Grace and Power

by Sally Bedell Smith

  Facing the press for the sixty-fourth time at his final news conference on November 14, Kennedy was remarkably serene in the face of unusually tough questioning. Asked about congressional intransigence on the tax and civil rights bills, Kennedy declared, “The fact of the matter is that both these bills should be passed.” If there was further stalling on the tax bill, he warned, “I think the economy will suffer.”

  Yet he also expressed his faith in the 88th Congress by quoting from Arthur Hugh Clough’s poem “Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth”:

  And not by eastern windows only,

  When daylight comes, comes in the light;

  In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

  But westward, look, the land is bright.

  Playing off the final line, he said that however dark it seemed at the moment, he was confident that by the summer of 1964 he would sign the civil rights and tax bills into law.

  The Black Watch performance marked Jackie’s reemergence as first lady. Two days before, the White House had announced that in addition to the Texas trip, she would resume her official duties six weeks earlier than expected by serving as the hostess of two events—the annual judicial reception on November 20 and the Erhard state dinner on the twenty-fifth.

  Three months after the loss of her baby, she seemed more serene. Robin Douglas-Home, a British journalist she had gotten to know in Ravello, came to visit her at Wexford on Saturday, November 16. He intended to spend only a few hours and ended up staying for dinner. During their extended conversation, Jackie displayed a “new humility. . . . The moods were less shifting, the wit less biting.” In earlier encounters, he had feared that her “merciless mockery” might be turned on him along with “other people and customs and protocols and institutions.” Now he felt more relaxed in her presence.

  She told him, as she had written to Charley Bartlett, that after Patrick’s death JFK had helped her appreciate how fortunate they were to have Caroline and John, and that she was heartened to see “how much he valued their presence.” The shared tragedy, she said, had “strengthened their self-sufficiency as a family.”

  Jackie also talked about the visit to Dallas the following week. “Now I’m quite firm in my decision to go to Texas,” she said, “even though I know I’ll hate every minute of it. But if he wants me there, then that’s all that matters. It’s a tiny sacrifice on my part for something that he feels is very important to him.”

  Kennedy was away that weekend on a five-day speechmaking trip in New York and Florida. On Thursday he had gone to a dinner party at Steve and Jean Smith’s Fifth Avenue apartment. The gathering included Bobby and Ethel, Oleg Cassini, Adlai Stevenson, and the novelist William Styron. “I heard Stevenson advising the President not to go to Texas,” Cassini recalled. Stevenson had been rattled by the violent mood he had encountered in Dallas three weeks earlier and had asked Schlesinger to recommend that Kennedy scuttle the trip. Schlesinger had worried that JFK would take offense and that O’Donnell would dismiss Stevenson as “a fussy old man.” As Schlesinger wavered, Stevenson called back “to withdraw his objections.” Now face-to-face with Kennedy, Stevenson had raised his doubts anew. “Why do you go?” Cassini asked Kennedy afterwards. “Your own people are saying you should not.” Kennedy just “shrugged and smiled,” Cassini recalled.

  The most noteworthy part of JFK’s Manhattan stopover was his decision to avoid “fuss and feathers” by dispensing with his usual motorcycle escort, which “aged his Secret Service detail ten years,” reported Time. As the presidential limousine crawled through midtown traffic and halted at a stoplight on Madison Avenue, a woman rushed the car and fired a flash camera in JFK’s face. “She might well have been an assassin,” said a New York police officer.

  Such fearlessness on Kennedy’s part had become commonplace, and was a trait valued in his family. His mother told him she had been pleased to hear from the “proletariat” of New York—an elevator man, hairdresser, and cabdriver—who applauded him for shedding his police escort “to be just like us.” She wanted Jack to know he had achieved a political “coup” with the electorate.

  In the same spirit he had permitted crowds of young men in Ireland to swarm his car as he eagerly shook their hands, and the previous summer he had been mobbed on the South Lawn by more than two thousand screaming foreign students who stole his tie clasp and pocket handkerchief before he was rescued by police. “The kind of man he was made it impossible for him to take precautions, to guard against maniacs, to think of his life being in danger, to accept protection,” wrote Katie Louchheim.

  Kennedy spent the final weekend of his life in Florida with the ever faithful Dave Powers as well as Congressman Torbert Macdonald, the old Harvard friend and fellow “tailhound” kept on the margins by Jackie for the previous three years. They arrived at La Guerida in Palm Beach in the early evening of Friday, November 15. O’Donnell and Smathers joined them on Saturday morning at Cape Canaveral, where they watched the successful firing of a Polaris missile from a submarine and inspected the massive Saturn rocket being constructed to launch a man to the moon.

  Back at Joe Kennedy’s house, JFK spent the afternoon swimming and watching the Navy-Duke football game on TV. After dinner, he sang “September Song” “better than usual,” Powers recalled. Sunday was another leisurely day spent watching the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers play on TV, followed by a screening of the bawdy new film Tom Jones. “Usually this time of year, the wind just blows and blows,” Macdonald recalled. “But this time—four pleasant days, not a cloud in the sky. . . . It was like back in 1939, where there was nothing of any moment on anybody’s mind. Sure there was some talk of politics . . . but it wasn’t the usual tension-filled weekend.”

  On Monday, Kennedy and his guests took a swing through Tampa and Miami, where he pledged that the United States stood ready to help any Latin American country “to prevent the establishment of another Cuba in this hemisphere.” Aboard Air Force One back to Washington, Kennedy confided to Smathers some anxiety about the Texas trip. “I wish we had this thing over with,” he said, but quickly added, as he had “many, many times: ‘You’ve got to live every day like it’s your last day on earth and it damn well may be!’”

  That night Jackie decided to remain in Middleburg to rest before the journey to Texas. Once again, Kennedy invited Enüd Sztanko to the White House to “just talk.” “He seemed a little low,” she recalled, and she was struck by “some kind of urgency” in his voice. “I was afraid if I went that evening I might get involved. I said no because Jackie wasn’t there.” Sztanko later “regretted not having seen him at the last possible moment” and for years afterwards “felt regret that I could not have been a friend and given some kind of comfort.”

  Jackie had been wavering about returning to Washington in time to make her scheduled appearance at the Judicial Reception Wednesday evening the twentieth. “It was a big crisis,” Tuckerman recalled. “She hedged back and forth.” On Wednesday morning Jackie took her horse Sardar out for a vigorous five-mile ride. On returning to Wexford, she instructed Clint Hill, her Secret Service agent, to notify Evelyn Lincoln that she wouldn’t be coming to the reception.

  It was a disappearing act Jackie had pulled repeatedly, but this time Kennedy refused to indulge her. He immediately phoned Jackie, and by Hill’s tactful description, “It was decided that she would come back earlier that day.” Just before 1:30 p.m. her car slipped through the Southwest Gate of the White House.

  Taking his midday swim with Dave Powers, Kennedy said he was “so happy” Jackie was going to Texas. JFK had also just met with Jim Reed about a lease the following July for Brambletyde. Reed knew the owner and had negotiated the rent down from $3,000 to $2,300 for the month. As he signed the lease, “Kennedy was in great form, good cheer,” Reed recalled, “but he bitched about the rent.” The Kennedys had already contracted to rent Annandale Farm in Newport for August and September. It was an eighty-acre estate next to Hammersmith Farm, with a large
white-columned house, equally panoramic views, and even greater privacy. Combined with a month on Squaw Island, the summer of 1964 promised to be the best yet.

  At six-thirty Jack, Jackie, Bobby, and Ethel received the members of the Supreme Court in the Yellow Oval Room before greeting some seven hundred guests from the federal judiciary, Justice Department, and White House. Jackie wore a burgundy velvet evening suit and pink satin blouse with a simple strand of pearls. Kennedy was tanned from his days in Florida. As he chatted amiably with the justices and their wives, Ethel caught a slight undercurrent. “It was the only time I’ve ever seen him look preoccupied,” she said later. “I went to say hello but he looked through me” as he never had before.

  The group marched downstairs, led by the Kennedys with Chief Justice Earl Warren and his wife. JFK decided on the spot to dispense with the traditional East Room receiving line. Nancy Tuckerman had reminded him that the previous year some judges were “upset” that they never made it through the line, so this year he and Jackie would circulate through all the state rooms. After her long absence from the public spotlight, Jackie was the center of attention. Numerous guests congratulated her on looking so good. White House curator James Ketchum watched with pleasure as Jackie and Bobby “went around to the wives of the judges, keeping them happy.” Spotting Douglas Dillon, JFK smiled warmly and exclaimed, “You’re going off to Japan, I’ve got to go to Texas. I wish we could change places!”

  The President and First Lady stayed less than a half hour. He ducked into his office to read some cables before joining Jackie, Bobby, and Ethel on the second floor. The younger Kennedys were off to host a party for sixty at Hickory Hill to celebrate Bobby’s thirty-eighth birthday.

  As the Marine Band played songs from Camelot and My Fair Lady for the dancing guests in the East Room, Jack and Jackie had dinner upstairs and packed for their trip the next morning. JFK decided he would help Jackie plan her wardrobe, with an eye toward all the “rich Republican women” in Texas who would be “wearing mink coats and diamond bracelets”—perhaps forgetting momentarily his wife’s own diamonds, couture clothes, and double-breasted mink coat. As if she needed reminding about the virtues of sartorial restraint, he advised Jackie to “be simple—show these Texans up.” He made a selection of pastel outfits including a nubby pink wool Chanel suit with a navy blue collar and a matching pillbox hat to wear in Dallas. Although Cassini remained her official couturier, on the sly Jackie was still buying Parisian clothes through Lee and Letizia Mowinckel.

  Janet Auchincloss and Rose Kennedy had sent notes of encouragement to Jackie that she read after dinner. “Have a wonderful time in Texas!” wrote Janet. “I am so glad you are going and I should think it would be the greatest fun even if hectic.” Rose’s message was more businesslike, alerting Jackie that she had sent White House guidebooks to Sacred Heart convents around the world. Jack also showed Jackie a teasing letter from Lee addressed to “Dear Chief Curley,” reporting that whenever Jackie went on trips, such as the recent cruise with Onassis, she got beautiful gifts, while Lee received only “3 dinky little bracelets that Caroline wouldn’t wear to her own birthday party.”

  With the children asleep, Jack and Jackie talked on the phone to Eunice, Peter Lawford, George Ball, and Charley Bartlett. JFK and Bartlett talked about former HEW secretary Abe Ribicoff, the new senator from Connecticut. Bartlett asked why Ribicoff had run for the Senate, and Kennedy replied, “He wants to be the first Jewish president, and that’s a long alley with no cans to kick.” Kennedy tried to reach Chuck Spalding, the first of three attempts before Dallas. Afterwards, Spalding figured his friend was trying to invite him to the country the following weekend, but he could only wonder about the “sort of insistence” implicit in those calls.

  The feud between Connally and Yarborough had sparked newspaper stories speculating that the split could “reduce the political mileage the President can expect to make” in Texas. These accounts focused on the exclusion of Yarborough from the Austin dinner, neglecting to note that no members of Congress had been invited. To Kennedy, the Texas troubles were a “minor annoyance,” not a consuming issue, according to Kenny O’Donnell. Kennedy had no intention of “going down there to patch things up.” JFK understood that Texas was a “fractious place with lots of infighting,” said George Christian. “Kennedy wasn’t going to wave his hand and all would be fine. He tried to get along with both sides, which is all anyone should try to do.”

  At six-thirty on Thursday morning the twenty-first, Kenneth Battelle arrived to cut and style Jackie’s hair. “She had lists of things,” he recalled. “Who was going to be there, things people never think of.” Kenneth had traveled to the White House many times since inauguration day 1961, but that morning was one of the rare moments he saw the President and First Lady together.

  “At 7 a.m. I was sitting in the hall on the second floor,” Kenneth recalled. “The President came along. He looked better than I had ever seen him—relaxed and tan, in a pale colored suit. She was very relaxed and very happy. There was something about both of them. I remember thinking it at the time.”

  According to Kenny O’Donnell, JFK said to him that morning, “I feel great. My back feels better than it’s felt in years.” Indeed, when Jackie had asked her husband what he wanted to do at the Johnson ranch, he had replied unexpectedly, “I’d like to ride.” Yet underneath his shirt, Kennedy was wearing his brace of white cotton that resembled a corset and covered his midsection, buttressed by vertical stays and fastened with buckles.

  Kennedy spent an hour in the Oval Office before walking back upstairs to prepare for his departure with Jackie. He was briefly irritated by a weather report forecasting warmer weather than anticipated. All Jackie’s clothes were wool, and he worried about her comfort. He had also planned to take John Jr. on the helicopter to Andrews Air Force Base, but Miss Shaw was resisting because it was raining and she didn’t want the boy to get wet. “I’ll go dress him,” JFK said, and Jackie giggled. “She saw the funniness of it in an easy, simple way,” said Kenneth.

  Father, mother, and son climbed into the first of three helicopters. O’Brien, O’Donnell, Powers, and Lincoln were making the trip, along with Turnure and Gallagher. At the airport, John Jr. cried as his parents boarded Air Force One. JFK kissed his son, and Secret Service agent Bob Foster tried to divert the boy with stories as the plane lifted off. En route to Texas, Kennedy quizzed Powers and O’Donnell separately about Bobby’s birthday party the night before—“who was there, what did they have to say, what happened.”

  Jack and Jackie attracted large and friendly crowds that day in San Antonio and Houston—some 125,000 people in San Antonio alone. Jackie gave brief remarks—only seventy-three words—in Spanish that delighted her Hispanic audience. “Oh gee, she’s going to do it just fine,” Lady Bird said to herself.

  Speaking about the space program in San Antonio, Kennedy drew from one of his favorite Irish authors, Frank O’Connor, who told a story about a boy who tossed his hat over high walls that he was afraid to climb. “This nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space,” Kennedy said, “and we have no choice but to follow it.”

  In Houston, public relations man Jack Valenti crouched under the podium throughout Kennedy’s speech and was transfixed by the President’s hands “vibrating so violently at times that they seemed palsied. . . . Several times he nearly dropped his 5 x 7 cards.” Valenti assumed JFK was merely nervous, but the shaking seemed more significant than the slight tremble sometimes visible in Kennedy’s public performances. During an Oval Office meeting in mid-November, the FBI’s White House liaison, Cartha DeLoach, had noticed an “uncontrollable tremor” in Kennedy’s hands.

  A few shadows darkened the first day in Texas. The Thunderbolt, a right-wing newsletter, carried the headline “Kennedy Keeps Mistress” for a story about Pamela Turnure based on Florence Kater’s accusations. Ralph Yarborough also misbehaved on the presidential plane, telling reporters that Connally had declined to invite h
im to the Austin event because he is “so terribly uneducated governmentally. How could you expect anything else?” Although both Connally and Johnson shook Yarborough’s hand at the San Antonio airport, the senator remained petulant, twice refusing LBJ’s invitation to ride with him in the motorcade.

  Meeting with Johnson in Houston’s Rice Hotel, Kennedy vented about Yarborough’s behavior. “The President told me that he just thought it was an outrage,” Johnson recalled, “that he had told him that Yarborough had to ride with us or get out of the party.” After a discussion with Larry O’Brien, Yarborough relented. Veteran Democratic congressman Albert Thomas also persuaded Connally to invite Yarborough to the Austin event.

  The Kennedys spent the night in Fort Worth at the Texas Hotel, where their three-room suite had been specially adorned with $200,000 worth of paintings and sculpture—sixteen pieces including a Monet, a Picasso, a Van Gogh, and a Prendergast—lent by local collectors. But Jack and Jackie were too exhausted to notice the thoughtfully assembled exhibit that even came with a catalogue. It was already past midnight when they settled into the suite. “You were great today,” Jack said as they embraced before heading to separate bedrooms for much-needed sleep.

  Newspaper accounts the next morning called Jackie her husband’s “secret weapon” on the campaign trail. When Jack asked for an appraisal of the crowds, Powers said, “Just about the same as they did the last time you were here, only about a hundred thousand more have come to see Jackie!”

  Kennedy was scheduled to speak first at a rally in the parking lot outside the hotel, and Jackie would join him for breakfast in the ballroom with the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. Standing in the drizzle, Kennedy exhorted and joked with a crowd that included boisterous union workers who yelled, “Where’s Jackie?” He pointed to the window of their suite and said, “Mrs. Kennedy is organizing herself. It takes her a little longer, but, of course, she looks better than we do when she does it.”