13. ROBERT SARGENT SHRIVER (1915–2011) was working for Joseph Kennedy at the family-owned Merchandise Mart in Chicago when he met his boss's daughter Eunice and married her in 1953. During the interregnum, he served as the President-elect's highly effective chief talent scout. Kennedy made him the first head of his new Peace Corps. Later Shriver commanded President Johnson's War on Poverty, served as U.S. ambassador to France, and ran as Democratic nominee for vice president in 1972.
14. GORDON GRAY (1909–1992) held the post at the end of the Eisenhower years.
15. CARMINE DE SAPIO (1908–2004) was the Tammany Hall boss who had blocked FDR, Jr.'s, dream of becoming governor of New York.
16. JFK gave FDR, Jr., substantial credit for helping him win the pivotal West Virginia primary, reassuring many voters who worried about his Catholicism but who venerated President Roosevelt for saving their homes and jobs during the Great Depression.
17. STEWART UDALL (1920–2010) was a Democratic congressman from Arizona when JFK made him secretary of the interior.
18. ORVILLE FREEMAN (1918–2003) was governor of Minnesota before he became Kennedy's secretary of agriculture. He was a former Marine who, like the President, had won a Purple Heart for valor in the South Pacific during World War II. Freeman gave JFK's nominating speech at Los Angeles in 1960.
19. LUTHER HODGES (1898–1974) was a one-term North Carolina governor who had swung his state to JFK for vice president in 1956. The President-elect, who needed at least one southerner in his cabinet, made him secretary of commerce.
20. J. EDWARD DAY (1914–1996) had been Illinois insurance commissioner under Governor Adlai Stevenson before serving as an insurance executive in California.
21. ROSWELL GILPATRIC (1906–1996) was a Wall Street lawyer who served under McNamara as undersecretary of defense.
22. New York Times v. Sullivan, March 9, 1964, which decreed that a plaintiff in a defamation or libel case must prove that the defendant's statement was made with actual malice, in full knowledge or reckless disregard of its falsity. This ruling granted new license for publication of vicious comments about presidents and other public figures. Goldberg felt it would never be possible to firmly establish a defendant's motive, so he preferred a wider berth for the press.
23. Referring to a full-page extreme right-wing advertisement in the Dallas Morning News on JFK's last morning, accusing the President of treason, which had moved him to warn Jacqueline that Dallas, bastion of the radical right, was "nut country."
24. JOHN MCCLOY (1895–1989) was a wartime aide to FDR's war secretary, Henry Stimson, as well as a Republican Wall Street lawyer known as "Chairman of the Establishment." He advised JFK on disarmament.
25. Sargent Shriver, who was performing reconnaissance on potential appointees.
26. After the election, JFK found that the prospect so depressed his wife that he asked FDR, Jr., to reassure her.
27. In June 1962, Jacqueline wrote her friend William Walton, "My life here which I dreaded & which at first overwhelmed me—is now under control and the happiest time I have ever known—not for the position—but for the closeness of one's family. The last thing I expected to find in the W. House."
28. In 1962, the United States abruptly cancelled its program to build Skybolt missiles, including some promised to British prime minister Harold Macmillan as an incentive to shut down his own surface-to-air missile program. Washington's seemingly cavalier treatment of its British ally nicked Macmillan's prestige in his own country.
29. DAVID FINLEY (1890–1977) was the first director of the National Gallery of Art; first chairman of the White House Historical Association, founded by Mrs. Kennedy; member of her White House Fine Arts Committee (he refused unwanted gifts on the committee's behalf); and, from 1950 to 1963, chair of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which oversaw the design of federal buildings and monuments in the capital. As Jacqueline wrote another official, Bernard Boutin, she found Finley "a most cultured man + preservationist—but if only he would act more forcefully—so much could have been saved." John Walker III (1906–1995) was director of the National Gallery from 1956 to 1969. After the inauguration, she was still recovering from John's traumatic birth.
30. LETITIA BALDRIGE (1925– ), tall, energetic, and intense, had preceded Jacqueline at Farmington and Vassar and was a family friend of the Auchinclosses. She served in two American embassies in Europe and had resigned as a Tiffany executive to start her own public relations business in Milan when, in July 1960, Jackie called her and asked her to be White House social secretary "if Jack makes it." When Baldrige left her job in the spring of 1963, JFK told her she was the most "emotional" woman he had ever met.
31. She was later informed that Mamie Eisenhower had told her staff to keep a wheelchair behind an ornamental screen but only bring it out if Mrs. Kennedy specifically asked for it. After flying to Palm Beach, Jacqueline spent the next fortnight in bed.
32. J. BERNARD WEST (1912–1983), who served as chief usher from 1957 to 1969, directing the household staff of the White House, had a close and productive relationship with Mrs. Kennedy. He welcomed and provided crucial aid to her efforts to restore the White House.
33. The two men met in an oceanside villa near the Key Biscayne Hotel.
34. George Smathers, Democratic senator from Florida.
35. President Truman had been denounced in 1947 for his apostasy in adding a second-floor balcony to the mansion's south front. In March 1963, Jacqueline wrote David Finley, whose job it was to rebut complaints about some of her innovations, "The President told me you were the only person who stood by President Truman on his balcony problem!—I didn't know that—but I should have—because it is so like you." The South Carolinian replied, "I must be quite honest. . . . I agreed with the other members of the Commission that an eighteenth century Georgian house, such as the White House, should not have the line of columns broken by a balcony, as was done in the nineteenth century plantation houses." But the president had taken his objection kindly, and "Mr. Truman and I were friends." Replying to Finley's notice that he would leave the Fine Arts Commission that year, Mrs. Kennedy wrote him one of the emotive longhand notes that won loyalty and affection from so many with whom she worked: "I never dreamed that such a terrible thing could happen—while I was alive— It is inconceivable to think of existing without you—What will I do? . . . I could never find words to express all the gratitude and affection and indebtedness I will feel for you until my dying day."
36. HENRY DU PONT (1880–1969), the Republican heir to a famous fortune, was a well-respected expert on American art, furniture, and horticulture, and had done much to reshape Winterthur, his family's old 900-acre Delaware estate, opened to the public in 1951, with period rooms and gardens. Du Pont chaired Mrs. Kennedy's bipartisan Fine Arts Committee of prominent Americans advising her on the White House restoration. As an Americanist, du Pont was sometimes distressed by the French-inspired improvisations of Stéphane Boudin. On some of his visits, du Pont would rearrange White House furniture, after which Jacqueline would discreetly have it moved back. When du Pont was trying to block one of Boudin's designs for the Green Room, she wrote J. B. West, "Please enclose this humble letter soliciting his approval. If we don't get it he will have the shock of me doing it anyway!"
37. Clifford also helped Mrs. Kennedy establish the White House Historical Association, which to this day supports the upkeep of the mansion's public rooms, helps first families to acquire paintings and furniture, and publishes contemporary versions of the guidebook, The White House: An Historic Guide, and books on presidents, first ladies, and the White House gardens, all launched by Jacqueline Kennedy. The guidebook was purchased by a half million readers during its first six months, swelling the coffers of the new association.
38. Among neglected White House treasures, Jacqueline discovered the Victorian desk made from the H.M.S. Resolute that became famous in JFK's Oval Office and has been used by every president but one since Gerald Ford.
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br /> 39. In February 1962, Jacqueline's hour-long tour of the White House restoration was seen by 56 million television viewers and won her an honorary Emmy.
40. Mrs. Kennedy is being modest here. From the time of their grand trip to Paris of May 1961 and, especially, her vastly popular televised tour of the White House, she was not only no longer a political liability but would have been a major asset to the President when he ran for reelection in 1964. Knowing this, JFK used strong persuasion to have her agree to accompany him on planned trips to Texas and California that were to be the forerunner of that campaign. In her presence at the Rice Hotel in Houston on their final evening together, the President asked Dave Powers to compare the crowd that had greeted them that day to the one when he had come to Houston alone the previous year. Kennedy beamed when Powers said it was about the same, "but there were about a hundred thousand more for Jackie."
41. During the White House years, the Kennedys kept an apartment at the Carlyle Hotel in New York. Parke-Bernet was an auction house and J. J. Klejman an antiquities dealer.
42. STéPHANE BOUDIN (1888–1967), president of the Paris design firm Maison Jansen, who had advised on restoration at Versailles, Malmaison, Leeds Castle, and other historical monuments, was quietly secured by Mrs. Kennedy to guide her on her White House project. She told one of her aides, "I've learned more about architecture from Boudin than from all the books I could have read." To avoid public controversy about employing a non-American, her staff took pains, with Boudin's consent, to keep him in the background. But privately Jacqueline thought it completely appropriate that she consult a Frenchman, because of French contributions to the American Revolution, the French talent for using architecture and the arts to convey national glory, and because, as she considered how the White House should look, she was captivated by the sensibilities of Presidents Jefferson and Monroe, both former ambassadors to Paris, who adorned the mansion with French and French-inspired artifacts, painting, and furniture.
43. She feared a public outcry against the room's new design, which was no longer dominated by blue. But by 1980, she considered the chamber "Boudin's masterpiece," with its "sense of state, ceremony, arrival and grandeur."
44. Wildenstein & Company was a Manhattan art gallery.
45. SYLVIA WHITEHOUSE BLAKE (1930– ) had been Jacqueline's Vassar classmate and one of her bridesmaids. Her husband, Robert, was an American diplomat.
46. In the ground-floor corner bedroom of his parents' house in Palm Beach.
47. In what he came to call his "peace speech" at American University in June 1963, Kennedy said, "These problems are man-made. Therefore they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants."
48. SAMUEL RAYBURN (1882–1961) was speaker of the house until 1961 and a mentor to the young congressman Lyndon Johnson.
49. PIERRE SALINGER (1925–2004) of San Francisco, bon vivant, former journalist and aide to Robert Kennedy, served as press secretary during the 1960 campaign and White House years.
50. FRANK SINATRA (1915–1998), singer and JFK friend, had organized a pre-inaugural gala featuring Hollywood performers such as singer Nat King Cole and comedian Alan King.
51. A Washington restaurant.
52. STYLES BRIDGES (1898–1961) was a Republican New Hampshire senator and one of those responsible for inaugural arrangements.
53. Not the most diplomatic comment Mrs. Eisenhower could have made sitting beside the wife of the man who was now the nation's most prominent Irish-American.
54. During Cushing's very long invocation, smoke curled up from the lectern, due to an electrical malfunction, and when the aged poet rose to read a poem he had written for the occasion, he was blinded by sunlight and so instead recited his classic "The Gift Outright."
55. EARL WARREN (1891–1974) was the governor of California whom Eisenhower had appointed as chief justice in 1953. Although a Republican, Warren had been glad to swear in Kennedy, rather than Nixon, who was a political enemy.
56. JANE WHEELER (1921–2008) was a Washington hostess and early Kennedy supporter.
57. EDWARD FOLEY (1906–1982) was a well-known Washington lawyer, former undersecretary of the treasury under Truman, and chairman of JFK's inaugural committee.
58. Refers to the Alsop house.
59. ROWLAND EVANS (1921–2001) was a Washington reporter for the New York Herald Tribune. John Hay "Jock" Whitney (1904–1982) was the paper's owner and publisher.
60. GEORGE THOMAS (1908–1980) was an African-American from Berryville, Virginia, who was JFK's longtime valet and lived on the third floor of the White House.
61. ARTHUR KROCK (1886–1974) was a conservative New York Times columnist. Krock had once been a close friend of Joseph Kennedy's and adviser to Jack while writing Why England Slept, but had broken with them in 1960 over JFK's growing liberalism while seeking the presidency. An old friend of Jacqueline's grandfather, John V. Bouvier, Jr., and her stepfather, Hugh Auchincloss, Krock had helped her get her job on the Washington Times-Herald.
62. Referring to the exuberant tours of the White House given by Lyndon Johnson since becoming president.
63. HANS KRAUS (1905–1995), an Austrian-born mountain climber, was an orthopedic expert who extolled exercise as a remedy for back injuries. When JFK's back problems grew worse in 1961, he consulted Kraus, who agreed to take on the case as long as Dr. Travell was removed from the President's case and that Kraus would be able to reach Kennedy at any time by direct telephone. Aghast that Travell had simply cured the President's pain with Novocain and let the President's chest, abdominal, and back muscles atrophy, Dr. Kraus warned him that he would soon need a wheelchair unless he began a strict regimen. Under Kraus's care, JFK was telling friends by 1963 that he had never felt better and felt hearty enough to resume golf. Dr. Travell, who was well-known to the public as the first female White House doctor, was allowed to keep her title and observe at least the fiction that she was still caring for the President.
64. Joseph Kennedy was one of the owners of the New York restaurant Le Pavillon.
65. An estate in Middleburg, Virginia, which the Kennedys rented in 1961 and 1962. Writing to a friend in July 1962, she called it "the most private place I can think of to balance our life in the White House." Campaigns, travels, and pregnancy had kept Jacqueline from riding regularly since her marriage in 1953.
66. JOHN VERNOU BOUVIER III (1891–1957) was the debonair father whom Jacqueline adored.
67. In 1963, the Kennedys built a seven-bedroom yellow ochre stucco and fieldstone house, with a breathtaking view of the Blue Ridge Mountains, on thirty-nine acres in Atoka, Virginia. They named it Wexford, for the Kennedy ancestral home in Ireland.
68. JFK spent the long weekend before Texas in Tampa and Miami, where he made speeches, and Palm Beach, where he stayed at his father's house with his Harvard friend Torbert Macdonald and watched televised football. Having lost substantial support in most of the Deep South states he had won in 1960 over his stand for civil rights, he considered it essential to his reelection to carry Florida in 1964.
69. EVANGELINE BELL BRUCE (1918–1995) was the second wife of David Bruce (1898–1977), who was JFK's ambassador in London after occupying the same job in Paris and Bonn. Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987) was the second wife of Henry Luce (1898–1967), founder of what was probably the most powerful single print influence on American public opinion of those years, the Time-Life organization. Partly influenced by their longtime friend Joseph Kennedy, who had persuaded Luce in 1940 to write the foreword to Jack's first book, Why England Slept, and who went to the length of watching his son's Democratic acceptance speech on television with Luce after they dined together, the conservative publisher had been surprisingly benign toward JFK during the 1960 campaign. But when Kennedy became President, his more doctrinaire wife, a former Connecticut congresswoman and ambassador to Italy, tended to lecture him as if he were still the student he was when they had first met.
70. Jacqueline had taken a room in the
family quarters that recent presidential families had called the "Monroe Room" and renamed it the "Treaty Room." Used by presidents from Andrew Johnson to Theodore Roosevelt as a Cabinet Room, it was restyled by Mrs. Kennedy as a dark green Victorian chamber featuring Ulysses Grant's ornate cabinet table, other late-nineteenth-century furniture and fixtures, and framed facsimiles of agreements signed in the room, such as William McKinley's peace treaty ending the Spanish-American War.
71. NANCY TUCKERMAN (1928– ), Jacqueline's close friend (whom the First Lady called "Tucky") and White House social secretary from June until November 1963, had known her since the age of nine, when they both attended the Chapin School in New York, and later roomed with her at Farmington, where, as Tuckerman recalled, Jackie had her walk under her horse's belly "twenty times a day to get over my fear of horses." Expecting a baby, Mrs. Kennedy planned to be "taking the veil" and winding down her public commitments from the brisk regimen pressed on her by Tish Baldrige.
72. PAMELA TURNURE (1937– ) was Mrs. Kennedy's press secretary. Jacqueline asked her to give reporters "minimum information with maximum politeness."
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