These Few Precious Days

by Christopher Andersen

  Shipped in a climate-controlled, bulletproof crate and occupying its own stateroom aboard the luxury liner SS France, La Gioconda had arrived in the United States in late December. On January 8, after attending a dinner for one hundred at the French Embassy, JFK and Jackie joined some 1,200 invited guests at the National Gallery. When the elevator to the second floor of the gallery got stuck, Jackie, dressed in a Cassini strapless mauve silk chiffon gown glistening with crystal beads, could only make it up the stairs with an uncomfortable Clint Hill holding her short train, like, the Secret Service agent recalled, “an attendant at a wedding.”

  Once the president and first lady arrived, the reception quickly devolved into chaos. In the crush of guests and photographers, it quickly became evident that Jackie—not the Mona Lisa—was the real star of the evening.

  Three days after upstaging Leonardo, Jackie was in the middle of dictating a letter to her secretary, Mary Gallagher, when she came to an abrupt halt. She wanted to know if Gallagher thought she’d done enough as first lady. She needn’t have waited for an answer; even with her frequent absences from the White House to spend time with her horses and her children, Jackie already ranked as one of the most activist first ladies in U.S. history.

  Jackie called Tish Baldrige to the West Sitting Room and declared, “I am taking the veil!” From now on, she was going to cut back dramatically on her official duties and devote more time to her family. “Semi-official” trips abroad, ship launchings, press luncheons were to be back-burnered. And while Jackie claimed she would only perform those official duties her husband deemed essential, Baldrige knew that meant “she was going to do what she wanted to do. The President, bless his heart, really couldn’t force her to do anything if she didn’t want to.”

  Neither Gallagher nor Baldrige knew the reasons behind Jackie’s decision to scale back her workload, although Provi the maid had already guessed: Jackie was pregnant. The baby was due the first week in September, and she intended to keep her pregnancy under wraps as long as possible.

  Her self-described “declaration of independence” aside, Jackie’s schedule was more packed than ever in the early months of 1963. In the span of a few weeks, she and Jack dined at the Washington homes of Franklin Roosevelt Jr., the Douglas Dillons, and the Joe Alsops, then went to New York to catch the hit satirical revue Beyond the Fringe and attend parties thrown in their honor by Adlai Stevenson and former U.S. ambassador to Cuba Earl Smith. (Smith’s wife, former model turned society queen bee Florence Pritchett, had dated JFK when he was a young senator and remained one of Jack’s closest female friends.)

  Flush with the excitement of another child on the way, Jackie and JFK took full advantage of their weekend in New York. Trailed by their Secret Service detail, they strode up and down Park Avenue on their way to and from favorite haunts like Voisin and Le Pavillon. With the Carlyle as their base, Jackie had managed to walk up and down the streets of Manhattan’s Upper East Side without drawing a crowd. With a little help from the Secret Service, even the president was able to take his daughter on a stroll through Central Park. Rather than using the Carlyle’s front entrance, they sneaked out a service door on East Seventy-Seventh Street, directly opposite tony Finch College for Women (which Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia would soon be attending). Unnoticed, JFK and Caroline were then able to enjoy a rare treat, laughing and chatting as they walked hand in hand through a public park.

  Caroline’s parents cherished such stolen moments of privacy. But they remained the exception to the pomp- and ceremony-filled rule. To a state dinner honoring Lyndon Johnson and Chief Justice Earl Warren on January 21, Jackie wore a citron yellow chiffon-and-satin gown inspired, she said, by the turbans she had seen on her trip to India. Weeks later, it was black silk chiffon and pearls for a state dinner honoring Venezuelan president Rómulo Betancourt.

  From the moment they learned she was pregnant, both Jackie and the president were understandably concerned that, once again, she might lose the baby. There were now days when, overcome with exhaustion, she would lie down for a nap and sleep for twelve hours straight. As the first lady entered her third month, only a handful of people—Clint Hill and one or two other key Secret Service agents, and Joe and Rose Kennedy—were let in on the secret. Jackie’s own mother, the talkative Janet Auchincloss, was not.

  Jackie had already given up water-skiing and riding, replacing her strenuous workouts astride Sardar, Bit of Irish, and Rufus with long, brisk walks. Nothing too strenuous, of course—and nothing like the torture her husband had in mind for their friends.

  Even before he was sworn in as president, Jack railed in speeches and articles against the new “generation of spectators” who had replaced strenuous exercise with long hours spent staring at the television set. To get these “soft Americans” back on the road to fitness—literally—he resurrected a 1908 memo from then-president Theodore Roosevelt to his Marine Corps commandant instructing corps officers to stay in shape by periodically hiking fifty miles in less than twenty hours.

  Soon Americans everywhere were taking the president and TR up on the challenge. JFK himself was in no condition to do any such thing; his back pain in early 1963 was so excruciating he told the Bradlees he’d prefer the pain of childbirth. But he still wanted a member of his administration to march alongside the Marines. “Unfortunately,” said the rotund, cigar-smoking Pierre Salinger, “he kept looking at my waistline.”

  Salinger played along for a while, until finally bowing out on the grounds that, as he put it, “if I went I would be dead—serious!” The man closest to JFK had already proven himself up to the task. While Jackie and Jack were traipsing around Manhattan, Bobby Kennedy hiked fifty miles up the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal straight to Camp David—and in only eighteen hours.

  The previous Christmas, JFK had bet Stas Radziwill and Chuck Spalding a thousand dollars they could never finish the hike. Jack’s sister Eunice Shriver upped the ante by another thousand, with everyone agreeing that the winners would donate the money to charity. Now that Bobby had successfully completed the hike, Jack was more determined than ever to have his band of hikers follow through.

  Sibling rivalry, Kennedy-style, was now in play as Radziwill and Spalding began their hike along the new Sunshine Parkway from Palm Beach to Miami at 2 a.m. on February 23. To ensure their safety, Clint Hill was enlisted to hike alongside them. “Bobby had hiked through the woods,” Spalding said, “and Jack didn’t want to be shown up by his little brother.” The event quickly took on a life of its own, and soon Radziwill and Spalding were inundated with sneakers sent by strangers from around the country.

  Although it was going to cost him and his sister two thousand dollars, JFK was determined that his friends beat Bobby’s time. To ensure that, he sent Dr. Max Jacobson—whose Constructive Research Foundation stood to get the money if Stas and Chuck won—along to look after the middle-aged hikers. In addition to oxygen, Jacobson was, said Spalding, “giving us shots all over the place.”

  Jackie and Lee drove out periodically to check on their progress, and the president interrupted a cruise aboard the Honey Fitz to rendezvous with his hikers when they reached Pompano Beach—the thirty-five-mile mark. While Stas and Chuck sprawled on the grass, the president drove up in his white Lincoln Continental to deliver a “pep talk. Mainly,” Spalding said, “Jack was worried about Stas having a heart attack and told him he could quit if he wanted to.” Radziwill declined, and the trio made it to the finish line in Fort Lauderdale at 9:35 p.m.—fifteen minutes ahead of Bobby’s time.

  Along the way, they weren’t exactly roughing it. All three men took frequent smoking breaks, and whenever the mood struck them they called for the Secret Service to deliver ice, steaks, and even champagne and orange juice to make mimosas. Once it was over, a limousine picked them all up and drove them to Palm Beach, “where,” Spalding said, “Jack had a big buffet waiting for us and champagne, and the jukebox was playing ‘Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen’ by the Andrews Sisters.”


  “Congratulations!” Jack said as he hung a “medal” made of purple construction paper around each hiker’s neck. Each was inscribed with a personal message from JFK, who boasted with a wink that he had even drawn a presidential seal on each one “to make it official.” (Back at the White House, Salinger gleefully accepted an award from his press office staff for not hiking fifty miles.)

  The fifty-mile hike down Florida’s Sunshine Parkway made front-page news across the country, but it seemed doubtful that it could have been accomplished without the help of Dr. Max. “What people didn’t know,” Spalding said, “was that with all that speed we could’ve walked all the way to Rio, we were so hyped up!”

  Spalding also noticed during this time in Palm Beach what he called a “sea change” in the outward relationship between the president and his wife. “They were as happy as I’d ever seen them,” he said, “and they were much more affectionate toward each other. We couldn’t put our finger on what was up exactly … because none of us knew at the time that Jackie was pregnant.”

  There were other, subtle signs that changes might be afoot. On March 8, 1963, Jackie and Jack gave what would be the last of their now-famous White House dinner dances—this one for World Bank chief Eugene Black. With music provided by society bandleader Lester Lanin in the softly lit Blue Room and fireplaces roaring in the Green Room and the Red Room, the Executive Mansion was, recalled Tish Baldrige, “everything I believed Jackie ever hoped it could be when she first set foot inside—an elegant, inviting home brimming over with life.”

  Perhaps a little too much life. As with many of the Kennedys’ bashes, this one had its bacchanalian moments. The girlfriend of JFK’s Air Force aide, General Godfrey McHugh, reportedly took a dip in the White House pool and then went upstairs to the residence to jump on Abraham Lincoln’s bed. When word reached the president the next day, he was not amused. “Get after McHugh,” he told Jackie, who had actually dated McHugh before she met Jack.

  The March 8, 1963, dinner dance was memorable for more than just hijinks. One of the guests that night was Mary Meyer, who by late 1962 had become a fixture at the White House. “She was almost part of the furniture,” recalled White House counsel Myer Feldman. “I would see her in the Oval Office or over in the residence. There wasn’t any attempt to hide her the way there was with some of the other women.”

  For over a year, Meyer had occupied a special place in the hierarchy of Jack’s women. “He was certainly smitten by her,” Charlie Bartlett allowed. “Heavily smitten.” Yet the same bohemian spirit that made Meyer irresistible to him also gave Jack pause. “Mary would be rough to live with,” he asked Ben Bradlee more than once, and, more than once, Bradlee answered in the affirmative.

  At one point at the last dinner dance, Jack looked out over the sea of beautiful women on the dance floor, turned to Bradlee, and sighed, “If you and I could only run wild, Benjy.” Bradlee, who claimed to be unaware of JFK’s shenanigans at the time, took that as nothing more than a nostalgic reference to their bachelor days. In retrospect, George Plimpton later theorized, “Jack was admitting that he couldn’t ‘run wild’ any more and risk hurting Jackie. And certainly not while she was pregnant. They were both terrified she’d lose the baby, and of course he would do anything to keep that from happening.”

  LATER THAT EVENING, JACK CORNERED Mary and they disappeared together for a heart-to-heart conversation. Despite the freezing temperatures outside, she had chosen to wear a frilly chiffon summer dress that had belonged to her great-grandmother, instantly setting herself apart from the other women in the room. When she and the president were finished talking, an anguished Meyer wandered out onto the snow-covered South Lawn in her flimsy dress, then fled the party on the verge of tears.

  It is unlikely that Jackie had delivered an ultimatum to her husband, demanding that he break off his relationship with Meyer—since Marilyn Monroe’s death, the only “other woman” Jack seemed to have any real feelings for. There was no need. Jackie’s pregnancy had changed everything.

  That same evening at the White House, she turned to Adlai Stevenson and, without revealing that she was expecting, hinted that things might be different inside her marriage. “I don’t care how many girls Jack has,” she told the stunned Adlai, “as long as I know he knows it’s wrong, and I think he does now. Anyway,” Jackie added, looking across the crowded room at her husband, “that’s all over, for the present.”

  I know my husband was devoted to me. I know he was proud of me. It took a very long time for us to work everything out, but we did.

  —JACKIE

  9

  “You’re My Ideal, Jacqueline”

  “John, slow down now. You’ve got to behave. Watch where you’re going, John!” Maud Shaw’s pleas fell on deaf ears as the headstrong two-year-old darted at his customary breakneck speed across the lawn toward Daddy’s office. The nanny reached out, but before she could grab him, the boy stumbled and banged his mouth on a concrete step. A bloody tooth went flying, and John collapsed on the grass in tears. Nanny Shaw finally managed to calm the toddler down when, suddenly, John jumped up and dove into the bushes. He emerged holding the incisor, which he then proudly showed off—along with his new gap-toothed grin—to Secret Service agents, cabinet members, and anyone else he came across that day.

  John had to wait until his father got home before he could show him the wayward baby tooth; when all the commotion occurred outside his office, the president was busy delivering his third State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress. History repeated itself just two weeks later when John broke another tooth while playing in the Kennedy children’s tree house. This time Jack was in the Oval Office and rushed outside to comfort the boy.

  As he looked forward to the birth of another child, Jack seemed more besotted than ever with the two he already had. He was so eager to communicate with John, for example, that when the boy was only ten months old his father demanded to know why it was taking him so long to learn to talk.

  “Oh, but he does talk, Mr. President,” Maud Shaw answered. “It’s just that you can’t understand him.”

  “That’s right, Daddy,” Caroline chimed in. “He does talk to me.” JFK decided that, from then on, Caroline would serve as the president’s official interpreter of John-speak.

  The Kennedys’ dinner guests often availed themselves of Caroline’s services. “John-John has a big thing about coming up to you and whispering a lot of gibberish in your ear,” Ben Bradlee said at the time. “If you throw your head back and act surprised, John-John roars with laughter until he drools.”

  Bradlee was impressed with the way “John-John and JFK quite simply just break each other up. Kennedy likes to laugh and likes to make people laugh, and his son is the perfect foil for him.”

  Jack couldn’t resist teasing the boy. “So how’re you doing, Sam?” he would ask John-John nonchalantly when he toddled into the room.

  “I’m not Sam, I’m John.”

  “What was that, Sam?”

  “No, no, no,” John answered. “I’m not Sam. I’m John. John, John, JOHN!”

  “Oh, sorry, Sam.”

  Vacations in Palm Beach, at Hyannis Port, and at Hammersmith Farm gave father and son even more opportunities for mischief. A favorite spot to swim near Hammersmith Farm was the swimming pool at Bailey’s Beach in Newport. There, according to Jamie Auchincloss, his two-year-old nephew often jumped off the low diving board into the deep end with no one there to catch him—sending suited-up members of the Kiddie Detail scrambling to pull him out. Other times, John would ask for help to climb up the ladder to the high diving board, and go “racing off the board to ten feet of free fall. His father was often there to catch him.”

  As John climbed up the ladder one day, the president reached up and yanked his swim trunks down, exposing the boy’s derriere.

  “Daddy,” John protested as he pulled his swimsuit up. “You are a bad man!”

  John turned and resumed his climb up the sta
irs, only to have his father pull down his trunks a second time. “Daddy,” said the toddler, now seething with righteous indignation, “you are a poo-poo head!”

  Feigning outrage, JFK lowered his voice. “John,” he said, “no one calls the President of the United States a poo-poo head.”

  Father and son were “really great pals,” White House photographer Cecil Stoughton said. “Little John was so endearing. His father couldn’t get enough of him.”

  It was typical for John to wander in and out of the West Wing, and the president “really didn’t try very hard to get rid of him,” Salinger said. “He liked having John around.” George Smathers believed his friend JFK “could not deny that boy anything. If the President was having a cabinet meeting or talking to some head of state, it didn’t matter—he’d stop everything if John came skipping into the Oval Office.”

  Ted Sorensen remembered John lingering at one breakfast meeting attended by Pierre Salinger, Arthur Schlesinger, and McGeorge Bundy. “After shaking hands and bowing all around, John took over a proffered chair and very nearly took over the meeting,” Sorensen said. “His father’s suggestions to leave, accompanied by bribes to take him to the office later, were loudly resisted. Deciding to ignore him, the President opened his request for questions with the usual, ‘What have we got today?’”

  John answered immediately. “I’ve got a glass of water,” he proclaimed.

  On those rare occasions when John was barred from the Oval Office, he didn’t handle it well. While JFK tried to pin down Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko on such critical issues as Cuba and the Berlin Wall, a frustrated John stood outside the door shouting “Gromyko! Gromyko!” until he was led away by Maud Shaw.