by Hill, Clint
He broke into a big smile and played along like he really was surprised, as he was presented with an array of gag gifts. There was a miniature rocking chair, boxing gloves to deal with Congress, “Debate Rules” supposedly from Richard M. Nixon. But he got the biggest kick when Mrs. Kennedy gave him her present—a basket of dead grass.
“Mr. President,” she deadpanned, “on behalf of the White House Historical Society, it is with great honor and with the utmost respect that I present to you genuine antique grass from the antique rose garden.”
The president loved it.
That evening, Mrs. Kennedy had planned an intimate cruise for twenty-four guests aboard the presidential yacht, the USS Sequoia. None of President Kennedy’s political advisors had been invited—the guest list included only family members and his closest friends—and while we had Secret Service agents on a couple of security boats, there were just three agents aboard the Sequoia—Floyd Boring and Ron Pontius from the president’s detail, and myself.
It was a dreary, rainy evening, making the open-air top deck unusable, so everybody was crammed inside the main and aft salons. There were plenty of toasts, and after birthday cake at the dining table, the president opened presents—more gag gifts that had everyone laughing with delight and amusement. The champagne flowed, people danced, and as the evening wore on the party got louder and livelier. I had never seen the president and Mrs. Kennedy having so much fun—and while no one wanted the night to end, the captain finally docked the Sequoia around 1:20 in the morning signaling it was time for everyone to go home.
What a privilege it was for me to have been there, to witness the joy and laughter on that wild and raucous night. It was such a special evening, one that everyone aboard would remember forever—none of us capable of imagining that President Kennedy’s forty-sixth birthday would be his last.
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Triumph and Tragedy
On June 22, 1963, President Kennedy departed on an ambitious ten-day trip to Europe that included stops in Germany, England, Ireland, and Italy. Mrs. Kennedy, now in the sixth month of her pregnancy, had settled in for the rest of the summer in Hyannis Port, so Paul Landis and I had a relatively easy schedule, while the agents protecting President Kennedy faced enormous and exuberant crowds rivaling those we had seen during President Eisenhower’s foreign tours three years earlier.
My colleagues would later regale me with stories of near chaos. From the moment President Kennedy landed in Germany, he was treated like royalty. Hundreds of thousands of Germans lined the motorcade route—cheering, screaming, and waving—as President Kennedy rode from Wahn Airport to Cologne with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. As a matter of protocol, the two leaders rode in the Germans’ car—an open-top Mercedes limousine—while our Secret Service agents rode on the running boards of the follow-up car. A diamond-shaped formation of white-uniformed German motorcycle police led the way through country roads and into the city, but at times the crowds were so large, and the people so eager to get close to the handsome American president, that not even the motorcycles could keep them back. The agents ended up jogging alongside the Mercedes most of the way, fending people off. People were everywhere—hanging out open windows, standing on ledges and balconies—anywhere they could stand to get a fleeting view. There was no way to check every building or every rooftop. You had no idea who was in the crowd, and if someone had really wanted to take out either President Kennedy or Chancellor Adenauer, there was little the agents could do but react. For the agents, many of whom were new to the detail and had not seen anything like this before, it was harrowing. And then, hours later, the afternoon-shift agents experienced the same thing as Adenauer and President Kennedy drove to Bonn.
After two days of meetings in Bonn, Adenauer and Kennedy flew to Berlin, where Kennedy would make one of the most memorable and powerful speeches of his presidency.
In mid-August 1961, less than seven months into JFK’s presidency, the government of East Germany, in coalition with Soviet premier Khrushchev, had erected a concrete-block wall topped with razor-sharp wire, complete with sentry towers and minefields around it, to halt the exodus of people leaving Communist-controlled East Germany for the West. President Kennedy was deeply disturbed by the photographs he’d seen and stories he had heard of people being killed as they tried to climb over the wall to freedom, and one of the primary reasons for this trip was for him to see the situation for himself.
Agent Win Lawson had done the advance for the Berlin trip.
“It was incredible,” he told me. “There were hundreds of thousands of people along the motorcade route—thirty-eight miles—from Tegel Airport into the city. The German police were out in force; they’d erected barriers and there were dozens of motorcycle police, yet that didn’t stop the people from breaking through the police lines to swarm the presidential car.”
They had flown our presidential limousine, the midnight-blue SS-100-X, to Berlin, and Lawson said President Kennedy, along with Adenauer and Berlin mayor Willy Brandt, stood nearly the entire way, waving to the crowds.
“At times it sounded like thunder,” Lawson said. “The crowds were enormous. At one point, two women ran toward the car—narrowly missed being run over by one of the motorcycles—and President Kennedy leaned over to shake their hands as the car was still moving.
“Jerry Blaine was riding on the rear step of 100-X, so he jumped off, while Boring and Sulliman ran up from the follow-up car. It took all three of them to pry the shrieking ladies away and repel them into the crowd.”
Lawson recalled how moving it was as President Kennedy stood atop the viewing platform at Checkpoint Charlie and peered over the wall.
“On the other side, hundreds of Communist police stood on guard with submachine guns,” he said. “And behind them, there were at least a thousand people who had come out just to see President Kennedy, and they stood there waving scarves and handkerchiefs with tears in their eyes.
“He stayed for four minutes—and let me tell you, those were the longest four minutes of my life!” Win said. “And then we went to the huge square in front of City Hall, and you can’t even imagine the crowd, Clint. The people were packed in there tighter than sardines. They were on rooftops, on balconies, dangling out of windows, and when the president yelled out ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’—I am a Berliner—the place erupted.”
Win Lawson was not one to exaggerate or be emotional, but the scene evidently had made an impact on him. Press secretary Pierre Salinger told reporters, “This is the greatest reception the president has received anywhere in the world.”
Agent Jerry Blaine recalled that the crowds in Ireland and Italy were just as enormous. “By the end of the trip I had holes in my shoes, and all my suits were soiled and ripped beyond repair,” he said, shaking his head. “We were living on pure adrenaline. It was almost overwhelming. But to see the immense admiration for President Kennedy—you couldn’t help but be proud to be American.”
In Rome, the crowds had welcomed President Kennedy with genuine affection as throngs filled the streets to cheer and wave as the motorcade passed. At the Vatican, President Kennedy had a private audience with the newly inaugurated Pope Paul VI, becoming only the third sitting American president to have an official visit with a pope—but for this Catholic president it was an especially meaningful visit on both sides.
ONCE PRESIDENT KENNEDY returned from Europe, he began the usual summer schedule in which he arrived at Hyannis Port on Friday afternoons, and left Monday mornings.
On Wednesday, August 7, 1963, Mrs. Kennedy suddenly went into early labor and was helicoptered to Otis Air Force Base hospital. President Kennedy was notified and was on his way from Washington, while I paced the floor just as I had done when John was born two and a half years earlier.
Shortly before one o’clock in the afternoon, while the president was still airborne, Dr. John Walsh came out of the surgery room and informed me that Mrs. Kennedy had delivered a baby boy, and she was fi
ne, but the baby weighed just four pounds, ten and a half ounces, and was having difficulty breathing.
President Kennedy arrived about forty minutes later, and as soon as he learned the critical situation of his baby’s health, he came to me and said, “Clint, find the base chaplain. We need to baptize the baby right away.”
The child was baptized Patrick Bouvier Kennedy—“Patrick” after President Kennedy’s paternal grandfather, and “Bouvier” for Mrs. Kennedy’s father.
It was determined that Patrick had a condition known as hyaline membrane disease—a common affliction in premature babies caused by incomplete lung development—and he needed to be moved to Children’s Hospital in Boston, where they had the equipment and expertise to help him.
President Kennedy helicoptered to Hyannis Port for a quick visit with John and Caroline and returned an hour later to check on Mrs. Kennedy. He was the President of the United States, but in these hours he was simply a husband and a father, concerned for the well-being of his family more than anything else. When he emerged from Mrs. Kennedy’s room, he had a faraway look in his eyes.
“Clint, I’m going to Boston to be with Patrick. I know you’ll make sure Mrs. Kennedy is well taken care of. Just make sure I’m kept informed.”
Protecting Mrs. Kennedy was my job, but in the past three years I had spent more time with her, the president, and their children than I had with my own family. I cared about them not as the president and the first lady but as people, and to witness their anguish over the uncertainty of their newborn son’s life was heartbreaking.
The next day, August 8, President Kennedy flew back and forth between Boston and Otis Air Force Base and Hyannis Port, while Mrs. Kennedy continued to sleep for most of the day. I had not left Otis since we arrived on the morning of August 7, and had taken over one of the bedrooms in the hospital suite so I could at least try to get some sleep.
At 4:15 a.m. on Friday, August 9, Jerry Behn, the Special Agent in Charge of the White House Detail, phoned from Boston and told me that Patrick had died. My heart ached for Mrs. Kennedy and for the president. It was a devastating loss.
President Kennedy flew in from Boston later that morning, and I was there to greet him as he entered the hospital wing. We had managed to keep the members of the press outside the hospital building itself, but when the president arrived, they lined up like vultures, capturing his every move. I knew they were just doing their jobs—and many of them were friends of mine—but it sickened me that they couldn’t leave the president alone during this time of personal grief.
The president looked like he had been to hell and back, with swollen eyes and sorrow etched all over his face. As I escorted him to Mrs. Kennedy’s room, I didn’t know what to say. What do you say to anyone who has lost a child? So I simply looked at him, my own eyes melting with sadness, and said, “My condolences, Mr. President.”
He looked at me and replied softly, “Thank you, Clint.”
I turned the knob and opened the door to Mrs. Kennedy’s room, and as soon as he walked in, I quietly closed it to give them the privacy they needed. Standing outside the room, I could hear their muffled sobs as they grieved over the loss of their son.
SAIC Jerry Behn would tell me later of the heart-wrenching scene he and the other agents had witnessed in Boston. The doctors had called the president in the middle of the night, knowing death was imminent. They had released Patrick from the lines and tubes, and President Kennedy was able to hold his son in his arms for the first and last time.
The funeral services for Patrick Bouvier Kennedy were held on Saturday, August 10, in Boston, but Mrs. Kennedy was still so weak from the cesarean operation that she was unable to fly to Boston. Paul Landis and I stayed with her while the agents on the President’s Detail accompanied President Kennedy to the somber private funeral Mass delivered by Cardinal Cushing, and then to Brookline Cemetery, where they watched—most struggling to blink back tears—as President Kennedy’s shoulders heaved up and down at the sight of the tiny white coffin being placed in the ground of the Kennedy family plot.
On each of the next two days, President Kennedy brought John and Caroline to the hospital to visit their mother, and while they tried to boost her spirits, the death of baby Patrick was immensely difficult for the entire family.
Mrs. Kennedy remained in the hospital for a week, but the president had to return to Washington to deal with the nation’s business. The world does not stop for the death of a president’s son.
CARDS AND FLOWERS and gifts poured into the White House and the Kennedy residence in Hyannis Port as people all over the world grieved with President and Mrs. Kennedy over the death of baby Patrick. Meanwhile, all of the agents noticed that something had changed in their relationship. I first observed it in the hospital suite at Otis Air Force Base, but it became publicly visible when Mrs. Kennedy was released from the hospital a week after she gave birth. With press photographers snapping away, President and Mrs. Kennedy emerged from the hospital suite hand in hand. There was a tenderness, a closeness between them that had deepened as a result of the tragedy, and suddenly they seemed much more willing to show their affection for each other in public.
Mrs. Kennedy and the children stayed in Hyannis Port for the rest of the summer, but when the president came on the weekends I noticed that he seemed to be taking great pains to be supportive to Mrs. Kennedy, while also spending more time with the children. He would go swimming with John and Caroline in the ocean, watching with delight as they jumped to him from the deck of the Honey Fitz; he began taking Caroline to Sunday church services regularly; and when he had to return to Washington, he would bring Caroline and John with him on the short helicopter ride from the Kennedy compound to Otis Air Force Base.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Kennedy was having a much more difficult time getting back to a normal routine. As the weeks went by, she seemed to be spiraling further into depression. One day, at the end of August or the beginning of September, she told me that her sister, Lee, had been trying to convince her to take a trip for a change of scenery. Aristotle Onassis had offered them the use of his private yacht for a relaxing cruise around the Mediterranean, and President Kennedy agreed it would be an ideal way for Mrs. Kennedy to get away and avoid the press.
As we began to make the plans for the trip, members of the president’s staff were expressing concern about how this would appear to the public—that Aristotle Onassis, who had some long-standing legal issues with the United States government, as well as a reputation for being a womanizer and opportunist, was providing his personal yacht for use by the president’s wife. President Kennedy was aware of the political ramifications, but he was so concerned about Mrs. Kennedy that he insisted she should go.
On October 1, Mrs. Kennedy; her personal assistant, Provi; Paul Landis; and I flew to Athens, where we boarded the Christina. I wrote in detail about the trip—including some interesting encounters with Aristotle Onassis himself—in Mrs. Kennedy and Me, but the end result was that the trip did indeed help Mrs. Kennedy immensely, and on the way back to Washington two weeks later she informed me that she had decided she was going to make an effort to help her husband as much as she could in the upcoming 1964 presidential campaign. A trip to Texas in November was already in the planning stages, and she intended to go with him.
THE PRIOR YEAR, when Mrs. Kennedy found out they would not be able to renew the lease at Glen Ora in Middleburg, she and President Kennedy had purchased some land in the area, near Atoka, Virginia, and had a home built to their specifications. It was a sprawling ranch-style house that was very secluded, with beautiful views of the acres and acres of rolling hills that surrounded it. On Saturday, October 26, 1963, President and Mrs. Kennedy spent their first night in their new home together, and two weeks later they returned with the children and their friends Ben and Tony Bradlee.
It was a crisp fall weekend in November, perfect weather to enjoy the outdoors. Young John played army in the woods with nanny Maud Shaw as the Army nurse, w
hile Caroline rode her pony. The president and the Bradlees sat outside on a stone wall at the edge of the patio overlooking the property as Mrs. Kennedy and friend Paul Fout demonstrated their equestrian skills, riding and jumping fences and other barriers. Everyone was relaxed and enjoying themselves.
At one point, after all the riding, everyone was at the side of the house watching the children play, when Mrs. Kennedy walked over to them leading Caroline’s pony. The president was seated on the grass, his back propped up by the house, not paying much attention, when Mrs. Kennedy let go of the lead. The president apparently had some food in his pocket or his hand, and the pony stepped right up and began nuzzling him. The president was squirming with laughter as the horse nuzzled his neck. It was one of the funniest scenes I ever witnessed around a president, and it was all caught on film.
I remember how nice it was to see the family laughing and enjoying simple times together again.
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The Trip to Texas
I arrived at the White House around eight o’clock on the morning of Thursday, November 21, with my bags packed for the short trip to Texas. We would be gone for only two nights, but an intense schedule was planned that included stops in San Antonio, Houston, and Fort Worth on the first day; on to Dallas and Austin the next, with an overnight at Vice President Johnson’s ranch outside Austin; and returning to Washington late Saturday afternoon, November 23. There would be motorcades, speech sites, and fund-raisers, and the fact that Mrs. Kennedy was going with the president on this trip added a whole different dimension to the preparations and the logistics. Although she had traveled with her husband on several official foreign trips, this would be the first domestic political trip President and Mrs. Kennedy had taken together since JFK became president. To make things even more complicated, since Texas was LBJ’s home state, Vice President and Mrs. Johnson would be traveling with the Kennedys as well.
