“Jackie, you have to pull yourself together,” Joan said, concerned by the former First Lady’s haggard appearance. Her hair had been combed, but defied order. She wore little makeup. Her clothes weren’t “Jackie Kennedy crisp.” “We all love you,” Joan said. “We’re so worried.”
Jackie just shook her head, dismally. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just fine.”
Then, as she picked listlessly at her food, Jackie began once again to tell the story of what happened in Dallas, running a checklist of each awful occurrence. She said that the previous night she had suddenly awakened screaming after a nightmare. “I’ve heard that gun go off ten thousand times,” she said. “I picture my own head splattering. I’d give my own life gladly, if I could just get back Jack.” Joan looked horrified.
With nothing further to talk about, an awkwardness that had never been a part of their relationship began to set in. The two women just sat and stared over each other’s shoulders, according to the agent. After one more drink, they kissed each other good-bye and parted company.
Recalls the agent, “As she was leaving, I heard Joan call after Jackie, ‘Give me a ring, will you?’ Jackie didn’t respond.”
Even when trying to be social, Jackie couldn’t help but talk about the grisly murder. “My God, his brains were all over me,” Jackie would say, as if she still could not believe the carnage she had witnessed. “All over my dress. Just brains. And blood. So much blood.”
Those close to Jackie, such as Ethel, called Jackie’s nightmarish tale of the assassination the “story from hell.” Whenever Jackie would tell it, Ethel would shake her head vigorously, put her hands to her ears, and run from the room. Ethel, who feared that Jackie was becoming an alcoholic (yet didn’t notice that Joan was becoming one), told Joan Braden, “My poor sister-in-law is losing it, I’m afraid. And there’s nothing anyone can do. Maybe time will take care of this.”
Among the sisters-in-law, Jackie had always been the “strong one,” and as much as Ethel had quarreled with her, she still had grudging admiration for her strength and her determination to live her life in a strong, powerful way. “You can count on Jackie,” she once said to a reporter. “She’s dependable. You may not know what she’s thinking, but she has a certain resolve. She loves being First Lady, that’s for sure.”
It’s true that Jackie’s personality—imperious at times, usually fair (though she could be unreasonable if the mood struck her), often a voice of reason among the women in the family—had been a constant in the lives of her family members over the years. To see her in such a weakened state was frightening to all. “We lost Jack,” Joan told Ted, according to what he later told friends. “We don’t want to lose Jackie, too. What can we do?”
Moreover, because she was one of their own, a Kennedy, her family had great affection for her. Ethel, Joan, and all the Kennedys had known the private Jackie for many years and had watched—with mixed emotions, at least for Ethel—not only her public glory as First Lady but also her moments of great despair, such as the deaths of her babies. All of her experiences, personal and professional—her wedding, the birth of her children, her campaigning for Jack, her White House transformation, her dealing with the Marilyn Monroe drama—had meshed with their own lives’ events to compose a family history of memories and emotions that only those in the inner circle could or should fully understand. “I couldn’t bear to watch what she was going through because it was Jackie,” Joan once said of this black period in her sister-in-law’s life. “It broke my heart in a million pieces.”
Jackie may have wanted to tell her terrible story repeatedly, but she really didn’t want others to discuss what had happened or ruminate over the sensational details. One topic of discussion in which Jackie steadfastly refused to engage—and it often came up after she told her “story from hell”—had to do with whom to hold responsible for her husband’s murder. Was it a conspiracy? Or had Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone? To this day the question remains a source of fascination. Throughout her life, though, Jackie never wanted any answers. In fact, none of the Kennedys did.
“I think she was afraid of what she would learn, and also what the country would learn, in terms of Jack’s personal behavior and the Kennedys’ connection to the mob, the CIA… all of it,” says Jackie’s cousin John Davis. “She had enough to deal with. She knew that any further investigation over the years could open up all sorts of possibilities about affairs, both governmental and romantic. She didn’t want to know.” Doubtless, she didn’t want the world to know, either.
Davis says that the only time he ever spoke to his cousin about a further investigation into Jack’s murder was more than ten years later, in 1974.
“Do you think more should be known about it?” he asked her.
She looked at him blankly, and then said, “So, what have you been up to, John? Are you well?”
“She completely changed the subject, which is what she would do if you tried to discuss the assassination with her,” said John Davis. “I don’t know if she got over it… I suppose, maybe, she found a way to move on. But she wasn’t about to dredge it all up. Finding out the truth meant nothing to her. It wouldn’t bring back Jack so, in her mind, what good would it serve?”
Rita Dallas recalled, “I once overheard Jackie tell Rose, ‘You know, I don’t think that I care how Jack was killed. Does it matter? Will it bring him back?’ ” Jackie did not give her mother-in-law a chance to answer. “No. No. No!” she exclaimed.
“She couldn’t have cared less about the myriad of theories,” Ted White, who interviewed Jackie for Life magazine after the assassination, once said. “What difference did it make whether he was killed by the CIA, the FBI, or the Mafia, or some half-crazed misanthrope? He was gone, and what counted for her was that his death be placed in some kind of social context.”
The only Kennedy who seemed interested in what really may have occurred in Dallas was Ethel, who felt strongly that the family should get to the bottom of what happened to her brother-in-law. “They took him away from us,” she told one family member, “and I want to know why. I’m sorry, but I want to know.” It was interesting that Ethel referred to “they” when speaking of responsibility for her brother-in-law’s death.
“She tried to have conversations with Jackie about it,” said Lem Billings, “but Jackie wouldn’t have it.”
One afternoon after the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination, released its report, which concluded that Oswald acted alone, Ethel and Eunice visited Jackie at her home (she was living in New York by this time). “I think you owe it to the country to lead the way and demand more of an investigation. Do you believe this report?”
Jackie was very clear. “Ethel, I don’t want to know,” she said, her temper rising. “It won’t bring back Jack, will it? I was in that car,” she reminded her. “Do you think I’m over it? Do you think I can bear another second of it? Why would you think I would want to open further investigation into it?”
Perhaps Ethel’s curiosity about what had really occurred in Dallas had to do with the fact that her husband, Bobby, believed there was more to the story than what was presently known. He told Arthur Schlesinger that while he believed that Oswald was guilty of the crime, there was question in his mind as to whether Oswald acted alone or had been a part of a larger plot organized by either Castro or the mob, or, as he put it, “who knows who.” Bobby realized, though, that to probe too deeply in matters having to do with these possibilities would open the Kennedys to heavy scrutiny and, as he might have put it, “who knows what” might have come to light. “Bobby asked some questions and did some follow-up,” says George Smathers, “but I think he was unhappy with what he was learning—whatever that was—because he backed off.”
“He asked me to stay on top of the investigation, and I did,” recalls his press secretary from 1965 to 1968, Frank Mankiewicz. “I would relay information to him from time to time. But, really, it wasn’t a primary concern. Jack was gone. No one n
eeded more, I suppose, than that.”
“As Attorney General, Bobby had all sorts of information about what had happened that no one else knew,” adds John Davis. “But in the end, he agreed with Jackie to just take the simpleminded Warren Commission report at its word: Oswald acted alone. He was just a nut, and that was that….”
For the most part, Bobby eventually put the question of who killed his brother out of his mind. On April 4, 1968, after Martin Luther King was murdered and Bobby spoke to a crowd of a thousand, mostly black, in Indianapolis, he went back to his room, slumped into a chair, and said to his speechwriters Jeff Greenfield and Adam Walinsky, “You know, that fellow Harvey Lee Oswald—or whatever his name was—set something loose in this country.”
“That was the only time I ever heard him mention his name,” recalls Greenfield. “When the news of John Kennedy’s death first came out, the news reports had the name backward and that’s the way he always remembered it, because he never took a look at it again.”
Jackie and Brando—The Rumors
After her husband’s death there were whisperings of an affair between Jackie and the handsome, forty-year-old Academy Award–winning actor Marlon Brando.
It was in January 1964 when Jackie first met Brando over dinner with her sister Lee and Brando’s friend George Englund at the Jockey Club in Washington. Brando couldn’t have been more charming; he and Jackie seemed to have an instant rapport, as he regaled her with stories about things she usually didn’t care about, such as the celebrities with whom he made movies and had friendships. “Tell me about Frank Sinatra,” Jackie said, teasingly. “Isn’t he just an awful man?” Brando agreed. After making Guys and Dolls with Sinatra almost a decade earlier, he believed the singer to be a self-absorbed lout.
As the night wore on, all were having a good time. However, the press had been tipped off, and when reporters showed up at the restaurant, Jackie became completely enraged. “How is it that they always, always, always know where I am,” she cried. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Those goddamn parasites!”
The quarter vanished through a kitchen exit. Once back at Jackie’s house, the four of them had more martinis, listened to a Wayne Newton record, and danced—Lee with George, Jackie with Marlon. As he danced with Jackie, according to what he later told a friend, he decided to kiss her. His lips touched hers, and Jackie froze in his arms. The look in her eyes said it all: The dance was over and he should leave.
Embarrassed, Brando said his good-byes and staggered out to a waiting car. As he drove off, Clint Hill noticed Jackie Kennedy standing in the doorway with a sad expression on her face.
“It’s too soon,” she said later. “Much, much too soon. I doubt I’ll ever be ready to be a woman again.”
The next day Marlon Brando sent Jackie a dozen yellow roses with an accompanying card. While the specifics of what he had written on the card remain unknown, Jackie was touched. Lee suggested that her sister telephone Marlon to apologize, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so. “I just hope he forgets all about it, and all about me, and never, ever says a word to anybody about any of it, ever,” a mortified Jackie said. She and Brando never saw one another again—at least not that anyone close to them can remember.
PART EIGHT
Ted’s Plane Crash
It was one o’clock in the morning on Saturday, June 20, 1964. Twenty-seven-year-old Joan Kennedy was sound asleep when a persistent knocking on the bedroom door jarred her to consciousness. After the assassination, she rarely slept deeply. So distraught had she been that, just two weeks earlier, she had suffered a miscarriage, her second. She went to the door, wearing only her slip. When she opened it, she found her chauffeur, Jack Crimmins. The concerned look on his face told her that something was very wrong.
“Joan, I don’t know how to say this to you,” Crimmins remembered telling her. “Maybe you should sit down.”
Joan stood, frozen. No, she would not sit down, she said. “Please just tell me. Tell me now.”
“There’s been an accident.”
Joan gasped and leaned against the door frame. “Oh no. Who?”
“Ted.”
“Oh, my God,” she exclaimed, tears immediately coming to her eyes. “Not Ted, too.”
“I’m sorry, Joan,” Crimmins apologized. “Ted’s plane went down, somewhere near Springfield.”
“Not another nightmare,” she said. “Please, God.”
The scene between Joan and Jack Crimmins was played out at the home of Alan and Ann Biardi, friends of Kennedy campaign worker Don Dowd and his wife, state Committeewoman Phoebe Dowd. Joan had gone to West Springfield to watch Ted accept the nomination at the Massachusetts State Democratic Convention for a second term as senator. It seemed clear that he was headed to victory in that he had done so well filling the two unexpired years of his brother Jack’s term. With the usual preconvention festivities—receptions, parties, dinners—it promised to be a good time.
A day earlier, the Senate had voted on the civil rights bill, which was approved by a wide margin. Because JFK had introduced the bill (which Lyndon Johnson then championed), Ted had understandable sentimental attachment to remaining on the Senate floor until its passage. So Joan would go ahead to West Springfield alone, with Ted intending to join her there as soon as the final vote was tallied.
Because the Senate was, as usual, running over schedule, Ted would be late in arriving in Springfield. Before even getting on the plane, he wanted to go to Arlington to visit Jack’s grave. Head bowed, he would kneel alone at the eternal flame, spending just a moment with his brother and telling him of the passage of the bill—the final tally was 73 to 27—that had meant so much to him.
In a telephone hookup to the Massachusetts delegates, Ted’s voice crackled through the loud speakers at 7:30 P.M., just ten minutes before that final vote. “I want everybody to know that I am a candidate this year,” he announced. “We are now fifteen minutes away from the vote for civil rights.” At that announcement, a loud cheer erupted from the floor. Ted added that he would join them all as soon as possible. “And I ask you,” he concluded, “not to get so impatient that you decide to nominate Joan instead.” (This was in reference to the strong reaction Joan received earlier when she gave a brief speech to the delegates.)
Joan wasn’t at the hall, however. She was in bed, at least until she was awakened by Jack Crimmins, who had driven Joan from Washington, with the horrifying news that he had heard on the car radio.
The plan was that Ted would land at the Barnes Airport in Westfield and then be whisked to the Coliseum in West Springfield, where Joan would meet him. There he would accept his nomination, and the two would share his victory with the nearly two thousand delegates. She hadn’t planned to sleep, just to rest her eyes. Somehow she drifted off.
Flying through a heavy fog and drizzling rain, the twin-engined, six-seat Aero Commander plane carrying Ted and his party crashed into an apple orchard. Ted was taken to Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton. Crimmins had gone to Bradley Field, the commercial airport that served Springfield, to meet Ted’s plane, but when he heard the news, he turned around and headed back to the house where Joan was staying. Once he was sure there was no mistake, he knew that he had to tell Ted’s wife what had happened.
When an announcement of the accident was made from the platform of the Coliseum in West Springfield, delegates reacted in shock and horror. There were audible gasps and female screams at the mindnumbing news. Surely, it was not possible that God would take another Kennedy brother, and at the young age of thirty-two! The chairman asked for a moment of silent prayers.
Gerry Doherty, Ted’s campaign chairman, would later recall that he knew in his heart that Ted was probably dead. “How to tell Joan?” he wondered. He knew he had to get her to the hospital, “but I didn’t know what she would find there. My mind raced through all the possibilities, and the most likely was that Ted was dead. After what happened to Jack, we were all pretty fatalistic.” Doherty found Ph
oebe Dowd in the crowd and sent her to pick up Joan and take her to the hospital. Phoebe’s husband, Don, followed shortly after in his own car. By the time the Dowds got to Joan, though, she had already been told the news by Jack Crimmins.
Joan dressed quickly. Looking drawn and pale, she quickly walked downstairs, outside and into Don Dowd’s car. She saw Phoebe on the way. “Isn’t this terrible?” Joan said. Phoebe would recall that her voice was almost inaudible.
It was a foggy, difficult, twenty-six-mile ride to the hospital known as Cooley Dick, a drive during which Don could barely see the road ahead. Joan sat in the front seat with him; Phoebe sat in the back with Jack Crimmins. She remembered that Joan kept chattering to herself. “I hope everyone is okay,” she said. “Ted, [Senator] Birch Bayh [who was to deliver the keynote speech], and [his wife] Marvella, and Ed [Moss, Kennedy’s administrative aide]. Sometimes they say a plane has crashed, when really it’s just landed. Isn’t that true?” Joan asked, her eyes hopeful. Phoebe agreed. “Sure, that happens all the time.”
Don didn’t say a word. Later, he would remember that he truly felt that the worst had occurred, and he didn’t want Joan to read his fatalistic attitude into anything he would say.
When Joan and Don finally arrived at the hospital, reporters were already there, waiting. Jack Crimmins was so rattled that when he got out of the car, he slammed the door in Phoebe’s face, bruising her badly. “Oh, my God,” Joan exclaimed. “What’s next?” After tending to Phoebe for a few moments, the four headed to the hospital.
Without showing any emotion whatsoever, and very much like her sister-in-law Jackie in her impassive demeanor during a crisis, Joan hurried past the waiting reporters without looking directly at any of them, only straight ahead. “He’s going to be fine,” she said to one writer who shouted out a question at her. “He’s going to be fine.”
Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot Page 32