The technicians (broadly interpreted, the term may include most members of the subcabinet) were adroit because they were following predetermined patterns of behavior. If you were accustomed to plugging a switchboard or planning funerals—or calculating foreign exchange rates—you instinctively picked up the thread of habit. Those who were thrust into new situations were far likelier to falter or, in some cases, to turn their backs. They had been struck, said John McCormack, “by a thunderbolt out of a clear sky.” McCormack was among those who turned away. Throughout 1964 his refusal to weigh proposals to alter the law of succession was universally interpreted as a token of ambition. Since Johnson’s death would make him President, his angry dismissal of such discussions as “indecent” were given but one interpretation; pundits inferred that he was brooding over that single heartbeat. The truth was 180 degrees the other way. He not only wasn’t brooding; he couldn’t even bring himself to think of it. The prospect, to McCormack, was literally unbearable. The Speaker was fully aware of his age and his limitations. Each morning and each evening in the Hotel Washington he repeated a simple prayer for Johnson’s health: “May the Lord protect and direct him.” That was the best he could do. He was incapable of facing the fact that should prayer fail Congressional legislation would make him the thirty-seventh President. On the afternoon of November 22, as Aircraft 26000 approached mid-flight, a detail of Secret Service men presented themselves at the door of the Washington Hotel’s Suite 620. They never crossed the threshold. The Speaker coldly informed the Special Agent in Charge that “The Capitol provides me with all the protection I need. This is an intolerable intrusion in my private life and Mrs. McCormack’s, and I won’t have it.”8
When the Georgetown switchboard’s last light winked on, resuming normal service, nine AT & T jets were in the air rushing emergency units from San Francisco, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Norfolk, New York, Cincinnati, Huntington, and Charleston; some had taken off before the Presidential aircraft left Dallas, and boosters from nearby Baltimore were already being feverishly installed. At that moment (4:15 P.M. EST), as Angel traversed the Confederate-gray oxbow of the Arkansas River three miles north of Pine Bluff, Lyndon Johnson asked Sergeant Ayres to connect him with President Kennedy’s mother by radio patch. Castle put the Sergeant through to the compound and Rose Kennedy was summoned from her lawn to the phone. She answered, “Hello?”
Ayres started to say, “The President wants to speak to you,” and checked himself. Instead he said, “Mr. Johnson wants to speak to you,” and handed the receiver to him.
Lady Bird, studying her husband’s face, realized that this was the most difficult call of his life. Muffling the instrument with his big hand, he whispered, “What can I say to her?” Then he removed his hand and said, “I wish to God there was something I could do.”
Rose Kennedy replied, “We know how much you loved Jack and how Jack loved you.”
“Here’s Lady Bird,” said the President. To Liz Carpenter it seemed that he was thrusting the stateroom phone at his wife “like a hot potato.”
“Oh, Mrs. Kennedy,” the new First Lady began and paused. Dropping her voice, she said—it was precisely the right thing to say to a mother—“We must all realize how fortunate the country was to have your son as long as it did.”
“Thank you, Lady Bird,” Rose said.
Joe Ayres then set up a second patch, and both Johnsons talked to Nellie Connally at Parkland. Listening to their end, Cliff Carter gathered that Nellie was in good spirits. Apparently her husband was recovering. Cliff was astounded. From what the emergency area nurse had told him he had assumed that by now the Governor would be dead.9
Running ahead of the wind, Angel revved up to 635 mph; Aircraft 86972 passed the 150th meridian; the AT & T’s improvised fleet approached the capital with its tons of now useless equipment; Red Fay crossed the Middle West; Lieutenant Sam Bird’s helicopter fluttered over Anacostia Flats; and Senator Edward Kennedy and Eunice Shriver, the two principals who had left the capital when everyone else was converging on it, reached Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod. They were met by Jack Dempsey, an old friend. The family chauffeur drove them to Hyannis Port.
Meanwhile Joseph P. Kennedy had awakened from his nap, and Ann Gargan had gone in to tell him of his son’s death. He had been surprised to see her; he thought she had left for Detroit. Standing at the foot of his bed, she had begun, “As you see, I haven’t left. There’s been an accident.…”
She bit her lip. Nurse Rita Dallas had just entered and was tugging at her elbow. Rose had just told Rita, “If anything happens to him, I couldn’t stand it. Tell Ann to wait till one of the boys gets back.” In the hall the nurse had whispered this message to Ann. Returning to her uncle, the girl said lamely, “My car got banged up—that was the accident. That’s why I can’t go. So I’m staying.” The old Ambassador had squinted at her with what, to her, had seemed a distinctly suspicious look.
The burden of dealing with his parents therefore fell upon the junior Senator from Massachusetts. Arriving, he crossed to the grand piano downstairs and stood, arms akimbo, intently examining the keyboard. He was still there when Ann’s brother Joe bounded in. He was breathless; he had just broken every speed record between Boston and Hyannis. Ted studied him absently and murmured, “Hi, Joey.” Joe swallowed. “Hi, Teddy.”
The President’s mother had just finished talking to Air Force One; she wanted to walk again. Rose, Eunice, and the two men donned heavy sweaters and strolled along the beach to the Squaw Island causeway and back. A brisk gale was whipping around the white-shingled houses and lashing the weathered wooden fences and green hedges that separated the manicured Kennedy lawns. The strollers flapped their arms for warmth. Rose said obliquely, “Joey, you should read more.” He nodded. “Yes, Aunt Rose.” “Read Marlborough, Fox, and Burke,” she persisted. The wind tore at them, and she added, “Like Jack.” That was it: Now there could be no dodging of the central issue, and they plunged into a discussion of where the burial should be.
The consensus was Boston. Back at the big house Ted called Cardinal Cushing. The Cardinal vetoed Brookline as unsuitable. The narrow streets made traffic there congested enough as it was, and a Presidential funeral would create an impossible jam. Either His Eminence or a member of his staff—several were on the line, and he had no later recollection of this—suggested a tomb in the center of Boston Common. The Senator left the matter open. He replaced the receiver, and his mother asked his advice about her own plans. Should she pack for Washington? “Stay here till Dad’s been told,” he suggested. That brought up the dreaded question of when he should be told. “Wait till tomorrow morning,” she begged. “Give him one more night.”
It wasn’t easy. Joe Kennedy customarily watched television when he awoke from his nap, and the networks were carrying nothing except assassination news. He couldn’t talk, and he wasn’t in the mood to read. Upstairs Ann had been evasively insisting that she couldn’t get any channel. She had played his favorite phonograph records, and during the long Squaw Island walk Rita Dallas had set up a 16-millimeter movie for him in the basement theater. He squirmed, restless. The nurse gave him a milk shake with sedation in it, but the sedative proved as ineffective as the liquor on the Presidential aircraft; the Ambassador was wide awake and vigilant. Back in his bedroom he fidgeted, and when Ted, Eunice, and Joe entered he looked up expectantly.
“Hi, Dad,” the Senator said carelessly. “I had to give a speech in Boston, so I thought I’d say hello.”
The absurdity was growing. Joe Kennedy was old and afflicted, but behind his withered features he remained canny. His children were putting on a charade, and he seemed to know it. Ted and Eunice engaged in animated argument while an early supper was served. Their father thrust his plate aside and gestured at the television set.
Ted turned his back to the bed and disconnected it. “It doesn’t work, Dad.”
The Ambassador’s eyebrows rose owlishly. He pointed accusingly at the dangl
ing cord. Desperate, Ted went to his knees. He obediently inserted the cord in the wall socket, and then, in the twenty seconds before the sound could warm up, he ripped the wires from the back of the set.
He spread his hands. “Still no good. We’ll fix it in the morning.”
Rita Dallas came in with a glass of milk. She had fortified it with another, more powerful opiate. Joe sipped it slowly, running quizzical eyes over them. By this time they had all reached a peculiar understanding. Obviously he knew that something momentous had happened; he was waiting to be told what. They knew he knew, but because of Ted’s commitment to his mother nothing could be said until tomorrow. So Ted and Eunice exchanged droll comments while their hearts were aching and their father sprawled in his lair of rumpled sheeting, a wary spectator. Finally the drug took hold. The parchment lids drooped. He fought to raise his lashes, twisted this way and that, and then capitulated, turning his drawn face into the pillows.
While Joseph P. Kennedy had awakened from one nap his most famous grandson had roused from another. The President’s son was struggling to swing his leg over the side of his crib in the blue bedroom on the second floor of the executive mansion. Caroline had wakened him. Maude Shaw had changed her to pajamas and put her in her yellow room next door, hoping she, too, would sleep. It hadn’t worked. She was punching the mattress and screaming for Agatha. Miss Shaw now realized that the separation of the two first-graders had been a mistake. Ethel Kennedy, Mrs. Auchincloss, and Jacqueline Hirsh, the French teacher, had offered to shelter the children, but in the absence of instructions from their mother the nurse wasn’t budging. She did decide to reunite the two girls. She telephoned Liz Pozen. Liz said at once, “I’ll let Agatha come to the White House to keep Caroline company. I’ll bring her right away.”
“No, I’ll send a White House car for her,” said Miss Shaw.
That was a mistake. On any other day it would have been quicker, but she hadn’t counted on today’s bizarre traffic. Liz could have made a one-way trip. The chauffeur, starting from the Twenty-second Street garage, faced a round trip. Moreover, the driver was unaccountably obtuse. Parking outside the Pozen home, he left his commercial radio blaring. The whole neighborhood could hear it. Liz scampered out, indignant, and even then he couldn’t see why it was important that Agatha not know of the assassination; he complied grudgingly.
Back at the mansion the Presidential apartment was almost deserted. Apart from John’s lusty shouts there was no sound. Miss Shaw was the only adult upstairs. Charles Fincklin and his fellow servants couldn’t bear to face anyone in the family, which, to them, included the children’s nurse. Ben and Toni Bradlee were the first friends to arrive. They came—after the usual parking problems—at the suggestion of Nancy Tuckerman, who begged Toni to “Send off Jackie’s mother.” Toni replied, “I can’t do that to Mums.” Nor could she. Nancy’s concern was understandable. Mrs. Auchincloss was emotive, as she herself was the first to admit. Nevertheless she was the President’s mother-in-law. They would simply have to wait, hope, and cope.
Agatha was delivered at the South Portico at 3:30 P.M. Her father embraced her, took her upstairs, and sprawled in a chair, limp with relief. Caroline was appeased, and the two girls began to play in the oval study. John, however, was now fully awake. His leg wasn’t quite long enough to span the slatted crib side. He attempted to vault over it, failed, and bellowed louder.
In presenting his christening cup, the Irish Ambassador had read a poem:
… When the storms break for him
Make the trees shake for him
Their blossoms down;
And in the night that he is troubled
May a friend wake for him…
In the broad central hall a friend stirred. Hearing the calls from the blue bedroom, Bill Pozen crossed and turned the knob.
“Hello, John,” he said gently.
“Hello, Mr. Pozen!” John held up his arms and crowed.
Pozen carried the boy to Miss Shaw and went downstairs. He decided that he shouldn’t stay with the children; he wasn’t that close to the First Family. But Ben Bradlee was. Ben had been two years behind Kennedy at Harvard. He knew John and Caroline well, and although he had been unable to carry Caroline lately—like the President, he suffered from a bad back—that didn’t matter; she was busy with Agatha. So he played with the boy. Lying on the floor beside him, he marched his fingers up and down the rug, entertained him with stories about a three-year-old boy named John who had great adventures, and watched as the President’s son proudly showed the salute Dave Powers had taught him. John was an amusing saluter. His parade-ground stance had always delighted his mother. He would stand at exaggerated attention, chest puffed out and the sturdy legs rigid, his face tense with solemnity. Then his right fingers would stiffen and he would begin his swing. Somehow he always missed. If he were wearing a hat, he would knock it off; just as frequently he struck his nose. This afternoon he was especially diverting. Nobody smiled.
Nancy, Toni, and Miss Shaw watched from the sofas beneath the muted mantel clock. The nurse kept squeezing her hands. “I haven’t the heart to tell them,” she kept whispering. “I can’t do it.” Toni distributed bubble gum among the children. She shouldn’t do it, she thought; it wasn’t good for their teeth. But gum was the only thing in her purse they could possibly want, and she had to give them something. Pleased, they champed away, John listening to Ben’s stories and pausing from time to time to smite his nose, Agatha earnestly gossiping over dolls, and Caroline listening. All four adults thought the President’s daughter exceptionally withdrawn. For long periods she was completely silent. Once, however, she spoke up clearly. Agatha had been talking about her nurse, Ann Connally, an Irishwoman. Caroline’s eyes turned dreamlike. Peering over her playmate’s shoulder, she said, “A long time ago my father’s people came from Ireland because there was nothing to eat. They all had to crowd on a big boat because you couldn’t eat the potatoes.”
Abruptly the stillness of the room was ruptured by the whirl of rotors. A brown Army helicopter was taking off from the mansion’s South Lawn. John left Ben, Caroline left Agatha. The President’s children raced to the windows. “That’s Mummy and Daddy!” they shouted gleefully. “Mummy and Daddy are coming home!” John swung up his arm, grazing his right cheek, and beamed at Ben. He said, “Daddy’s here!”
Ben felt like a criminal. In desperation he said, “Daddy will be back later.”
The three groups resumed their places: the man with the boy, the six-year-old girls crouched over their dolls, the women on the divans. Then there was another fluttering; a second chopper was departing, hovering over the Rose Garden like a gigantic insect.
“There they are! Mummy and Daddy are home!” Caroline and John cried in chorus.
Ben took his wife aside. He said grimly, “I’m going to tell those children.”
“No, you aren’t,” she said. “You don’t have the right.”
Below, the tumult grew: a third helicopter, a fourth, a fifth. “It was ghastly,” Nancy remembered afterward, and Ben would never forget “those bloody great choppers, one after another, drowning everything out. The evening,” he said later, “grew progressively worse.” There had never been anything like this fleet of rotors before. No one came upstairs to explain, and the adults were baffled. After a while Caroline also grew perplexed. “Why are there so many?” she asked. They turned away: they could only shrug and avoid her inquiring eyes. But John never abandoned hope. Each time he fled tirelessly down the long rug, piping, “Here they come! Here they come!”
It was five o’clock. Darkness had gathered, yet no one reached for a switch. Caroline stopped speaking altogether. In utter hopelessness the nurse, Nancy, and the Bradlees waited for something to happen. Something did: the white princess telephone by the fireplace purred. Miss Shaw answered. It was Bob Foster, downstairs at Secret Service Station F-5. He had just received a coded message from the plane. Clint Hill had instructions for Foster and Tom Wells. Lace w
anted Lyric and Lark taken to Hamlet, the Auchincloss home, before Angel reached Acrobat. The agents at F-5 had no way of knowing that Clint and Ken O’Donnell had reached this decision on their own. Foster and Wells did remark to one another that it seemed unlike Mrs. Kennedy, and it was; she had always remembered how, when she was a girl in Central Park, the presence of a Secret Service man had made Kate Roosevelt uncomfortable, different, and lonely, and she had been determined to mitigate that sense of isolation in her own children. Clint, however, had convinced himself that she would want them in a secluded place. O’Donnell had agreed, and he had also agreed that mentioning the move to her would be unwise. Had the call come from any other agent, the kiddie detail would have disregarded it, but Clint was Lace’s agent; if he said it, it must be so. Foster told Miss Shaw to pack.
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