Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  No one would have dreamed then that John Kennedy would not reach the September of his years but, rather, would be cut down in the prime of his life. Now, with his sudden death, the memory of that family night in Hyannis Port was just as painful as it was touching.*

  At 3:30, Joan’s sister Candy telephoned her from the airport. They had just arrived in Washington. Should they stay? Or turn around and go back to Texas?

  “Oh, no, you must stay,” Joan said, her voice trembling. “There are going to be so many people calling. I’m going to be besieged by reporters. Ted is gone, and I don’t know what to do.”

  An hour later, Joan’s sister and husband arrived. Soon after, there was a knock on the door. With Joan in bed resting, Candy answered it.

  It was the caterer, along with a truckload of food and supplies for Joan’s dinner party.

  “The party’s been canceled,” Candy intoned. “The President is dead.”

  The next couple of days would be some of the most difficult in Joan Kennedy’s life as she stayed behind in Georgetown while all of the other Kennedys were together at Hyannis Port and then at the White House. For the most part, Joan would be about as connected to these historic events as anyone else in the country—any other anonymous citizen—via televised news reports. She would lie in her bed watching the bulletins and the televised images of Jack’s flag-draped coffin in the East Wing of the White House.

  Dejected, wondering how everyone else in her family was faring, and perhaps feeling inadequate, the weeping Joan would probably never feel less a part of the Kennedy family than she did the weekend after her friend and brother-in-law Jack’s death. As if somehow fulfilling her husband’s prophecy, she became weaker until, finally, she had become just what he said she was: helpless. Somehow, she would manage to drag herself to the private mass said by Father Cavanaugh for the family at the White House on Saturday, but by that time she wasn’t at all well.

  At the service, Joan was too distraught to do anything but stare ahead, as if in a trance, on the verge of collapse. Ted didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with her at the White House. To him she was apparently an embarrassment. While Jackie and Ethel, his sisters, and even his mother somehow managed to get through it all, Joan had crumpled. She wouldn’t be able to attend any of the White House functions prior to the funeral or even pay tribute to Jack by visiting his coffin as it lay in state, as would everyone else in the family. After the Mass, Candy took Joan back to her Georgetown home as quickly as possible, where she would stay as though in exile, until the funeral on Monday.

  In Mourning

  As Air Force One carried John F. Kennedy’s casket back to Washington from Dallas, his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, was sworn in on board as President of the United States. LBJ was under considerable pressure at this time, wondering whether or not an organized plot had been behind the death of the President, or even if such a conspiracy would also be suddenly carried out against the Vice President. Johnson was well aware that the CIA had been involved in plots to kill Castro in Cuba and Diem in Vietnam. Suspecting that Kennedy’s death was the result of some form of retaliation, perhaps a Communist force coming against America, he was concerned about the United States appearing weak in the face of such an emergency. The new President was anxious to see the country move forward—or at least appear to do so—in a strong, assured manner, and made swift moves in that regard. For instance, it was Johnson’s idea that a picture of him actually taking the oath be distributed to the media so that an anxious and bewildered country would know that the Constitution worked, or, as Jack Valenti, a key member of the Johnson White House staff (and today president of the Motion Picture Association of America), says, “… that while the light in the White House may flicker, the light just never goes out.”

  Though she didn’t have to do so, Jackie said she wanted to be at Johnson’s side during the swearing-in ceremony. “I owe it to the country,” she told Kenny O’Donnell. She stood at LBJ’s left, her clothes still stained with the blood of her late husband, while Lady Bird Johnson stood to his right. Twenty-seven people witnessed the swearing-in ceremony officiated by Dallas Federal Judge Sarah Hughes in the private presidential quarters of the jet. Later, Jackie would say she barely remembered any of it. Photographs of the moment show her with a blank, hollow expression.

  It could be argued that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was not the best husband to Jackie Kennedy, at least based on his disregard for her feelings about his philandering with Marilyn Monroe, Mary Meyer, and the rest. But, his relationship with his wife aside, Jack is still viewed as one of the most memorable of this country’s leaders, and it is not because of any of his domestic programs or foreign policies. It was really the way he ignited the American imagination, like few before him, that made Kennedy so memorable.

  No doubt, he would have run again. His popularity was high. Of course, one wonders what secrets might have been revealed about Kennedy’s private life during that second campaign. At the time, most Americans had no idea—and probably never would have believed it, anyway—that Kennedy’s personal life was in such disarray. What Jackie was going through as a result of her husband’s personal choices also remained a closely guarded secret. Now, the challenge ahead for young Jackie Kennedy would be to go on with her life, though to some she seemed beaten before she even began. “I want you to know that I consider that my life is over,” she wrote to Ben Bradlee shortly after the assassination. “And I will spend the rest of it waiting for it really to be over.”

  During the loneliest time of night before the funeral, the hours just before dawn, Jackie thrashed in her bed unable to sleep, in spite of the massive doses of tranquilizers administered by her doctor. Impulsively, she sprung out of bed and fervently wrote on her pale blue stationery an impassioned letter to Jack, probably as a way of releasing the fiery emotions burning inside her. She addressed the letter to “My Darling Jack,” and went on to write about the sense of loss that was only just beginning, and about her deep love for him.

  Soon she began crying, but she kept on writing, her tears blotting the stationery. In page after page she scrawled about Caroline and John Jr., about Patrick, and about their marriage and what it had meant in her life.

  Earlier in the evening she had asked the children to do the same, marching into the playroom and saying, “You must write a letter to Daddy now and tell him how much you love him.” In block letters Caroline wrote, “Dear Daddy, We’re all going to miss you. Daddy, I love you very much, Caroline.” John Jr., not old enough to write, simply scribbled on a piece of paper.

  The following morning Jackie slipped the letters, along with a set of cuff links she had given him, into the President’s coffin, which was lying in the East Wing. Bobby added a PT-109 tie pin and an engraved set of rosaries to the items Jackie placed in the casket. Jackie continued to stare at her dead husband, stroking her hair. Then a Secret Service man, realizing what Jackie wanted, brought Jackie a pair of scissors and she clipped a lock of hair from her husband’s corpse.

  On Monday, November 25, 1963, the United States mourned the death of its President, John F. Kennedy. Kennedy’s casket was carried on the very same gun wagon caisson that had carried the body of Abraham Lincoln. In fact, when planning it, Jackie had patterned the funeral after Lincoln’s. It seemed appropriate. Both Kennedy and Lincoln had captured the imagination of their fellow Americans, firing up the conscience of humanity through words and deeds, meeting the emotional needs of their constituents. Both were struck down while at the height of their persuasive power.

  Jackie approached Jack’s funeral with the same fierce loyalty and dedication with which she approached all her activities during the Kennedy administration, from the restoration of the White House to the planning of her celebrated wardrobe. A riderless horse with stirrups reversed walked alongside the carriage. Behind it strode the First Lady, a model of self-control and dignity.

  Like some beautiful, ancient Greek heroine Jackie would become immortaliz
ed in a national tragedy. The meticulous manner by which she planned the funeral created images that were seared into the minds of a generation and of generations to come—the serene and composed widow holding the hands of her small children walking on either side of her; later, Jackie, followed by Bobby and Ted and an array of world leaders, walking erect and poised behind the carriage carrying her husband’s coffin, her stoic face covered by a black translucent veil. The nation was pierced by the gesture of the slain President’s little son saluting the casket, gently urged on by his young mother. It was an image that would be constantly broadcast thirty-six years later when, tragically, John Kennedy Jr. would follow his father in unexpected, violent death.

  It really was her public strength and impeccable dignity that had enabled Jackie Kennedy to help America endure one of the saddest and longest weekends it has ever known. Regal and poised, her resolve held the country together. “During those four endless days,” Ted Kennedy would say thirty-one years later at Jackie’s own funeral, “she held us together as a family and as a country. In large part because of her, we could grieve and then go on.”

  Inside, however, Jacqueline Kennedy was shattered. Those close to her often took note of the way the full extent of the horror she had experienced would suddenly overwhelm her. One witness, an assistant to Sargent Shriver, recalled his observation of Jackie at a small Mass for the President’s friends, family, and servants preceding the television funeral: “She takes the five steps to the casket and quickly kneels down, almost falling on the edge of the catafalque. Her hands hang loosely at her sides. She lays her forehead against the side of the casket. She picks up the edge of the flag and kisses it. Slowly she starts to rise. Then, without warning, Mrs. Kennedy begins crying. Her slender frame is rocked by sobs, and she slumps back down. Her knees give way. Bobby Kennedy moves up quickly, puts one arm around her waist. He stands there with her a moment and just lets her cry.”

  Somehow, the night of the funeral, Jackie and other family members managed to celebrate John Jr.’s third birthday. After the party, Jackie and Bobby visited Jack’s graveside at Arlington National Cemetery. Followed by Secret Service agents, they approached the burial site slowly, Jackie supported by Bobby, who seemed to hold her up by her elbow. The two knelt by the grave and said a silent prayer. Then they walked away from Jack, though he would never be far from their hearts. A bouquet of lilies of the valley was left at his grave by his wife.

  Tea with Lady Bird

  The day after the funeral Jackie stayed at the White House, dwelling on all that had occurred and writing emotional, heart-wrenching letters to those whose support meant so much. Also on her calender was a date for tea at 3 P.M. with Lady Bird Johnson in the private family sitting room on the second floor, called the West Hall.

  “Lady Bird had that kind of warm, Southern hospitality and personality that Jackie needed at this time,” recalls Secret Service agent Joseph Paolella, who observed the two women from time to time. “She was nurturing during a time when Jackie was in such a state of shock. As a woman, she understood what Jackie was going through. In fact, I used to wonder how a guy like LBJ could get such a sweet wife, because he wasn’t a real nice guy.”

  Liz Carpenter, Lady Bird Johnson’s press secretary, recalls, “People were always asking Lady Bird if she and Jackie were good friends. Lady Bird felt awkward about being so presumptuous as to say that they were, so she asked me to talk to Letitia Baldrige about it. ‘How should we answer the question?’ I asked. ‘Why, say yes, of course,’ Letitia told me. ‘She is a close friend, because Jackie doesn’t have many close friends. Definitely say yes.’ ”

  In some ways Lady Bird thought of Jackie as a daughter and was always available to her for emotional support whenever she needed it. She saw a side of Jackie that most people wouldn’t have dreamed existed. For instance, it was known by all that the sophisticated and worldly Jackie “simply adored” (as she once put it) expensive jewels, but Lady Bird liked to tell of the adolescent enthusiasm Jackie would display when gifted with new pieces. For Christmas 1961, Lady Bird gave Jackie a black pearl ring. In her promptly written thank-you note on the day after the holiday, Jackie wrote that, in her view, the black pearl “was always the most romantic, exotic piece of jewelry!” Like a schoolgirl she gushed, “I never imagined that I would be fortunate enough to have such a jewel!”

  Now, just two years later, such simple frivolity was the farthest thing from their minds. Both women were dressed in simple, black, knee-length dresses, Jackie in matching high heels and Lady Bird in more “sensible” shoes. Jackie wore no jewelry; her face seemed drained of all color. Looking painfully thin, she seemed barely able to walk without leaning against the furniture she would pass.

  “You really don’t look well, dear,” Lady Bird told her.

  “I don’t feel well, either,” Jackie said. “In fact, I never will again, Lady Bird. I’m sure of it.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Why should I bother?” Jackie answered. “Who cares what happens to me now?”

  The new First Lady didn’t know what to say to her predecessor. She herself was suffering from persistent chills and insomnia, all the result of being so affected by JFK’s gruesome murder. For Lady Bird, it was as if the tragic images had been indelibly etched into her consciousness. For instance, immediately after the shooting, as she and Lyndon Johnson were being rushed into the hospital, Lady Bird took a quick look over her shoulder to see if she could find Jack. “I saw in the President’s car a bundle of pink, just like a drift of blossoms, lying on the backseat,” she recalled. “It was Mrs. Kennedy, lying over the President’s body.”

  According to a family member of Lady Bird’s (who would speak only under a condition of anonymity as long as the former First Lady is alive), it was during the course of their tea together that afternoon that Jackie and Lady Bird had their first and only discussion about their husbands’ philandering, veiled as the topic was during their talk.

  Like Jackie, Lady Bird also knew that her husband had mistresses over the years. (The competitive LBJ would become incensed when he would hear about Kennedy’s female “conquests.” He would bang his fist on the table and say, “Why I had more women by accident than he ever had by design.”)

  According to what Lady Bird later told her relative, Jackie seemed as if she needed some confirmation that Jack truly loved her. “Know that our husbands have loved us greatly, Jackie, but in their own time and in their own way,” the older and more experienced woman told her.

  “Why, I wonder, have we put up with so much?” Jackie wanted to know.

  Grabbing Jackie by the hand, Lady Bird no doubt looked at her with warm, understanding eyes as she said, “Because we know that thing that only women like us can understand. Great men have great flaws.”

  Then, while Lyndon met with Alliance for Progress members in the East Wing, Jackie and her successor walked through the White House discussing furniture and staff members. All the while, Jackie passed on helpful tips, patiently explained her work, and reminisced about her days there with Jack. Lady Bird was moved by Jackie’s passion for the place, and remembered “an element of steel and stamina somewhere within her to keep her going.”

  The French chef was excellent, Jackie told Lady Bird, but the food he made was too rich. “Jack never likes those rich foods,” she said, reminding Lady Bird of JFK’s weak stomach. Lady Bird noticed that Jackie referred to her husband in the present tense.

  As they walked into the Yellow Room—Jackie’s favorite, where the Cezannes were hanging—Lady Bird noticed a folded flag on the table, from the funeral. It was intended for Joseph Kennedy; Jackie would be bringing it to Jack’s father later in the week.

  “Leaving here is the hardest thing for me to do,” Jackie told her.

  “Please stay as long as you like,” Lady Bird told her. “We want you here for as long as you want to be here.”

  Jackie asked Lady Bird if the White House school on the third floor—where Car
oline and twenty other youngsters of White House employees attended kindergarten and the first grade—could stay open until the semester’s end. She said she didn’t want to disrupt Caroline’s education. After the semester, the school would be moved to the British Embassy. Lady Bird was happy to oblige.

  “Don’t be frightened of this house,” Jackie told Lady Bird before they parted company. “Some of the happiest years of my marriage were spent here.”

  After the new First Lady departed, Jackie sat down and wrote a long letter to Lyndon Johnson to thank him for his involvement in Jack’s funeral.

  Jackie and Bobby had led a march from the White House to St. Matthew’s Cathedral, where the funeral service was held. President Johnson overruled the Secret Service’s wishes that he not participate in the march saying, “I’d rather give my life than be afraid to give it.” He walked behind the casket, and Jackie was moved by the gesture.

  “Thank you for walking yesterday, behind Jack,” she wrote on blue onionskin paper on her first night in the White House alone, after the funeral. In the letter that, many years later, she agreed to have displayed in the Lyndon Johnson Library, she noted that she realized that Johnson had probably been surrounded by people who were concerned that he should take such a risk, and that she was grateful that he had been unmoved by their wishes.

  Previously, on the night of the assassination, Johnson had written letters to John Jr. and Caroline, telling them of Jack’s importance to the country, and recognizing their deep, personal loss. In her own note to the new President, Jackie now mentioned how much Caroline and John Jr. “loved” LBJ, and said that she believed his letters to her children would have great sentimental value to them in the future.