Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  But during the birth of Kerry, her seventh child, there had been some complications during delivery and Ethel had been forced to undergo her first cesarean section. When it became clear that her eighth pregnancy, in 1963, would be troubled as well, Ethel was so determined to see it through that, uncharacteristically for her, she gave up all heavy physical exertion. She also became less social, spending most of her time at home. On weekends, when the Kennedy clan gathered for their usual touch football game, Ethel refrained from joining in and instead stayed indoors, resting. On the day of Bobby Jr.’s ninth birthday, she appeared only long enough to see him blow out the candles before scurrying back upstairs to bed. She seemed nervous, even upset, during the entire time she was “expecting,” and was extremely relieved when the baby was born safely.

  As for Jackie, because of her history of troubled pregnancies, doctors were being particularly cautious this time, sharply curtailing her schedule by having her spend as much time as possible at Glen Ora or Squaw Island. But then, on a gray morning on August 7, after returning from the children’s horseback riding lessons on Squaw Island (she and Jack were no longer staying at Morton Downey’s at this time, but at another estate, called Brambletyde), Jackie went walking along the beach. Suddenly, she stumbled and fell. Normally, she would have gotten up, brushed off the sand, and continued walking. But she couldn’t get up this time—there was something wrong, she knew. She was experiencing pains. She dug her nails into the sand and screamed for help. Within seconds, she was surrounded by Secret Service agents, who helped her back to her home, and into bed.

  When the pains did not subside, Jackie called her physician, who, fortunately, was vacationing nearby. Dr. John Walsh, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Georgetown University Medical School, arrived immediately. With the tragedy of her earlier unsuccessful pregnancies weighing heavily on her mind, Jackie was nearly hysterical with fear and dread. A helicopter was summoned, and she was taken to the military hospital at Otis Air Force Base, where she would give birth by cesarean—which had been anticipated all along, as all of her deliveries had been made in this fashion—to a four-pound ten-ounce baby boy. The child was so frail, however, it was decided that he be immediately baptized. He was given the name Patrick Bouvier Kennedy in honor of Jack’s grandfather and Jackie’s dad, Black Jack Bouvier. By the time Jack arrived, Patrick had been placed in an incubator. This time no one had to tell him that he should be by her side; their relationship had deepened at least that much in the years since Arabella’s death.

  Sadly, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy died on August 9 from hyaline membrane disease, a lung ailment common to premature babies. The President was hit hard by his son’s death; many—including Jackie—said they had never before seen him cry. “That was the one time I saw him where he was genuinely cut to the bone,” recalls Secret Service agent Larry Newman. “When that boy died, it almost killed him, too.”

  The First Lady was so overcome with grief that she sealed herself off in her makeshift suite at the military hospital while the press swarmed outside her window. Of course, Jackie received many letters of condolence, but probably none more perplexing—and filled with double meaning—than the one from Jack’s mistress, Mary Meyer. According to Secret Service visitation logs, Jack had been with Mary Meyer at the White House just two evenings before Patrick was born.

  “Dear Jackie,” Mary wrote. “Anything I write seems too little—but nothing that I feel seems too much. I am so, so, so very sorry.”*

  Baby Patrick was the first Kennedy to be buried in the large family plot at Holyhood Cemetery, in Brookline, recently purchased by Joseph Kennedy. As the little white casket was being lowered into the ground, Jack, overwhelmed with grief, put his hand on the coffin as if in a final farewell.

  After Patrick’s funeral, it was Joan who provided the most comfort to Jack during the time he secluded himself at home.

  “She was a rock through this for him,” said Joan Braden. “It was surprising to some. Joan was usually the one you needed to rally around in times of crisis. But for this one, she was there for Jack. I think she wanted to do it for Jackie, too. She felt terrible for what the two of them were going through. In so many ways, Joan was—is—probably the most sensitive person in the family. It’s easy to say someone would do anything for another person, but with Joan Kennedy, it was always the truth.”

  Former Kennedy aide Dave Powers who stayed with Jack at Squaw Island recalled, “The first night [after the funeral], she just sat with him for a long, long time and just talked. There was none of the orthodoxy you might expect from Ethel. No talk about how Patrick was in heaven and happy, but rather just warm, human, simple talk.”

  Jack and Jackie’s Squaw Island home was sparsely and simply furnished with comfortable, upholstered chairs and thick, woven rugs. It was large and airy, and spotlessly clean. On the walls were watercolored seascapes that had been painted by Jackie. As Joan and Jack stood before one of the paintings, Powers heard Joan say, “There’s no explaining what happened. I’m not like Ethel. I don’t know that all things happen for a reason. I just know that things happen.”

  “That they do,” Jack said, his blue eyes tearing up.

  “And when they happen,” Joan continued, “we just have to go on, somehow, and know that we have the strength to carry on. It’s in every one of us, Jack. That strength. It’s our birthright.”

  “Do you have that strength, Joansie?” Jack asked, using Ted’s nickname for her. “Can you get through this life God has given us?”

  Rather than answer the question, Joan embraced the President.

  “I know one thing, Jack. You do,” she said as she held him. “Of all people, you do.”

  “The President listened and was deeply moved,” said Dave Powers. “She left at eleven that night and the President walked with her out to the driveway. ‘You know,’ he told me when he returned to the house, ‘she’s a great girl.’ She was there the next night and the next, and the President was grateful. She did a great deal for him.”

  It would seem, based on the remembrances of others close to the President, that Jack developed a new respect for his sister-in-law and for her unique brand of simple, common, and good sense. She wasn’t afraid to address difficult subjects, which was unusual in the emotionally closed-off Kennedy family and was behavior worthy of admiration, and she was even insightful in her clear-eyed assessment of emotional occurrences.

  Thirty-four-year-old Jackie Kennedy’s mourning after the death of her infant was a private misery, and one the rest of the Kennedys were ill-equipped to handle. It’s never easy for a family to address the tragic death of any newborn. For the Kennedys, who rarely communicated their true feelings to one another, it was nearly impossible to come to terms openly with Patrick’s death. Jackie’s seeming emotional detachment—“I don’t really want to discuss it, thank you”—made some feel that she was “doing just fine under the circumstances.” She wasn’t. This was a darker time for her than most people knew.

  For his part, Jack thought he was helping his wife by sparing her the specific details of Patrick’s illness prior to the baby’s death. “He did so much to protect Mrs. Kennedy at that time,” recalls Pam Turnure, Jackie’s secretary. “I didn’t realize until after Mrs. Kennedy had come home that she hadn’t understood how serious the boy was until he died. But he really protected her from all of this. He had a double concern—for her and for the child.”

  During the grieving process, Jack, at a loss, did the best he could. When Jackie mentioned that she hadn’t heard from Adlai Stevenson, of whom she was very fond, Jack called Arthur Schlesinger to ask him to call Stevenson and have him drop her a note of condolence, “because I think it’ll make her feel a little better.”

  Of course, Jack also had his insensitive moments. “Jackie,” he told her on one blue day, according to what Janet Auchincloss, Jackie’s mother, once said, “we must not create an atmosphere of sadness in the White House because this would not be good for anyon
e—not for the country, and not for the work we have to do.” One might imagine that those words did little to lift Jackie’s spirits, though she would never say one way or the other. Jackie’s well-meaning mother was also at a loss as to how to deal with the matter. “It’ll get better as time goes on,” was all that she could offer her daughter.

  While pregnant, Jackie had decorated a nursery in the White House for Patrick with a white crib, rug, and curtains. The walls were done in blue, as if she had been expecting a boy. Now she was back at the White House, but without a baby. As days turned into weeks, Jackie fell into a disturbing melancholy, staring off into space, crying unexpectedly, and losing her appetite. No one knew what to say to her to console her, nor did they know how to handle her sudden crying jags and her many questions about her own responsibility in Patrick’s death. Perhaps if she hadn’t traveled so much in the early months of her pregnancy, if she had taken better care of herself, the baby would have lived. Hospital psychologists who had been recommended by Jackie’s doctor were not able to convince her to discuss her loss openly with them, nor could the priest that the family had asked to visit her on a regular basis. Feeling that it was the proper course of action to take, everyone in the family avoided the topic of Patrick’s death altogether and tried to act as if it hadn’t occurred.

  It would be Joan, who had suffered her own miscarriage a month earlier, who would prove to be the most sensible when it came to understanding Jackie’s torment about Patrick.

  “I think it hurts her so much more when we’re silent about it, acting as if it hadn’t happened,” Joan said of her sister-in-law at a luncheon with Pat, Eunice, and Ethel. According to what Ethel later explained to her friend Joan Braden, the women were sitting in Ethel’s kitchen in Hickory Hill eating clam chowder, which she always served from a large tureen her mother had given her, a family heirloom of sorts. Ethel had never had a miscarriage or stillbirth, but her last pregnancy had been troubled.

  Ethel looked at Joan with a bewildered expression. “I just can’t believe that’s true,” she said, “that it hurts her for us to be quiet.” She added that if she had suffered such a tragedy, she would want to forget it had ever occurred and certainly wouldn’t want anyone reminding her of it. “I say we should just ask her how she’s doing, but never bring up what happened,” Ethel suggested. “Besides,” she concluded, “Jackie doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Then we should force her to,” insisted Joan. “It’s for her own good. A grieving mother needs to know that she’s not the only one missing her child.”

  “I don’t know,” Ethel relented. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Jack should talk to her. But every time he starts, he gets nervous and goes and changes his shirt.” (Kennedy, always conscious of perspiration, would sometimes change his shirt four times a day.)

  Eunice and Pat disagreed. The topic of Patrick’s death should definitely be verboten, they insisted, regardless of Joan’s opinion and Ethel’s wavering on it.

  “Nobody wanted to bring it up, ever,” said Rose Kennedy’s secretary, Barbara Gibson. “Back in those days, you really didn’t know how to handle such a thing.”

  Because of her own concerns about motherhood, Joan was the most sensitive to Jackie’s emotional distress after the loss of Patrick. “A child is the most precious thing there is,” she had said. However, because her sisters-in-law so adamantly opposed speaking with Jackie about her sadness, Joan unfortunately lost confidence in her instincts. In the end, faced with so much opposition, she decided not to talk to Jackie about her great loss.

  Lee Radziwill Invites Jackie-in-Mourning

  Lee Radziwill, Jackie’s sister, was also unsure about how to deal with Jackie during this difficult period. Though the two often confided in one another, Jackie was not forthcoming about her sadness over Patrick’s death. Besides her emotional torment, Jackie was also in great physical pain at this time. It had been her fourth cesarean, and she was not recovering as quickly as her physician, Dr. John Walsh, had hoped. She was told to curtail all of her social activities for four months. This left Jackie, who was ordinarily a busy woman, completely frustrated. With little to do since Jack’s sister, Eunice, had stepped in and taken over many of her engagements, at the end of two months Jackie was ready to scream.

  “When all else fails,” Lee had said, “try getting away from it all.” Just as she had when Jackie was upset about “The Monroe Matter,” Lee decided that the best remedy for Jackie’s distress would be a vacation. In the fall of 1963, Lee suggested that Jackie take a cruise with her aboard the yacht of wealthy industrialist Aristotle Onassis.

  Jackie first met Onassis at a dinner party in Georgetown in the 1950s, when Jack was a senator. Soon after, during a visit to Rose and Joe’s vacation spot in the south of France, Jack and Jackie had visited Onassis on his yacht, the Christina, docked at Monte Carlo. While Jack was with Winston Churchill, Onassis took Jackie on a tour of his ostentatious cruise liner, a converted 2,200-ton Canadian frigate that cost him a million dollars a year to operate. After that, whenever Aristotle Onassis and his wife, Tina, sailed to the States, they had always made it a point to dine with the young Kennedys.

  Jack and Jackie thought Onassis one of the greatest storytellers they’d ever known. He loved telling Greek myths, fables, and other wild stories—he said that he believed in mermaids, for instance, and swore that a “stuffed mermaid” could be found in a secret location on the Suez Canal. He had held them both captive with tales about his rags-to-riches life, how he had amassed his fortune, and how he loved to spend it. (Much of it was fiction, as Jackie would later learn, but Onassis’s appeal was in his ability as a storyteller, not in his accuracy for detail.) His personal attorney of twenty years, Stelio Popademitrio, recalls of his client Onassis, “He was a bit larger—no, actually substantially larger—than life, and he knew it. Though you could say he was rather ugly, the moment he opened his mouth to speak, he could seduce anyone.”

  When Lee told Ari, as he was known, that Jackie had accepted his invitation to cruise, Ari glowed at the prospect of entertaining the First Lady. (The news, however, did not sit well with the woman with whom he was having a romance, opera star Maria Callas.)

  During Jackie’s recuperation, there had been growing concern about her sister Lee’s budding relationship with Ari, an assignation that would only serve to complicate matters for Jackie. (For the previous four years, Lee had been married to her second husband, the exiled Prince Stanislaw Albert Radziwill, known as “Stas,” pronounced “Stash,” a Polish nobleman who had made his fortune in British real estate.)

  David Metcalfe, an insurance company executive in London, and a friend of Lee’s, told her biographer, Diana DuBois, of Lee’s affair with Onassis: “It was all supposed to be very discreet, but Ari was out in the open because he reveled in publicity. One couldn’t be discreet with Onassis.”

  When the affair was brought to the President’s attention, partly because of a gossip item in the Washington Post, and then confirmed by his aides, he was uneasy about his sister-in-law’s new romance. While he liked Onassis personally, he was not eager to welcome him into the family. Over the years, the Greek millionaire had earned a personal and professional reputation that was shadowy. He had been embroiled in serious legal disputes with the United States government after being indicted for fraud during the Eisenhower years for not paying taxes on surplus American ships. Jack also had a loyalty to Lee’s husband, Stas, who had worked hard on behalf of the Kennedy-Johnson ticket in 1960 and had been very effective for him in Polish communities in the Midwest.

  Jackie agreed that the romance was a problem and, unless Lee was serious about Onassis, not worth the political risks to Jack. In her weakened and exhausted condition, however, she didn’t have much more to say about it.

  Of course, as was wont to happen in the Kennedy clan, other family members had plenty to say about the affair. Ethel, with her eye always on the bigger political picture, had heard about Lee’s involvement with
Onassis and felt that the “situation,” as she called it, was a problem in the making.

  “Talk to your brother about it,” she told Bobby, trying her best to adhere to protocol. “It’s a political liability. If it were personal, I’d speak to Jackie. But since it’s political, you should talk to Jack.”

  Bobby agreed with his wife, and mentioned the matter to Jack, who, in turn, told him to bring it up with Jackie. “She’ll know what to do,” Jack said.

  So, during a private White House luncheon, Bobby pulled Jackie aside and said, “Listen, this business with Lee and Onassis, just tell her to cool it, will you?” Wearily, Jackie said she would “try to look into it” once she was aboard the Christina.

  “Not Ethel’s Best Moment”

  History has always painted a picture of Jackie Kennedy eagerly joining her sister on Aristotle Onassis’s cruise, anxious for a vacation after the tragedy of her baby’s death. Nothing could be further from the truth. Based on the best evidence we now have, Jackie didn’t even want to go.

  Says Lee Radziwill’s Swiss friend, Mari Kumlin, “Lee told me that Jackie was adamant that she wanted to stay with her children. She wasn’t happy, which was precisely the point of the trip.”

  Jackie probably decided to take the trip, however, because it was easier than arguing with Lee about it. It was a pattern in her life, anyway, to get away when she needed time alone to think—whether it was to Glen Ora, Hyannis Port, or to some far-off country.

  In the fall, the White House made it official: The First Lady was going away to rest, recuperate, and recover her peace of mind on a cruise on the Onassis yacht, though it was suggested in the press release that she was a guest of Stanislas Radziwill’s and that Onassis’s yacht had just been secured for the trip. Nevertheless, the decision was bound to stir up controversy, and it did. There were protests in Congress against allowing the First Lady to accept Onassis’s hospitality because of his ruthless reputation. Also, Jack’s advisers warned him that with an election campaign coming up in less than a year, voters would likely be offended at Jackie’s reappearance in the jet set so soon after the death of her baby. And, anyway, suggested the naysayers, why couldn’t Jackie vacation elsewhere?