Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Even Ethel would be impressed, and she was not often impressed by Joan. She telephoned her sister-in-law and told her, “The whole family is proud of you. What a wonderful job you did.”

  Rose, the “political pro” of the Kennedy women—who had presided at the tea parties that first introduced Jack to the voting public—sent Joan two dozen roses with her congratulations.

  Somehow, though, despite all of the kudos, it would be a hollow victory for Joan Kennedy because the approval of the most important person—Ted—was not forthcoming. In fact, he acted strangely aloof, as if he didn’t want to give her any credit at all. Demonstrating his lack of graciousness, he would tell one reporter that he would have won the election anyway, that Joan’s work was just “icing on a cake that I had baked myself.”

  Despite the fact that he had cheated death, Ted Kennedy was not a changed man. He was still too self-centered and busy to be grateful for anything his wife ever did for him. In the end, he would treat Joan as if she had done what any Kennedy wife would have done under the circumstances: her duty.

  Jackie on the Anniversary of November 22, 1963

  The first anniversary of Jack’s death hit Jackie hard; all the agonizing memories rushed back and she could barely function during the month of November. She complained to her hairdresser, Rosemary Sorrentino, that she wished the world would celebrate the day of her husband’s birth, not his death. “Why commemorate the most awful day in our history?” she asked Sorrentino, who probably didn’t have an answer.

  “Time goes by too swiftly, my dear Jackie,” LBJ wrote to her shortly after the anniversary, “but the day never goes by without some tremor of a memory or some edge of a feeling that reminds me of all that you and I went through together.” The note brought tears to Jackie’s eyes. Surely she was touched by the President’s gentle reminder that, though life had gone on and the business of government had not ceased even for a second, no one who witnessed those dark days in Dallas would ever be quite the same.

  By this time—November 1964—Jackie had moved into a fourteen-room apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan for which she paid $200,000. Jackie and her secretary, Nancy Tuckerman, had found an interesting way of looking at prospective homes before Jackie settled on the Fifth Avenue apartment. Nancy recalls, “You could never be bored when you were with Jackie, because you never knew what to expect from her. She had this love of intrigue that often led to some sort of conspiratorial act. For instance, when she decided to move from Washington to New York and we went apartment-hunting, to avoid publicity she came up with the idea that I would play the part of the prospective buyer while she’d come along disguised as the children’s nanny!”

  In a sweeping move to rid herself of the past, the thirty-five-year-old former First Lady also sold Wexford, a weekend retreat in Virginia that she and Jack had purchased after their Glen Ora lease had expired. Now she would live at the Carlyle Hotel while her new home was being renovated.

  As the day of the anniversary approached, Jackie wrote a letter about her late husband for a tribute issue of Look magazine. “I don’t think there is any consolation. What was lost cannot be replaced,” she wrote. “I should have guessed that it could not last. I should have known that it was asking too much to dream that I might have grown old with him and see our children grow up together. So, now, he is a legend when he would have preferred to be a man.”

  But Jackie was also a legend when she would have, most of the time at least, preferred to be just a woman. For the rest of her life, she would be the subject of heavy scrutiny in Manhattan and everywhere she went.

  After the first anniversary, Jackie decided it was time to force herself to move on with her life. Soon, new clothes in the pale pastels and vibrant rich colors Jackie so loved began to replace the somber blacks and whites of her mourning wardrobe. Having spent enough time in her dreadful limbo of loss and indecision, she now began appearing in public more often, lunching with old friends like historian Arthur Schlesinger and novelist Truman Capote. As she had done with the Warren Report, she would avoid, instead of seek out, all that reminded her of Jack. For instance, she refused to read a volume of poems published after the assassination to honor him. Even her visits to the grave in Arlington, once so poignantly frequent, became fewer. And, more importantly, at her small dinner parties she no longer told her “story from hell,” as Ethel called it.

  After a year of misery, Jackie Kennedy would begin turning away from the past and look ahead to the future, to the passage of years ahead. As a former First Lady and widow of a national hero, her date book would be filled with fund-raisers in America and abroad and public appearances with other Kennedys for political reasons. Of course, she would never get over her husband’s senseless death; rather, she would just learn somehow to live with the reality of it, and live past it as well.

  Two days after the anniversary, while with family friend and artist Bill Walton, Jackie was mobbed by a crowd as she attempted to go shopping in Manhattan. After they escaped by taxi, Walton said to Jackie, “That kind of thing must drive you absolutely nutty.”

  “No, not really,” she sighed wearily. “I’m all they have left.”

  Using Jackie—Yet Again

  That summer, Jackie would be with the family in Hyannis Port for the Fourth of July. To First Lady historian Carl Anthony, Joan Kennedy recalled, “We would both go off alone [together] and do what we enjoyed. For me, it was music and reading, for her painting and reading. When she painted, she said she liked to listen to chamber music, not symphonies or concerto music, but chamber music because it was more subdued and allowed her to concentrate intently without distraction. The rest of the Kennedy family were all off doing things together. And with great glee she said to me, ‘Joan, they think we’re weird! Weird! We’re the weird ducks!’ She said the word weird in the funniest way. She just made you laugh.

  “She took me waterskiing with her,” Joan continued of her favorite sister-in-law. “The Secret Service agent would drive the boat, and I would be the one getting her signals—go faster, go beyond the wake. And she’d stay on those water skis for a good hour, then drop off, and I’d get on while she rested up. After that, she went out again! Then we’d both swim for about a mile from the breakwater back to the shore. She was an incredible swimmer, and in great shape. And she always used flippers when she went swimming because, she said, ‘If you wear flippers, it’s a great way to trim your thighs.’ ”

  Meanwhile, against this backdrop of summer frivolity, the political rivalry between the Kennedys and the Johnsons continued—with Jackie as bait. Earlier in the year, Ethel had again complained to Jackie that LBJ was using her. Soon after, it seemed that Bobby began exploiting Jackie as well. He had asked Jackie to call upon her “friend” LBJ to have the Space Center at Cape Canaveral renamed Cape Kennedy. Jackie agreed to do so, and LBJ granted her wish (but later Jackie regretted having asked for the favor because she believed Jack wouldn’t have thought it appropriate). Afterward Jackie complained to Charles Bartlett that “Bobby keeps making me put on my widow’s weeds and go down and ask Lyndon for something.”

  At 7:30 P.M. on the night of the Fourth, the telephone rang at Bobby and Ethel’s. President Lyndon Johnson was calling from the LBJ Ranch in Texas. After a brief discussion about civil rights, Bobby asked Johnson if he wanted to talk to “your girlfriend,” at which point he put Jackie on the line.

  After exchanging holiday greetings with her, Lyndon complained to Jackie that he was “sunburned” and “blistered” because he had been out on his boat all that day. Jackie giggled. “You’ll look marvelous with a sunburn,” she said. Johnson also mentioned that his daughter Luci had not joined them in Texas, as she was in Washington, “having dates.” Again, Jackie laughed coquettishly. “I though it [her absence] was something sinister like that,” she said. Johnson then mentioned that, as a birthday gift to Luci on July 2, he granted her one wish: that she be allowed to go an entire day without a Secret Service agent at her side
. Jackie, who generally loathed Secret Service protection, exclaimed, “Good work!” When LBJ, his voice carrying a lascivious tone, asked Jackie what she thought might have occurred while Luci was on her unchaperoned dates, Jackie said, “I’d hate to think! And don’t you!”

  As he always did when signing off with Jackie, LBJ said that he “longed” to see her. And, as she always did, Jackie promised that they would do just that, “soon.” Then they hung up.

  According to his secretary, Marie Fehmer, Johnson was the one feeling “used” after that telephone call. He believed that the only reason Bobby had put Jackie on the line was so that he [Johnson] would feel somehow indebted to the Kennedys when deciding upon a running mate for his upcoming presidential campaign. Johnson believed that Bobby wanted to be that running mate. Of course, the last thing Bobby wanted to be was Vice President, certain that he would be even more useless as LBJ’s Vice President than LBJ was to Jack. Still, Johnson, a master manipulator who felt he knew when the tables were being turned, believed that Kennedy was using Jackie to wrangle such a position.

  Says Marie Fehmer, “I remember afterward the look of bemusement on his face. He felt that it took a very ambitious and callous man to use a grieving widow as leverage. I can only say that he thought a lot less of Robert Kennedy after that call than he did before he took it,” if such a thing were even possible.

  Joan the Emissary

  The month of November 1964 would be not only a time of renewal for Jackie Kennedy but also an important month for her sister-in-law, Joan. The John Fitzgerald Kennedy exhibition, which had been successfully touring the country, was now ready to be taken to Europe, and a representative of the Kennedy family would have to accompany the tribute and speak about displayed items. The Presidential Seal, Jack’s rocking chair, his golf cart, certain paintings, plaques, letters, and other mementos from trips around the world, and even the coconut shell on which the young lieutenant Jack wrote a message asking for help after his PT-109 boat ran into trouble would all be part of the travelling show. This exhibit, which had opened in May in New York, was the family’s way of showing its gratitude for the worldwide outpouring of sympathy following Jack’s assassination; it was also organized to raise funds for the Kennedy Library, to be built at Harvard.

  When it came time to decide who should go to Europe with the exhibit, it was Jackie’s immediate idea to send Joan. She felt strongly that Joan should, once and for all, claim her rightful place in the family by representing the Kennedys in Europe. Jackie had been particularly struck by an odd moment in the White House a year earlier, one that said a great deal about Joan’s inability to feel a part of the “dynasty.”

  Shortly after Jack’s funeral, Jackie had asked James W. Fosburgh, a well-known art collector who had assisted her in choosing artwork for the renovation of the White House the year before, to help her and the family choose a painting that would be hung in the White House in Jack’s memory. It was customary for departing presidents to add one painting to the permanent collection. Fosburgh went to New York and quickly returned with twenty paintings from art galleries and collectors there. He displayed them all in the family room, in front of Jackie, Eunice, Pat, Ted, and Joan. Together, they had narrowed the selection down to six.

  “Okay, now, another vote,” Jackie had said.

  “Not me,” Fosburgh said, bowing out. “You should decide this without me. I’m not a family member, after all.”

  Jackie had smiled and nodded her head appreciatively.

  “Me, too,” Joan blurted out. “I’m not a family member, either.”

  Everyone had turned and looked at her, confused expressions playing on their faces. Joan squirmed. “Well, I mean, I… I wasn’t born into the family, you know?”

  “Well, neither was I,” Jackie had said. “We’re all Kennedys, Joan.”

  “I’d rather not vote,” Joan said, uneasily standing her ground. “It’s not my place.”

  “Oh my God,” Pat said, impatiently. “Let’s just vote and get it over with.”

  In the end, the Kennedys settled for a painting of the River Seine in Paris by Claude Monet. It was hung in the Green Room.

  Jackie had never forgotten that day in the White House when Joan made it clear that she did not feel a part of the family. “She had decided that she would one day find something for Joan to do that would solidify her position in the family,” Lem Billings once said. “She had also been impressed by the way Joan had campaigned for Ted earlier in the year. No other Kennedy wife had done anything like that for her husband and everyone in the family was excited by Joan’s accomplishment.”

  “She’s beautiful and articulate,” Jackie explained, “and Jack loved her. I want Joan to do it. I believe she’ll do a wonderful job.”

  Eunice, Pat, and Jean, and even Ethel, agreed that Joan had acquitted herself so nicely while stumping for Ted that she could most certainly handle the exhibit. Some thought that Ethel should go, since Bobby was Jack’s right-hand man, but she wanted to stay home with her children. “I love her like a sister,” Ethel said in a statement, “and I’m proud to see her representing the family in this way.”

  Of course, Ethel had a funny way of showing that she loved Joan “like a sister,” especially since she often seemed to go out of her way to belittle her. Richard Burke, who was a senatorial aide to Ted, recalled that “Ethel had a very condescending attitude toward Joan because Joan was really sick [referring to her drinking]. Ethel didn’t deal very well with anybody’s illness. It was like Ethel had two personalities. She could show compassion and be very attentive to people who were ill, but if they were people who were close to her, or people she relied on, she took that as a weakness and acted resentful toward them. That’s the way she treated Joan—in a condescending manner [as if she were] a little girl.”

  Alcoholism was a serious problem in the Skakel family. Ethel’s grandfather, James Curtis Skakel, was an alcoholic, as were her parents, George and Ann. Ethel’s sister, Georgeann, would eventually die of the disease, and her brothers were heavy drinkers as well; George Jr. was a particularly troubling alcoholic whose drinking caused decades of problems for the family and his wife, Pat (also, unfortunately enough, an alcoholic).

  Ethel believed that she had been strong enough not to succumb, and in her view anyone who did was weak. “Ethel despised weakness of any kind,” George Terrien once explained. “It was just so un-Kennedy in her mind.”

  Interestingly, Jackie also feared that the disease could be passed down to her. She saw the way alcoholism had ravaged Black Jack, and she was smart enough to know that she was genetically predisposed. Luckily, she somehow managed to get ahold of herself after Jack’s death because she seemed headed down the same road as her father.

  If Joan somehow symbolized their worst fears, Jackie and Ethel reacted to it in vastly different ways: Jackie by reaching out to Joan and treating her kindly, Ethel by castigating her.

  Whatever Jackie could do to see to it that Joan would shine, that’s apparently what she wanted to do. So, in the second week of November 1964, Joan Kennedy and her sister, Candy, whom she took for emotional support, departed for Europe. Their first stop was Dublin.

  Cead Mile Failte

  Back in the summer of 1963, when President Kennedy visited Ireland, he had said that it had been “one of the most moving experiences” of his life. While he walked through the U.S. diplomatic residence, he mentioned that he hoped one day to become the ambassador and live there. He and members of his family, including his sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, traveled from city to city, meeting and speaking to the Irish, who pressed rosary beads into his hand as he greeted them. He was an icon for the Irish (just as 1922 marked Ireland’s legal independence from the United Kingdom, U.S. election year 1960 defined its psychological independence from hundreds of years of British domination) and his sister Jean watched, awed by the reception.* Jack also spent time with a third cousin there, Mrs. Mary Kennedy Ryan. Experiencing the warmth and enthusiasm of the Iri
sh was not only a career highlight for Jack but a source of personal satisfaction as well. (While there, he also addressed a joint session of the Irish Parliament, to resounding success.)

  “It wasn’t just a sentimental journey,” Jackie later explained. (She wasn’t with her husband because she was pregnant at the time and couldn’t fly.) “Ireland meant much more. He had always been moved by its poetry and literature because it told of the tragedy and the desperate courage that he knew lay just under the surface of Irish life. The people of Ireland had faced famine and disease, and had fought against oppression, died for independence. And all through the tragic story, they dreamed and sang and wrote and thought and were gay in the face of their burdens.”

  “I’ll be back in the springtime,” John Kennedy said just before he left Ireland. Sadly, he would never see the spring.

  Now a little more than a year had passed. Much had changed. Jack was gone, and Joan Bennett Kennedy was representing him and his family in the country that had shown so much love and respect to the Kennedys. From the start, the response Joan received was enthusiastic and heartening. For instance, 50,000 Dubliners came to see the JFK exhibit at the Municipal Art Gallery in Dublin. More specifically, though, it would seem that they came to see the blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty, Joan.

  “Look at this, Joan. Just look,” Candy exclaimed as thousands of Dubliners stood in a winding line in front of the gallery just to catch a glimpse of Joan. The line of patient people seemed endless as it circled around the block. “Cead mile failte” (Gaelic for “a hundred thousand welcomes,” the national slogan), they shouted at Joan as she finally got up the courage to walk down the street outside the art gallery, shaking hands and greeting all of those who had come to remember Jack, and to meet her.