These Few Precious Days

by Christopher Andersen

  A markedly more tame affair, the gala featured Ed Sullivan and famed trial lawyer Louis Nizer dancing in a chorus line, as well as appearances by boxing legend Sugar Ray Robinson, The Music Man star Robert Preston, and actor Tony Randall. With Marilyn Monroe’s forty-fifth-birthday rendition of “Happy Birthday” still fresh in the public’s mind, everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the unfailingly classy Audrey Hepburn serenaded the president. (It would be decades before it was revealed that Hepburn had also briefly been one of JFK’s lovers, before he married Jacqueline Bouvier.)

  Before anyone had the chance to get too comfortable, Fisher’s then-girlfriend, Ann-Margret, took the stage. The redheaded bombshell had just bounced and slithered her way through the film version of her Broadway hit Bye Bye Birdie, and now that she was only a few feet away from JFK she was determined to out-Marilyn Marilyn. “Ann-Margret did this provocative dance right in front of Kennedy,” Fisher recalled. “People remember Marilyn’s incredibly suggestive song, but Ann-Margret just buried that. She was so bold.”

  As for the first lady: “Jackie was sitting right next to the President, smiling,” Fisher said, “but I don’t think she meant it.” There was an important difference this time: Ann-Margret was not having an affair with JFK.

  On his actual birthday Jack proudly received the George Washington Medal as Father of the Year in the Oval Office. Coincidentally, May 29, 1963, was also Tish Baldrige’s last day on the job.

  The social secretary’s decision to leave had been a long time coming. To repay his country for its hospitality to her the previous year, Jackie agreed to attend a dinner for Indian president Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan the first week in June. But in the meantime, she skipped a number of commitments, including the annual congressional wives’ brunch in early May. Doctor’s orders, Jackie claimed, although the morning papers were filled with photos of her attending a ballet performance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera the night before.

  It had all proven too much for the self-deprecating, outgoing, unpretentious Tish Baldrige, who had used up her own credibility with the Washington press corps to run interference for Jackie. She couldn’t always shield the first lady from her obligations, and that meant there were times when Tish told Jackie bluntly, “You just have to do this.” Even then, Jackie seldom cooperated. “I don’t have to do anything,” she often answered, storming off to complain to Jack.

  Baldrige chalked up her boss’s recalcitrance to a “lapse of selfishness going back to her school days of doing what she wanted, being independent, and stamping her foot.” In the end a burnt-out Baldrige, who often had to scramble to find a last-minute replacement for Jackie, confessed that she was in “a most unfortunate position, being both someone who worked for her and an old friend.”

  Jackie quickly replaced Tish with another old friend—arguably her closest—Nancy Tuckerman. The two women had known each other since they were nine-year-olds at New York’s Chapin School, and had been roommates at Miss Porter’s in Farmington. “Tucky” seemed to be everything Tish was not—shy, somewhat drab, and not in the least bit interested in forcing Jackie to do anything she didn’t want to.

  At about the same time JFK was being pinned with his Father of the Year medal, Jackie threw a farewell party for Tish in the White House China Room, where the walls are lined with china services from previous administrations. The champagne flowed freely, and there were gifts from the staff; Jackie had a table made that was inlaid with the autographs of White House senior staff and the first family, including a doodle from John. Then, while the Marine Band played, the staff sang “Arrivederci, Tish” to the tune of “Arrivederci Roma,” with lyrics Jackie had written specially for the occasion.

  Baldrige was touched at the warm send-off, but also a little mystified by what she would take as a backhanded compliment from the president when he said goodbye to her in the Oval Office. “Tish,” JFK told her, “you are the most emotional woman I have ever known.”

  A few hours later, the White House staff threw another surprise party—this one for the president’s birthday—held downstairs in the no‑frills Navy Mess. JFK gamely opened one gag gift after another: a copy of “Debate Rules” from Richard Nixon, boxing gloves “to deal with Congress,” a Lilliputian rocking chair, and Jackie’s gift—a basket of dead grass from the “White House Historical Society, genuine antique grass from the antique Rose Garden.” The dead grass, poking fun at Jackie’s ongoing own crusade to fill the White House with antiques, drew the biggest laugh.

  That night, Jackie went ahead with plans of her own for Jack’s birthday—a cruise down the Potomac toward Mount Vernon aboard the Sequoia. Told about the party weeks before, Jack let it be known that he preferred the Honey Fitz, but was told “the boat’s got rotting stern timbers—like the rest of us, I guess.”

  The invitation called for “yachting clothes” and instructed everyone to be on time for an 8:01 departure. It was a dismal, rainy evening, but the yacht embarked anyway with a full complement of guests: Lem Billings, the Bradlees, the Shrivers, the Smatherses, Bobby and Ethel, Teddy, the Bartletts, the Fays, actor David Niven and his wife, Hjordis, the Shrivers, Bill Walton, an old Boston pol named Clem Norton, Mary Meyer, and one or two others.

  With thunder and lightning crashing all around, drinks were served on the covered fantail, followed by a dinner of roast filet of beef in the elegant, mahogany-paneled main cabin. As the 1955 Dom Perignon flowed, the toasts were delivered, and the laughter grew louder, everyone was having too good a time to notice the storm raging outside.

  ALTHOUGH BY NOW THE TWIST was decidedly passé, it remained Jack’s favorite piece of dance music. On the orders of their commander in chief, the three-piece Marine Band on board played the tune over and over again until it was finally time for JFK to unwrap his presents.

  Sitting in one of his padded rockers, Jack ripped through the presents as he always did, reacting to each with unalloyed glee. As he held each gift aloft for the others to see, Jackie gave a running commentary—until a soused Clem Norton stumbled and put his foot right through the rare engraving of a scene from the War of 1812 that had been Jackie’s gift to her husband.

  It took a moment for the gasps to subside. “That’s really too bad, isn’t it, Jackie?” Jack said as he reached for the next gift. “Oh, that’s all right,” she said, disappointed but determined not to put a damper on the proceedings. “I can get it fixed.” Although Tony Bradlee knew from Jackie’s expression that she was “distressed,” Ben Bradlee was impressed by how “unemotional” Jackie and Jack were. “They both so rarely show any emotion,” he observed, “except by laughter.”

  At JFK’s request, the Sequoia sailed downriver and back again a total of five times. By the time the captain finally docked the yacht at 1:23 a.m., most of the guests were drunk, Teddy had somehow managed to rip the left leg of his trousers completely off, and JFK—with Jackie and Mary Meyer right there—got caught up in the moment and chased Tony Bradlee around the boat while crew members roared with laughter. The episode, which apparently went unnoticed by Jackie, left Tony feeling “flattered, and appalled too.”

  By the next morning the storms had rolled away, leaving behind warm temperatures and a cloudless sky. JFK, none the worse for the wear, marked Memorial Day by laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, at Arlington National Cemetery. Instead of immediately returning to the White House, he decided to take a stroll in the sunshine with Caroline on the cemetery’s well-tended grounds. This had long been one of Jack’s favorite spots, and he took care to point out Arlington’s spectacular views of the Potomac and the monuments of Washington, D.C., beyond.

  Caroline was particularly struck by the stately hilltop mansion overlooking the cemetery. “Who lives there, Daddy?” she asked.

  “That’s the Custis-Lee Mansion,” he answered. “A very famous Civil War general named Robert E. Lee lived there a long time ago.”

  From this day forward, Caroline would scan the horizon for the mansion when
ever she was being driven through Washington. “When Caroline was very little,” Jackie said, “the mansion was one of the first things she learned to recognize.”

  The sudden arrival of spring and the breathtaking views also had a profound impact on Caroline’s father. “You know, Buttons,” he told her as they stared out over capital, “I could stay here forever.”

  That afternoon, the Kennedys boarded a helicopter on the South Lawn and headed for Camp David with the Bradlees and Nivens. Jack, decked out in white pants, a sky-blue polo shirt, and tasseled loafers, drove everyone in his Lincoln convertible to a skeet-shooting range, where David Niven cracked everyone up by pretending to be an expert marksman (“It’s all in your tone of voice when you say ‘Pull!’”)—and then missing every shot.

  Later, when the group went for a swim in Camp David’s heated outdoor pool, JFK lent the British actor his swim trunks; the president wound up in the pool wearing his white cotton boxers. It was obvious to everyone that Jack’s back pain was even worse than usual. Niven and Bradlee were surprised when JFK took off his shirt to swim, to see that he was wearing his back brace (which French ambassador Hervé Alphand described as “his peculiar little white corset”). He would continue to wear it even for the short walk from the dressing room to the pool.

  Before lunch, everyone gathered on the terrace to sip Blood Marys while the president opened more presents that had somehow survived the mayhem of the night before. Again, Jack tore through the pile with glee, paying equal attention to expensive gifts from close friends and inexpensive items that had been sent to the White House by total strangers. Bill Walton’s elegant framed drawings of Lafayette Square were a hit with Jackie. JFK’s favorite was a scrapbook from Ethel parodying the White House tours by substituting her own Hickory Hill “madhouse,” overridden with untamed children, for the Executive Mansion.

  AFTER ENDURING A MISCARRIAGE, A stillbirth, and two difficult pregnancies, Jackie looked forward to a relaxing summer in Hyannis Port. Once again, they had rented a house on Squaw Island that was close enough to the Kennedy compound but afforded Jackie the peace and privacy she craved.

  It was also important to her that, while JFK’s children be allowed to play with their rambunctious and often ill-behaved Kennedy cousins, Caroline and John should always follow her strict rules of conduct. Keeping the Bouvier-Kennedys a healthy distance from Ethel’s wild brood would be an essential part of Jackie’s plan to raise two well-mannered kids. “Jackie didn’t want Caroline and John inhaled into that frenzied macho world of the Kennedys,” her friend David Halberstam, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, later remarked. Another longtime acquaintance, Peter Duchin, said the influence of the wild Kennedy cousins was something Jackie “worried about all the time.”

  Nestled in the woods at the end of a narrow gravel road, “Brambletyde” was a sprawling gray-shingled house that offered glorious ocean views from the rear and a broad, private beach. It was also more luxurious, more secluded, and infinitely quieter than the houses that made up the Kennedy homestead. The plan was to settle in there on June 27, then move on to Hammersmith Farm for the baby’s anticipated arrival in September.

  Before she settled into Brambletyde at the end of June, the first lady put the finishing touches on Wexford. The house did have panoramic windows that offered jaw-dropping Blue Ridge mountain views, but it was otherwise unremarkable. Jackie sought to change that with the décor, filling the rooms with brass tables, carved elephants, camel saddles, tapestries, and other exotic mementos of her travels through India and Pakistan.

  Jackie was perhaps proudest of her Mogul miniatures—scenes from the Kama Sutra—which she displayed prominently in the dining room. Clint Hill had his own theory as to why Jackie hung the erotic works in the dining room as opposed to the bedroom, which Gallagher deemed more appropriate. “Shock value,” Hill wrote in his excellent memoir, Mrs. Kennedy and Me. “Pure and simple.” It turned out that Jack was even more impressed with the green, red, and orange paisley wallpaper that covered every square inch of the guest room—walls, doors, even the ceiling. “It looks,” the president said, “like the inside of a Persian whorehouse.”

  After all Jackie’s hard work, she made a startling decision after spending just one night at Wexford that spring: she and Jack would lease the place out from June to October at $1,000 a month ($8,000 a month in 2013 dollars). JFK was especially pleased, since he was once again on the warpath about Jackie’s spending, and this was one way to offset the cost of renting Brambletyde. “The President wasn’t too thrilled about spending money on the Squaw Island rental,” Larry Newman said, “when they had a beautiful home at the compound.” But in the end, Oleg Cassini said, “he wanted her to be happy at all costs, especially with the baby coming.”

  The first week in June, Jack headed west to address graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, observe missiles being launched in White Sands, New Mexico, and watch a display of America’s military might from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk off the California coast. He also spoke with the nation’s mayors in Honolulu, attended party fund-raisers in Los Angeles—and met with Lyndon Johnson and Texas governor John Connally about a campaign trip to Dallas tentatively planned for November.

  Jackie, meanwhile, amused herself by spending a day at the Maryland farm of Ros Gilpatric—“the second most attractive man in the Defense Department” (next to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara). Gilpatric was returning to his law practice in New York, and Jackie was crestfallen. In Jack’s absence, Gilpatric, whose own romantic entanglements had provided grist for the New York and Washington rumor mills for years, had provided a sympathetic ear. He had also provided her husband with sound advice that led JFK to make the right decisions during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

  The following Thursday, Jackie sat down at her desk in the White House and wrote Gilpatric an emotional farewell letter. “I loved my day in Maryland,” she said. “It made me happy for one whole week … I always push unpleasant things out of my head on the theory that if you don’t think about them they won’t happen—but I guess your departure—which I would never let myself realize until tonight—is true.”

  Jackie went on to say that she pitied whoever would replace Gilpatric at the Defense Department. “They will always live in your shadow … and no one else will be able to have force and kindness at the same time … Please know Dear Ros that I will wish you well always—thank you—Jackie.”

  Gilpatric conceded that he “filled a void” in the first lady’s life. But by the time he left Washington he was more impressed than ever with new direction the Kennedys’ marriage had taken. “They loved each other,” he reflected. “If anything, I think they were growing closer toward the end.”

  Whatever the strains between them over the years, there was one thing Jackie never doubted about Jack: his greatness. On June 10 and June 11, she watched in awe as her husband gave back-to-back speeches that were instantly hailed as historic. In his “Peace Speech,” delivered at American University’s commencement in Washington, Kennedy announced that the United States was suspending aboveground nuclear testing and called for a both a reduction in nuclear weapons and an across-the-board re-examination of U.S.-Soviet relations.

  The next day, in the wake of segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace’s to block the integration of the University of Alabama, JFK took to the airwaves again. In an eloquent eighteen-minute prime-time address to the nation, Kennedy argued for equal rights under the Constitution and promised to propose new laws against discrimination based on race, religion, ethnic origin, or sex.

  Medgar Evers, Mississippi field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was so excited he rushed home from his office to tell his young children what had just happened. As he got out of his car outside his house, Evers was shot by a white racist and bled to death in front of his two children. Jack was so moved by the tragedy, which further galvanized the civil righ
ts movement, that he met with Evers’s widow and their children in the Oval Office just ten days later.

  Jack continued to use his wife as a sounding board, talking about the difficulties that confronted him at every turn as he grappled with the issues of the day. She downplayed her importance in this role, but it was crucial to JFK’s decision-making process. “She had a keen mind and knew all the personalities involved,” John Kenneth Galbraith said. “Jackie, like her husband, was also a student of history. What she thought clearly mattered a great deal to him, and she was very proud of that.”

  Given her delicate condition, there was no question of Jackie accompanying her husband when he embarked June 22 on a history-making two-week trip to Europe. Without Jackie there to speak to the multitudes in their native tongues, the linguistically challenged president would have to fend for himself.

  The first stop was West Berlin, and he was determined to say at least a few short phrases in German. Struggling with the pronunciation as he practiced his lines for more than an hour, he finally jotted a few key lines phonetically and prayed.

  More than 1.5 million people—three-fifths of Berlin’s entire population—poured into the streets to hear Kennedy’s rebuke of communism and the ugly wall that now divided the city. “Freedom has many difficulties, and democracy is not perfect,” he told the cheering crowd, “but we have never had to put up a wall to keep our people in.” He concluded that “all free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’”

  (Jackie, who watched the speech at the White House with Robert McNamara, called to congratulate her husband. However, she would later be told by a German-speaking friend that by inserting “ein” before “Berliner” he may have saying something entirely different. “You were wonderful, Jack,” Jackie said, “but apparently it sounded to him like you were saying ‘I am a doughnut.’”)