Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Joan was taken directly to the emergency room to see Ted; she was horrified by what she saw before her: her battered husband lying on a bed inside an oxygen tent with tubes sticking out of his nostrils, one coming from his chest, and blood flowing into his body by transfusion. He looked up at her and tried to force a weak smile. Saying her name seemed to sap him of any strength he had left. “I’m okay,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” Then he drifted off.

  After the plane hit the ground, its wings sheared off by tree branches, it cartwheeled in a death roll, its roof torn off. At the moment of impact, Ted had been half standing, looking at the control panel and trying, in his panic, to assist the pilot in some way. He was thrown about the cabin like a rubber ball. Birch and Marvella Bayh were miraculously uninjured. The pilot of the plane, forty-eight-year-old Ed Zimny, was killed instantly. (A year and a half earlier, Zimny had flown Jackie’s mother, Janet Auchincloss, to Rhode Island to accompany baby Arabella Kennedy’s body after it was exhumed to be reburied next to her father, JFK.) Ted’s aide, forty-one-year-old Ed Moss, died seven hours later after brain surgery.

  Ted was not expected to live through the night. With his back broken in three places, he had no feeling in his legs and was bleeding internally. His left lung had partially collapsed, he had two broken ribs, and his blood pressure reading was erratic and dangerously low. It was feared that if he did survive, he would be a paraplegic. The doctors decided not to tell Joan of the gravity of Ted’s condition, however, because they sensed that she would not be able to take the news. In fact, Joan was so shaken that she had to be helped from the room. Hospital officials suggested she get immediate rest.

  After Phoebe helped her undress, Joan climbed into the bed in the room that was reserved for Ted should he ever be well enough to leave the emergency ward. Later, the Dowds and some other visitors swarmed around Joan in her hospital bed. The hospital sent in coffee.

  “Call Cardinal Cushing,” Joan said. “He should know what has happened. He should pray. Tell him I spoke to Ted,” she said, weakly. “He looked terrible. Oh, my God. What if he can’t walk? He’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Oh, my God, poor Ted.” By the time Bobby arrived at four in the morning, Joan was asleep. When she awakened at eight, she and Bobby began a vigil at Ted’s bedside.

  On Saturday afternoon the other Kennedys began arriving, while Bobby held an impromptu press conference. Eunice, Jean, and Pat joined Joan at Ted’s bedside. Ethel stayed behind at Hickory Hill with the children. When Jackie arrived later in the day, the scene outside the hospital was one of sheer pandemonium. She looked at the reporters with disdain and hurried into the hospital, muttering under her breath.

  “Where’s Joan?” she asked as soon as she saw Pat. “I have to see her.”

  When Jackie found Joan at Ted’s bedside, the two women walked into the hallway and embraced tightly.

  “Thank God he’s alive,” Jackie told her as doctors and nurses gawked at her. “We just have to thank God he’s alive.”

  “What would I do if he had died?” Joan asked.

  With no answer to that question, Jackie just shook her head.

  “It’s a curse,” Joan said, as members of the medical staff listened in on the conversation. “I know now that it’s a curse.”

  Joan told Jackie she had once heard that a gypsy had put a curse on the entire Kennedy family in the late twenties after having been evicted from a housing project owned by Joseph Kennedy.

  “This woman spat in Grandpa’s face and gave him the evil eye,” Joan told Jackie. “And now we’re supposedly all doomed.”

  “Oh, my God,” Jackie exclaimed. “Do you believe that, Joan?”

  “What if this is true?” Joan said, anxiously. “I mean, can we just discount it? Look at the things that have happened. Can we chalk it up to coincidence?”

  Jackie was speechless. “I… I…” she began. “I suppose anything is possible.” Jackie urged Joan to relax; she was concerned about her sister-in-law because she was well aware of the emotional and physical strain that could result from a miscarriage, and Joan’s was so recent.

  Meanwhile, Bobby reaffirmed to the reporters who had congregated in a conference room that this latest tragedy would not force the family out of politics—even though, privately, he wasn’t so sure about that.

  “The Kennedys intend to stay in public life,” he said. “Good luck is something you make. Bad luck is something you endure.”

  Afterward, Bobby pulled columnist Jimmy Breslin aside and said, “I was just thinking—if my mother hadn’t had any more children after the first four, she would have nothing now. I guess the only reason we’ve survived is that there are more of us than there is trouble.”

  By Saturday evening, Ted’s condition began to stabilize and it had become clear that his spinal cord had not been severed. In time he would walk again, but his recovery would be a slow and painful one. Joan was relieved, though still extremely shaken by the deaths of the two men who were also aboard. That night she asked to be shown the hospital’s chapel. She went inside and knelt at the altar for ten minutes, perhaps thanking God for sparing her husband, perhaps praying for the immortal souls of the two men who died in the crash. Soon after, Jackie followed her into the chapel and the two women knelt together, not saying a word. How far they had come in such a short time, from the discussion of Jack’s victory on a Hyannis Port beach three and a half years earlier to a chapel in a strange hospital, thanking God for not taking Ted the way He had so violently taken his brother. The three Kennedy sisters joined them, and together the five women prayed in silence.

  The next morning, Joan had three dozen red roses delivered to the chapel in honor of the deceased. (On Sunday, truckloads of candy and flowers would arrive for Ted, which Joan then graciously sent on to cheer other hospital patients.)

  After his press conference, Jackie cornered Bobby in the cafeteria.

  “Oh, Bobby, we have such rotten luck, don’t we?” she said as soon as she saw him. The two embraced tightly.

  “It’s going to be okay, Jackie,” Bobby said. “Don’t worry about Teddy. Nothing can stop him.”

  “I’m just so…” Jackie began.

  “Tired?” Bobby said, looking at her with a smile.

  “Yes, tired. I wonder how much more are we expected to take.”

  “Hopefully, not much,” he responded. “Hopefully, not much.”

  At 6:45 P.M., after Jackie and Bobby had enjoyed a light snack together, they were summoned to a telephone. It was President Johnson calling from the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. Johnson had sent four Walter Reed Army Hospital specialists to Cooley Dickinson Hospital to assit in Ted’s treatment, and was calling to express his concern. Of course he was taping the conversation.

  “He’s got a lot of broken bones and his back is in bad shape, but he’s not paralyzed,” Bobby told Lyndon. “It’s going to take anywhere from six months to a year, but he’s going to be fine.”

  “Looks like you have more than you can bear,” LBJ said. “But you’re a mighty brave fellow and you have my sympathy and all your family, and any way in the world I can help, I’m just as close as the phone….”

  “Jackie just wants to say hello to you, too,” Bobby said, handing her the phone. Drained, Jackie leaned up against a wall, the phone in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

  “Mr. President?”

  “My dear, it looks like you have more than you can bear,” LBJ told her.

  “Yeah, oh boy… for a day,” Jackie said. “I just wanted to say, you were so nice to call.”

  Johnson then told Jackie that he had spoken to Dr. Thomas Corriden, one of Ted’s doctors, and that he had assured him that Ted would live. “Yes, everything’ll be all right,” Jackie agreed.

  “Give Joan a hug for me,” Lyndon told Jackie.

  “I will,” she said as she tried to rush off the line.

  “Thank you, Jackie.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President.”


  Joan Wins the Election for Ted

  On the Monday after Ted Kennedy’s plane accident, a strategy meeting was scheduled with Ted’s political planners, Gerry Doherty and Eddie Boland, and Kennedy’s press representative, Ed Martin. Joan also attended. She had been told that Ted would be out of commission for some time—many months, probably. Not only was he physically impaired, but he was emotionally devastated by the crash. Ed Moss had been a close friend, much more than just an administrative aide. The two had enjoyed a special relationship; Ted could always count on Ed as being one of the few people not so intimidated by the Kennedy mystique that he would not give him an honest appraisal. He would be greatly missed.

  What now? Ted would not withdraw from the race; that was for certain. He was practically a shoo-in. The Republican Party had selected Howard Whitmore, Jr., a former Massachusetts state representative, to run against Teddy. Poor Whitmore was, at best, a reluctant candidate. So strong was the sympathy for Ted—and so grateful were many of the polled voters that he, unlike Jack, had been spared—that the odds were in his favor from the beginning. In fact, Whitmore would spend much of his campaign apologizing for his presence in the race and hoping that Ted, the other Kennedys, or the citizens of Massachusetts would not be angry at him for even being in the race. Ted was bound to win, but someone needed to campaign for him, anyway.

  Someone in his camp suggested that Joan stump for her husband. Kennedy wives were known to be strongly influential on the campaign trail, and if ever such influence was needed, it was now. Yes, she immediately decided, “Of course I will.” Recalls Joe Gargan, “She made up her mind to do all she could to help him to recover physically and to win re-election.

  “The first thing that had to be done, though, was to pick a hospital in Boston where Ted could spend the nine long months of required recovery,” said Gargan. “Joan and I went together to look at Mass [Massachusetts] General Hospital and also New England Baptist. We finally decided that New England Baptist was the best place for Ted because it had porches off the rooms where he could be pushed out onto to enjoy the fresh air. This was a good decision, because Ted spent as much time out in the sun and fresh air as he could.”

  While Ted would film a few television commercials from his bed, it would be Joan who would have to do all the real work. She had done it before in the summer of 1962 when she campaigned for Ted, and now, for the next five months of 1964, Joan Kennedy would campaign for her husband again, keeping to a grueling schedule that had been carefully organized by Ted’s handlers. “Joan became the candidate herself,” Joe Gargan recalls, “and was willing to go to every village and town in Massachusetts to appear for Ted.”

  President Johnson called Joan on July 3, six days before Ted was transferred to the Lahey Clinic in the New England Baptist Hospital. He had visited Ted earlier in his recuperation, a midnight visit to avoid the media. “Lady Bird and I just wanted to let you know that we’re thinking about you kids,” he told Joan.

  “Oh my, Mr. President,” Joan said in a whisper, sounding so much like Jackie. “Thank you for calling, and thank you for the flowers. Ted’s fine. He’s doing so much better.”

  “I hear you’re goin’ out there on the [campaign] trail,” LBJ told her. “It’s hard work, you know. Sure you can handle it?”

  “Oh, I know it is, Mr. President,” Joan said. “But I must do it. I know I can. It’s my responsibility.”

  “It is,” the President agreed. “So you go on out there and be a good little girl, and do a good job. They need you, gal.”

  Now here was a strange, ironic turn of events for Joan Kennedy: not only was she needed by her husband, Ted, but she had been encouraged by the President of the United States to “do a good job.” She had always felt like the useless Kennedy wife, but it seemed that this was beginning to change. She was probably astonished at the way her life had evolved, and would even ignore LBJ’s condescending tone, realizing that it was just who he was. (In a couple of years she would have her appendix removed, and the President would send her a note that said: “You’re sure a big girl to be having your appendix out.”)

  For the next five months, the routine would be the same: Early in the morning, Joan’s chauffeur would pick her up from her home on Squaw Island, where she would bid farewell to the children, Edward Jr., three, and Kara Anne, four, and then be driven to Lahey, seventy-five miles away. There, in Ted’s fifth-floor suite of the Lahey Pavilion, she would confer with him over the rigorous schedule of appointments she was expected of keep. He was strapped into an orthopedic frame, unable to move, his spine held rigid while it healed. In the morning he would awaken, facedown. He would shave in that position and also eat that way. Between his face and the floor was a fixed tray on which he would place a phone, newspapers, books, writing material, and food. He would be rotated several times daily, “like a human rotisserie,” he joked. Still, after his 9 A.M. therapy, he and Joan would somehow review her speeches, discuss the important campaign issues, and deal with whatever other business they needed to handle for that day.

  Joan would then leave for a suite across the hall from Ted’s that had been set up as a second campaign headquarters, the primary one being Ted’s Province Street campaign post. She would carefully review the list of people who wanted to see Ted that day—other politicians, reporters, friends—and decide which should have entrée and which should be turned away. Then she would conduct as much telephone business as possible before having to leave at about noon for her first of sometimes as many as eight stops. In all, in ten weeks—six days a week—she would visit 39 cities and 312 towns. “She went to the Fish Pier in Boston, the factory gates in Lowell, Lawrence, and Fall River,” recalls Joe Gargan. “Whether it was a ward party in wards six and seven in South Boston, or a music festival in the hills of the Berkshires, Joan was willing to try….”

  Joan was grateful for the support of the media and Ted’s constituency; however, she couldn’t help but wonder if people she met while campaigning were reacting to her personality or to her beauty. To compensate for her insecurity, and because she wanted to be good as a campaigning wife, she would say or do whatever she had to on the road—and if she had to dance, she would do that, too, as she did when she and State Comptroller Joseph Alecks performed a fast polka at the Pulaski Day banquet in the hall of the Kosciuzko Veterans Association Building.

  At the end of the day, if she had energy, she would go back to the hospital and with great exhilaration would fill Ted in on all that had happened. Joe Gargan recalls that “Ted was very pleased with what Joan was doing, and proud because the reports he was getting about her were positive.” That may be true; however, Ted didn’t act that way when he was around Joan. Though he tried to act grateful, he was distant.

  “It was okay at the start,” Joan recalled, “but as the months went on, it became too much of a good thing.” She said that she didn’t like being rushed through crowds by police officers as thousands of hands reached out to her. It felt “so unreal and impersonal,” she said. Soon, she began to bend under the pressure of such nerve-wracking work, her stomach constantly in knots. She would carefully rehearse her speeches in the car on the way to each stop, hoping that she would not buckle under the pressure and go blank in front of the crowd. Toward the end of the campaign, she began to seem lost.

  Unfortunately, for Joan, more pressure in her life eventually led to one thing: more alcohol. As the tour continued she began to drink, just to deal with the stress. “Her face seemed hard,” said one observer who had followed her progress on the tour. “She didn’t seem to smile as much as at the start. A couple of times I saw her she looked like she had crawled through a rat hole. The old Joan wasn’t like that, never in a million years. The old Joan was so beautifully dressed. Jesus, the old Joan would have charmed a bird out of a tree. But there was something very wrong about her, now.”

  So much was expected of her—people loved meeting her, being photographed with her, touching her, feeling as if they were getting to
know her—that she feared she would never be able to live up to their expectations. Rather than applaud her own successes, she couldn’t help but focus on the times she would fumble on the platform, give a wrong answer, or just not be as effective as she had hoped. She would wring her hands with nervousness before each speech, making some of those sitting ringside almost as anxious as she was.

  One of Joan’s biggest problems while on the campaign trail for Ted was that she felt like a fraud when having to tell reporters that she and Ted were happy in their marriage, that they enjoyed operas together, that Rose had sent them Shakespeare’s complete plays on records and that they loved listening to them together—all fiction.

  Except on rare occasions, Ted had seemed uninterested in Joan romantically. It was crushing for Joan to realize that when Ted would finally leave his hospital bed, it would be for the bed of one of his many consorts and not Joan’s. He was thinking about his political future, about a book of reminiscences about his father he was compiling called The Fruitful Bough, but certainly not about Joan.

  “You have an opportunity to do something here, Joansie,” he told her of the campaign in front of volunteers. “So do it. For yourself.”

  The problem, of course, was that Joan would rather have been doing it for Ted. Or, as Joe Gargan so aptly and succinctly put it, “I was not surprised at how hard she worked, because Joan loved Ted.”

  On Election Day, November 3, 1964, Ted would win by the largest majority ever recorded to that time in Massachusetts. He would manage 1,716,908 votes, almost 75 percent of the total, practically obliterating Republican Howard Whitmore.

  “Joan won the election for you,” Bobby would tell his brother, only half joking.

  Jackie sent Joan—not Ted—a note: “Congratulations, and a job well done. How wonderful! I hope this shows you how much you can accomplish…. I am so excited for you.”