing some observers to wonder just what kind of man he really was.

  Some had already been critical of Jack for not being at his wife’s side in the last days of her pregnancy. The fact that he didn’t return at once when his child was born dead was inexplicable, even to his closest friends.

  Two days after Jackie’s tragedy, her sister-in-law Pat Lawford gave birth to a daughter, Sydney. Then, two weeks later, Ethel would give birth to her fifth child, Mary Courtney. At just twenty-eight, Ethel would now be the mother of three boys and two girls, the oldest about to turn six years old.

  It was difficult enough for Jackie to endure the death of her baby, but to be confronted by happy Kennedy pregnancies and successful births all around her made her feel even more inadequate. Making matters worse, doctors speculated that the rigors of the recent convention—which she had insisted on attending because she wanted to support her husband—had probably been “too much” for her. She actually may have lost the baby because of the convention, which made her feel all the more sad about her husband’s abandonment and which also forced her to question her own responsibility in the child’s death. It was a terrible, dark time filled with deep sadness, self-doubt, and recrimination, and she was alone.

  In the end, Jack would be forced to return to the States when the press learned of the stillbirth. George Smathers and Joseph Kennedy convinced him that if he ever wanted to run for President, he had better first run to Jackie, lest he lose the potential vote of every woman in the country.

  Seven years later, in 1963, Jackie was pregnant again, as were her sisters-in-law. However, in May 1963, Joan suffered a miscarriage of a child that was due in August, a month before Jackie’s. (Joan would have another miscarriage in June 1964, and yet another in August of 1969.) Joan had had some difficulty becoming pregnant, and her miscarriages would affect her deeply, especially since Ted had announced early in their marriage that he wanted at least ten children—and he wasn’t joking!

  “It was discouraging and depressing for Joan not to see her way through her pregnancies as Ethel had,” the Ke
nnedy’s family nurse, Luella Hennessey, once said. Hennessey had tended to the births of twenty-six children, including all of Ethel’s. She added that Joan’s self-confidence and self-esteem were further whittled because “she felt she wasn’t as healthy as the others because she had trouble carrying to full term, even though Jackie also had trouble. The problem [with Joan] was in a hormonal deficiency.”

  Two months later, in July 1963, Ethel Kennedy gave birth to her eighth child, another boy, Christopher George—the second son to be delivered on the Fourth of July. Although he was born a week early, the latest addition to the ever-expanding Kennedy brood was healthy in every way. Ethel, on the other hand, was wiped out from this latest pregnancy, and took months to recover fully.

  Although Ethel’s first pregnancy had resulted in deep depression and difficult delivery, her next five had been relatively easy. Being pregnant had never stopped her from going on with her life as usual, including the heated, competitive tennis matches with Bobby (which she usually won). She also continued to participate in the wild games of touch football that took place on weekends at Hickory Hill. With her first six pregnancies, Ethel continued to be extremely active right up to the time of delivery.