Who was the uncle?
Norman Biltz. And he's always been in Nevada politics. He's married to my stepfather's sister, Esther, who was, before that, married to Ogden Nash's brother. Then she married Norman Biltz, I think, and lived in Reno for the rest of her life.10
Norman Biltz is a Democrat?
Yeah. You know, but Pat McCarran and all these sort of types were all, I don't know, rather—I don't know if he's "shady," because I love him, but he's certainly someone to know in Nevada. And he said, "All right," because Nevada hadn't been for Jack, and the next day, all Nevada's votes were for Jack. [Schlesinger laughs] So all I know is that when he decided, I don't know, but I just know that I knew that he was going for vice president that day—that night. And before—I suppose Torb could tell you that, because he was closeted in the room with him.
Yes, we'll talk to Torb. That's my memory, because I can remember Stevenson's decision to throw it open, and then again Ted or someone from the President's staff getting in touch with me about things, and I think, obviously it was in the mind of some people around—before, I think, it had become dormant and then it was suddenly revived. Let's talk about the fight against Bill Burke. It was really a fight against John McCormack, wasn't it?
Yes, and again, you'd have to tell me about it, and I could tell you things that rang bells, because it's—
The great problem was the control of the Democratic state committee, and Burke had been—
And Lynch there was—
There was Lynch, who was our man—
Yeah.
And who has been state chairman through the years since. Kenny and Larry11 were in that fight, were they?
SENATOR KENNEDY WITH KENNY O'DONNELL, 1960
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
I think so, yes.
They were. But I think that neither of them yet had come on the senator's staff—Senate staff.
That's right. I think Kenny told me about that just now—I mean, just a couple of weeks ago. But—first, that Jack was traveling a lot then, but I can just remember every night talking. I remember at Jean's wedding—he was so busy up in Massachusetts, and she came—she had a dinner the night before she got married.12 Well, even Jack was going all around at that dinner, talking to his father, talking to Bobby, Torb, everyone. It was sort of about this thing—it was just obsessing him. Because it was going to be known—she was married on May 6—something like that—May 19 she was married, and, I guess, the vote or whatever it is was going to come up a few days later, and I remember thinking—the only time in my life I've ever thought that Jack was a little bit thoughtless. But I didn't really think that, because you could see how worried he was, because all that night, when everyone should have been making little toasts to Jean and things—which they were, and he made a touching one—he was talking to everybody at the dinner about that fight. I mean, it was just on his mind, and I've never seen him like that—in the first Cuba, the second Cuba,13 any election—I mean, the election—the presidential election, when I think of how calm he was that night—whether it would come out well or not, but still—but that was just all that spring. And as I have—you know, you musn't think it bad that I don't have all of these political memories, because I was really living another side of life with him, but I just remember that was a terrible worry of all that spring.
I had the impression it must have been an awfully critical thing. It was the first big test of strength within the party organization. I know Kenny's told me from time to time when we've been talking about people in politics, and he would say, "So and so, he was for us in the Burke fight," which meant, we forgive him everything else. Or someone, "He was against us in the Burke fight." And this became the standard of judgment, which, years later, in the presidential years, would still be very much in everyone's mind.
And I remember all the people—it fascinated me because when I came back from my honeymoon, I was taken immediately to Boston to be registered as a Democrat by Patsy Mulkern, who was called "the China Doll," because he was a prize fighter once, and he took me all up and down that street, and told me that "duking" people means shaking hands, and things. And then there was another man with "Onions" Burke, named "Juicy" Grenara. Well, I mean those names just fascinated me so. You know, to sort of see that world, and then we'd go have dinner at the Ritz. [both Jacqueline and Schlesinger laugh] Then you'd be going someplace else. It just seems it was suitcases, moving, and then you'd go to New York for a couple of days. We never had our own house until we'd been married four years. So I can't tell you—
That was in Georgetown, or out in McLean?
Oh no, that's right. We had one—for three years in Hickory Hill.14 We didn't buy a house. You know, we'd rent January until June, then we'd go live at my mother's house, which was in Virginia, for the summer, because we didn't have a child for four years. So the summers we'd spend at her house, going up to the Cape when we could on weekends—and in the fall, we'd stay with his father—you know, living right with our in-laws. And then we'd go to his apartment in Boston or we'd go down to New York for a couple of days. It was terrifically nomadic, you know. And then we'd go away after Christmas or something for a few days to Jamaica or something. Such a pace, when I think of how little we were alone, or always moving.
I know, in the political life—you are never alone in politics. It's terrible.
And never alone. Later on, Jack said, when Teddy got married and got his house right away, "What was the matter with me? Why didn't I get our house sooner?" And I thought, why didn't I? But you were just moving and everything was so fast. And then we got Hickory Hill, but that turned out to be a mistake because it was so far out of town. That was the year after Jack's back.15 Well, again we spent a lot of money to buy this house in Virginia, and I thought it would be a place where he could rest on weekends the year where he would be recovering from his back. And we discussed that when we bought it. Again this shows you how he didn't sort of tell me what was ahead because once we got to the house, he was away every weekend, traveling. And it was no good to him during the week—it was that much farther from his office. And then, when I lost the baby—you know, that I had made nurseries and everything for there, I didn't want to live there anymore, so that's when we moved.16 We rented a house—no, the next year we rented a house on P Street, and then had Caroline and bought our house in 1957.17 Yeah, we must have had Hickory Hill—no, when did we have Hickory Hill? His operation was '55. Yeah, I guess it was two years before we had a house.
You got the N Street house in '57.
'Fifty-seven. And, I guess, we got Hickory Hill the winter after his back, which was '55.
Some people have speculated, and I have written, that the operation and the sickness of the back was kind of a turning point. I have never known whether there was anything—whether this was kind of a false knowledge of FDR and really whether there was anything in that.
No, I don't think there's anything in that. And it's just so easy. Max Freedman18 said to me the other night, "And when do you think the dedication started?" Well, that just irritated me so. It was always there. You know, the winter of his back, which was awful, just to keep himself from going mad, lying there, aches and pains, and being moved over, side to side, every twenty minutes or something, or beginning to walk, and just as he was starting to walk on crutches, one of his crutches broke, so then he was back in. You know, then he started to write that book which he'd always had in his mind a long time—he'd had Edmund Ross—he talked to me about that a year or so before as the one classic example of profiles in courage.19 And he'd always thought of writing an article or something on that, and then so that whole winter, he started to search out other people—enough to make a book. So, that wasn't any changing point. He was just going through that winter like he did everything—getting through an awful winter of sickness and doing the book.
The back had been an overhanging thing for some time before.
Yeah, with the back, it had just g
otten worse and worse. I mean, the year before we were married, when he'd take me out, half the time it was on crutches. You know, when I went to watch him campaign, before we were married, he was on crutches. I can remember him on crutches more than not. And then, in our marriage, he'd be off it a lot, and then something would go wrong. It was really—I mean, the problem everyone found later—he didn't even need the operation. It was that he'd had a bad back since college, and then the war, and he'd had a disk operation that he never needed, so all those muscles had gotten weak, had gone into spasm, and that was what was giving him pain—the muscles. And so, then he'd go— I think if he went on crutches for four days, you know, he'd get everything better, but again that was only weakening it. And it wasn't until after his back operation that the poor doctor who'd been his medical man, Ephraim Shorr, said to him, "Now I think I am at liberty to tell you something which I wanted to tell you before, but I didn't think it was correct to do that to Dr. Wilson," who was the back surgeon.20 This made me so mad how doctors just let people suffer, and don't say anything to hurt the other eminent physicians' feelings. But then Dr. Shorr told him about Dr. Travell, who was a woman in New York, and lived down on 16th Street, and had been doing terrific things with muscles. And Jack went to see her. She put in this Novocain for spasms. Well, she could fix him. I mean, life just changed then.21 Because, obviously, after a year of surgery and a year out, his back was weaker than ever. If you don't think that wasn't discouraging for him—to have been through that year and find that his back was worse, not better—
SENATOR KENNEDY ON STRETCHER ACCOMPANIED BY ROBERT KENNEDY AND JACQUELINE KENNEDY, NEW YORK, DECEMBER 1954
Dan McElleney/BettmanCORBIS/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
In other words, the operation of 1955 was not necessary?22
It was no more necessary than it is for you to have one this minute. And it was just criminal. But, you know, all those bone surgeons look at X-rays—you see, Jack was being driven so crazy by this pain. They even said to him before it, "We can't tell if it will help or not." I remember his father and I and he talking, and he said, "I don't care. I can't go on like this." It was, you know, one chance in a million, but he was going to take it. And if it hadn't been for Dr. Travell—I mean, no one can underestimate her contribution then. Though later on, it was apparent that what he should be doing was build up his back with exercises. She was very reluctant to let him leave her Novocain treatments, which by then were not doing any good. This is once we're in the White House. But she changed his life then.
And she came on the scene when? 'Fifty-six?
No. When did he have his back?
'Fifty-five.
October—no, he had it October of '54.
The operation, it was the winter of '54–'55.
Yeah, and he came back to the Senate, June '55. So she must have come on the scene about June '55. He made a great effort to walk that day and walk around. But he'd come back, we stayed at the Capitol Arms Hotel23 or something—right near the Capitol—he had a hospital bed there. He'd walk all around the Senate looking wonderful and tan in his gray suit, and then he'd come home and go in a hospital bed.
Oh, God, I think one of the most terrible sentences I've ever read was the one in Bobby's Introduction of Profiles in Courage24—about "half his days on this earth spent in pain." Because, you know, around the White House, occasionally one could tell when he started to reach for something and then would stop or pull himself short, or he didn't want to stand too much. Yet I never—from what I saw of him, it was total stoicism about this. Did he ever mention it?
He was never—when you think how many people are hypochondriacs, or complain, he never liked you to ask him how he felt. You could tell when he wasn't feeling well—you'd take care of him and put him to bed or something—but he was never irritable—he never liked to discuss it and he made a conscious effort to get his mind off it by having friends for dinner or talking about—you know, or going to see a movie, or—just to not let himself be sitting there having a pain.
And of course, this cut him off from sports, which must have been at one time—sailing—
Except—it's funny—because 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. On our honeymoon, we'd played golf. It would cut him off for periods, but then he'd come back again. And then he played baseball all the time in Georgetown in the spring with the senators.25 And he always would play touch football, but he couldn't run—I mean, he could run enough, but he could never be the one to run for the touchdown. He would pass and catch and run around a little.
SENATOR KENNEDY RECUPERATES IN PALM BEACH, FLORIDA, 1955
Caroline Kennedy/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
It would sort of come and go, would it?
Yeah.
I suppose when he was more tired, it would be worse. Or was it unpredictable?
It was unpredictable. Now that you know it's a spasm, I suppose it probably could come when he's tired. Or some thing might just put it out—something you wouldn't expect. He could go riding and nothing would happen. And some funny thing of dropping a pile of papers and stooping quickly to pick them up would set it off. But he wasn't in any way—I never think of being married to an invalid or a cripple, and I don't want it to look as if—because it hampered him so long.
That's the striking thing, because when I read that sentence of Bobby's—it is the last thing that one would think, having seen him off and on for many years, because he always seems to have had this extraordinary joy and vitality, and the fact that he had this, with this kind of business nagging at him—pain nagging at him—it was just a tremendous spiritual victory of some sort—a psychological victory.
Yeah. Oh, once I asked him—I think this is rather touching—if he could have one wish, what would it be? In other words, you know, looking back on his life, and he said, "I wish I had had more good times." And I thought that was such a touching thing to say because I always thought of him as this enormously glamorous figure whom I married when he was thirty-six. I thought he'd had millions of gay trips to Europe, girls, dances, everything. And, of course, and he had done a lot of that, but I suppose what he meant was that he had been in pain so much, and then hustling—well, then, those awful years campaigning, always with Frank Morrissey,26 living on a milkshake and a hot dog. [whispers about whether to discuss "stomach"] He had also stomach trouble, which gave him a lot of pain sometimes, so it wasn't always his back. But all his family have it. It's just a Kennedy stomach. It obviously comes from nerves.
During campaigns and so on, did these things continue, and he just—
Oh, yeah. As I said, he was always campaigning on crutches. It was so pathetic to see him go up the steps of a plane, or the steps to a stage or something on his crutches, you know, because then he looked so vulnerable. And once he was up there and standing at the podium, then he looked so, you know, just in control of everything.
What did he make of sort of the Last Hurrah world of Massachusetts?27 Obviously he enjoyed it and got a great kick out of it.
He enjoyed it the way he loves to hear Teddy tell stories about Honey Fitz.28 He enjoyed stories about his grandfather. But he really wasn't—Kenny and Dave29 and everyone, now that people are talking about writing books about Jack, they always say to me, "Why should Sorensen and Schlesinger write books? They won't be for the ones he belonged to. Why doesn't someone write a book for the three-deckers?"30 [Schlesinger laughs] You know, and they think that Jack is theirs. But he wasn't, really. When I think now that he's dead and the different people who come to me—you'd think he belonged to so many people, and each one thought they had him completely, and he loved each one just the way love is infinite of a mother for her children. If you have eight children, it doesn't mean you love them any less than if you just have just two—that the love is diminished that much. So he loved the Irish, he loved his family, he loved
people like you and Ken Galbraith.31 He loved me and my sister in the world that had nothing to do with politics, that he looked to for pleasure and a letdown. He loved us all. And you know, I don't feel any jealousy. He had each of you. He really kept his life so in compartments, and the wonderful thing is that everyone in every one of those compartments was ready to die for him. And we all loved everyone else because they all liked me—because they knew I would. And I love Dave Powers, though I never saw him much before. It's just now that you see how Jack just knew in every side of his life what he wanted. He never wanted to have the people in the evening that he worked with in the daytime. And often I'd say, in the White House, "Why don't we have Ethel and Bobby for dinner?" because I thought Ethel's feelings might be getting hurt. But he never wanted to see Bobby, and Bobby didn't want to come either, because they'd worked all day. So you'd have people who were rather relaxing. You'd have Charlie Bartlett32 and the Bradlees33 a lot. It was sort of light—or I don't know—those parties that we used to have.
Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy Page 4