Jackie's Newport

by Raymond Sinibaldi

  from St. Mary’s following

  their wedding ceremony

  to the cheers of thousands

  gathered outside. St. Mary’s

  is the oldest Catholic church

  in Newport, built by Irish

  immigrants.

  Joe Kennedy plants a kiss on

  the cheek of his daughter-

  in-law on her wedding day.

  Jackie got along famously

  well with the elder Kennedy.

  He very much admired her

  intelligence and indepen-

  dence and she his strength of

  personality.

  The wind off the bay

  reached 25 miles per hour

  during the afternoon and

  wreaked havoc for the

  photographers. Pausing for

  a break, Janet holds onto

  Jackie’s dog Soufflé while

  Jack fixes his hair.

  21

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  apparently taken a few drinks, but they felt he could pull himself together in time to walk Jackie down the aisle.” 49 Janet now had her way: Hugh would walk Jackie down the aisle. “It was the cruelest thing Janet could have done to both Black Jack and Jackie,” said Lee, “a sign of the tremendous bitterness she still felt toward him.”50

  The press were told by Joe Kennedy that Mr. Bouvier had taken ill with

  the flu. Jackie, heartbroken, asked Charles Spaulding if he could “get him into the church.”

  “We got him into the pew,” Spaulding reported, “but it was an interesting maneuver.” 51 Jackie carried her disappointment with grace and composure, only weeping when she went to her bedroom to change. She emerged with

  Jack, smiling and radiant, and was off to New York, then Acapulco, for the honeymoon. After settling in Acapulco, the first thing she did was write her father a long letter filled with love and understanding, telling him that “as far as she was concerned…he was the one who had accompanied her down

  the aisle.” 52

  Jackie embraced her role as the wife of a U.S. senator in a life that proved to be, in her words, “terrifically nomadic.” 53 The first order of business occurred when Jackie and Jack returned from their honeymoon. “I was

  taken immediately to Boston to be registered as a democrat.” 54 Her escort was Robert “Patsy” Mulkern. “He took me up and down the street and told me

  that ‘duking’ means shaking hands.” 55 It was Jackie’s introduction to street-level politics 101, and it came at the hands of Patsy, a former prizefighter also known as the “China Doll.” Other mentors included “Onions” Burke and

  “Juicy” Grenara. “Those names just fascinated me so…to…see that world

  and then go have dinner at the Ritz” brought a laugh to her as she recalled it.

  It was her first tutorial in moving through the stratum of politics.

  As a teenage girl Jackie often pondered the life of a gypsy. She even

  wrote of it in a poem: “I love the feeling down inside me that says to run away, to come and be a gypsy, and laugh the gypsy way.” 56 She could not 22

  Jackie prepares to throw her bridal bouquet down the staircase at Hammersmith Farm.

  Jackie’s lifelong friend Nancy Tuckerman caught the bouquet, and would later serve as her assistant in the White House.

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  have imagined that as the wife of a U.S. senator she would come to live the nomadic lifestyle of a gypsy. A high-society gypsy but a gypsy nonetheless.

  “We’d rent, January until June, then we’d go live at my mother’s house…

  in Virginia for the summer…going up to the Cape when we could on

  weekends—and in the fall we’d stay with his father. And then we’d go to his apartment in Boston, or we’d go to New York for a couple of days…and then we’d go away after Christmas…for a few days. Such a pace…it just seemed

  like it was suitcases…always moving.” 57

  Jack suffered from myriad gastrointestinal and adrenal difficulties

  throughout his life, all brought on by Addison’s disease. The only ailment of which the public was aware was his back, which was attributed to an old football injury, exacerbated by his service in the South Pacific during the war. 58 By 1950 he suffered from chronic backaches caused by the fact that the bones in his spinal column were collapsing. The following year compression fractures appeared in his lower spine, and for the next few years he spent a good deal of time utilizing crutches to walk. “Before we were married,”

  remembered Jackie, “I can remember him on crutches more than not.” 59

  Relief would come in spurts, and he took advantage of it. “The month before we were married, we both went bareback riding in a field in Newport on

  two unbroken work horses and galloped all around the golf course.” 60 They even played golf on their honeymoon, but the relief was taking longer to arrive and its stay grew shorter. With “Jack…being driven so crazy by his pain,” 61 the talk turned to surgery. It would fuse his spine with a metal plate, yet there were no guarantees that it would even work. “I don’t care,” said Jack, “I can’t go on like this.” 62 Two surgeries, in 1954 and 1955, followed.

  The first fused his spine, and the second removed the plate as it caused infections. Both nearly killed him.

  Jackie was at Jack’s side even while fighting through struggles of her

  own. Her fear that Jack was “like my father” proved all too true, and she found coping with his dalliances far more difficult than she had anticipated.

  24

  JACKIE, NEWPORT AND HAMMERSMITH FARM

  Disappointment that she did not get pregnant right away turned into dismay when she did in 1955, only to miscarry twelve weeks into the pregnancy. At that point she learned that conceiving, carrying, and bearing children could prove difficult for her. To her delight, she became pregnant again and was due in the fall of 1956.

  In August Jackie accompanied Jack to the Democratic Convention in

  Chicago, where he pursued the vice-presidential spot, which Adlai Stevenson threw out for the delegates to choose. At one point needing only thirty-eight votes to grab the nomination, Jack ultimately fell short but unified the convention when he asked them to declare Estes Kefauver as the unanimous choice. His performance launched his national appeal, for despite his defeat, a Boston scribe wrote, “Jack probably rates as the one real victor of the entire convention.” 63 His political future never looked brighter.

  Exhausted upon their return home, Jack was bound for some fun

  in the sun, sailing off the coast of France, while Jackie was headed to

  Hammersmith Farm. Five days later, Jackie lost the baby, a stillborn girl taken by Caesarean section, and Jack was nowhere to be found. It was three days before he returned, and when he did, a chasm had come between them.

  They sold their new house in Hickory Hill, with its newly added nursery, and rumors of divorce were everywhere. Time magazine reported that Joe offered her one million dollars to stay with Jack. Seeing the article, Jackie called Joe and, laughing, asked, “Why not ten million?” 64 There was no

  truth to the story, and Jackie had no intent on divorcing Jack, but changes were made in their relationship, primarily involving fewer family demands from the Kennedy clan.

  The hope of spring brought hope to Jackie when she learned she was

  pregnant again. The couple finally had a home, which they had purchased

  in Georgetown, and Jack was laying the groundwork for his presidential

  bid in 1960. Jack’s reelection to the Senate loomed in November 1958,

  an undertaking that Jackie categorized as a “major frantic effort…that

  25

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  Wedding guests gather

  around tables overlooking

  Narragansett Bay in the

  background, while two

  police officers stand near the
<
br />   fence on the left. The guests

  watched the bride

  and groom’s first dance

  to the song “I Married an

  Angel,” chosen by Jack.

  Reception dinner tables with

  Hammersmith Farm in the

  background. The cottage

  had 28 rooms, 13 bathrooms

  and 14 fireplaces. The

  Newport Daily News

  compared the wedding to

  Vanderbilt and Astor

  weddings of bygone days.

  The newlyweds are captured

  with Jackie’s veil billowing

  in the wind and Narragan-

  sett Bay in the background.

  Within eight years, the lawn

  just behind the wooden

  fence would become the

  landing zone for Marine I,

  the presidential helicopter.

  26

  JACKIE, NEWPORT AND HAMMERSMITH FARM

  Jack and Jackie pose in the water in Acapulco on their honeymoon, mimicking a scene from the movie From Here to Eternity, which came out in August 1953. Nominated for 13 Academy Awards, it won eight, including best picture.

  campaign was the hardest campaign…ever.” 65 However, before that Jackie

  would be transformed first by a death and then by new life.

  It was August 3, and she was six months pregnant, when the call came.

  Rushing to the Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, with Jack at her side, she arrived minutes too late. Black Jack was gone, a victim of liver cancer at age sixty-six. His “strong alliance with alcohol” had finally done him in. Jackie arranged his funeral service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and his burial in East Hampton. Viewing him for the last time, she removed a bracelet from her

  wrist and placed it in his hand. It was the bracelet he had given her when she graduated from Farmington.

  The day after Thanksgiving, November 27, 1957, Jackie gave birth to

  a full-term, healthy, seven-pound, two-ounce baby girl. Caroline Bouvier 27

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  Kennedy was, according to her father, as “robust as a sumo wrestler.” 66 Three weeks later, Jackie returned to St. Patrick’s with Caroline, clad in the same dress she herself had worn when Archbishop Richard Cushing of Boston

  baptized her into the Roman Catholic faith. “As new life will come from

  death, love will come at leisure. Love of love, love of life and giving without measure, gives in return a wondrous yearn of a promise almost seen. Live hand-in-hand and together we’ll stand on the threshold of a dream.” 67 The pair now stood on the threshold of their dreams as individuals and as a couple.

  The Kennedy siblings serenaded the newlyweds at the head table. Singing was a staple at Kennedy family gatherings. Left to right, Bobby (best man), Patricia (not visible), Eunice, Ted, and Jean. To the right of Jack is Jackie’s sister Lee (maid of honor) and mother Janet Auchincloss.

  28

  JACKIE, NEWPORT AND HAMMERSMITH FARM

  The arrival of Caroline transformed their marriage. The elated couple

  moved into their new home in Georgetown, finally putting their nomadic

  life behind them. Jackie went about the business of making her home with a new understanding of her role as the wife of a politician with a newfound hope and a newfound purpose. “I wouldn’t say that being married to a busy politician is the easiest life to adjust to,” she told one reporter. “But…you figure out the best way to do things—to keep the house running smoothly, to spend as much time as you can with your husband and your children—and

  eventually you’ll find yourself well adjusted…The most important thing for a successful marriage is for a husband to do what he likes best and does well, the wife’s satisfaction will follow.” 68

  Shortly after Jack’s death she talked of him and the people in his life.

  “He loved us all,” she said, from the “people in the three-deckers” to those with whom he walked the halls of the White House. He loved “Kenny69

  and Dave70, and you [Arthur Schlesinger]71 and Ken Galbraith72.” He loved

  “the Irish and his family…He loved me and my sister in the world that had nothing to do with politics…He belonged to so many people and each one

  thought they had him completely and he loved each one…He loved us all…

  He had each of [them].” 73

  Jackie had them, too; she had her family with the illustrated book of

  writings and poems she would give as gifts. She had the young man outside the Washington Movie Theater, who lent her and Jack fifteen cents, when

  she wrote him a thank-you note with three nickels taped to the bottom.

  She had Charles Whitehouse when she displayed the “courage of a lioness”

  galloping on horseback across the open fields of Newport. She had Peter, the pool boy at Bailey’s Beach, when she picked him up hitchhiking in her black Cadillac and drove him “all the way home” to the “poor Irish” section of Newport. She had the volunteer docent at the JFK Library, whose umbrella shielded her from a driving rain, when, with a genuine gentility of voice, she took his arm and said, “My dear, you are drenched.” She had the people of 29

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  West Virginia when she kicked off her shoes during one of Jack’s campaign speeches in the 1960 primary. She had them all, and there were more—many more—waiting.

  She stood beaming at her husband’s side in the overcrowded Hyannis

  Port armory as President-elect John F. Kennedy addressed the nation. “I

  can assure you that every degree of mind and spirit that I possess,” he told them, “will be devoted to the long-range interest of the United States and to the cause of freedom around the world. And now my wife and I prepare

  for a new administration and a new baby.” The new baby arrived sixteen

  days later, and it was time for Jackie to move again. This time her new

  address was 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. On January 20,

  1961, Jackie, Jack, Caroline and John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. moved into the White House, the bearers of the torch for this new generation of Americans.

  The queen of the circus, who had married the man in the flying trapeze, was on her way to the White House, to be admired by the world’s biggies.

  30

  PART II

  The Summer

  White House g

  “ All the memories come back, no place in the world as

  lovely as Hammersmith Farm.”

  Jacqueline Kennedy

  Dearest Mummy,” wrote Jackie as she prepared to leave

  Hammersmith Farm on Monday, October 2, 1961. This marked

  their first visit home to Hammersmith since becoming the first

  couple of the United States. “You can’t imagine what a strange and guilty feeling it is to be sitting on your bed with you coming home tomorrow. You can never guess what this vacation has done for Jack. He said it was the best that he’s ever had. The house and the bay are so beautiful, it gives you a lump in the throat even to him who doesn’t see it with all the nostalgia that I do.” 74

  Jackie’s passion for history and mindfulness of her place in it inspired her to create a guest book to be signed by everyone who accompanied Jack on 31

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  a presidential visit home. That same mindset found Jackie adding a plaque to the desk in Uncle Hughdie’s office, where Jack had signed some legislation into law. The plaque lists all the bills that became law at Hammersmith

  Farm. It was Jackie “who thought of having that plaque made to put on that funny old desk which has always been in this house.” 75

  When John F. Kennedy took the oath of office, he stood before his

  people and his God, declaring to the world, “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a The staff at Hammersmith Farm await the arrival
of Marine I bearing the

  president and first lady for their first presidential visit. Caroline can be seen standing in front of the chef. Caroline and John often waited on the step for the chopper to land.

  32

  THE SUMMER WHITE HOUSE

  new generation of Americans.” The Kennedys were the initial first couple to be born in the twentieth century. John Kennedy was the youngest man ever elected president, and at thirty-one, Jackie was the youngest first lady since Woodrow Wilson’s daughter served in that capacity in 1915. His predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, was reelected in 1956 at the age of sixty-six. At the time, he was the oldest man ever elected president, and his wife, Mamie, was sixty-four when they left the White House.

  President Kennedy took the unprecedented step of asking a poet to recite at his presidential inauguration. Robert Frost, a fellow New Englander, set that historic precedent. At a press conference surrounding Frost’s eighty-fifth birthday, he interjected himself into the upcoming 1960 presidential campaign. Asked about the decline of New England, he responded, “The

  next President of the United States will be from Boston. Does that sound as if New England is decaying?” Of course the press wanted Frost to name the next president, and he replied, “He’s a Puritan named Kennedy. The only

  At 3:15 on September 26, 1961, Marine I landed on the front lawn of Hammersmith Farm—a scene that would be re-created many times over the next two years at what came to be known as the Summer White House. Jackie carries Caroline (near the fence) while Jack walks behind.

  33

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  The first presidential visit to Hammersmith Farm called for a semi-formal family portrait sitting for White House photographer Robert Knudsen.

  They posed on the same stairwell from which Jackie threw her wedding

  bouquet in 1953.

  Puritans left these days are the Roman Catholics.” He added, “There, I guess I wear my politics on my sleeve.” 76

  Ten months removed from declaring his intent, Kennedy wrote to

  Frost, “I just want to send you a note to let you know how gratifying it was to be remembered by you on the occasion of your eighty-fifth birthday. I only regret that the intrusion of my name…took away some of the attention from the man who really deserved it—Robert Frost.77 In all his subsequent 34