JFK

by Fredrik Logevall

  Yet the time and interest could be ephemeral, with male as well as female friends. Before embarking for California, Kennedy had promised Red Fay that he would make a stop in Woodside, near San Francisco, to see him and meet his parents and friends. He almost reneged on the vow, then showed up late and made a poor impression on all concerned, bailing early on a party in his honor in order to go to a movie with another friend and showing scant interest in ingratiating himself with his hosts. Characteristically short on cash, he borrowed $20 from Fay and paid him back only months later, and after Fay had written him twice about it. The nonchalance left Fay feeling bitter, especially after he had traveled all the way to Boston to help out in Jack’s primary campaign. To Fay it was a disconcerting sign that his friend might be undergoing a change as he donned his political mantle, and not for the better—a congressman to be, he suddenly seemed less dedicated to maintaining the attachments of old.*3, 48

  Jack’s friend Henry James, whom he had known during his Stanford interlude, six years before, likewise detected a troubling change in him around this same time. “I didn’t see the whole evolution of the process,” James told a later interviewer, “but I did see certain signs, which made it very clear to me that I was losing him as a person and that perhaps the only way I could ever see him again was as a former friend, unimportant probably, for I wasn’t going to be his toady like Lem Billings—I put more value on myself than that….I envied people like Billings for their continuing close relationship to Jack, but I didn’t respect them for it.”49

  VI

  The November election went more or less as expected, in the Massachusetts Eleventh as well as nationally. Jack Kennedy sauntered to victory in his race, winning 69,093 votes to Bowen’s 26,007. But he was a rare bright spot for his party that autumn. In Massachusetts the Democrats lost a U.S. Senate seat—Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. trounced the old stalwart incumbent David I. Walsh, who had helped smooth Jack’s passage to combat service in 1943—as well as the governorship. Nationally, they were brutalized, relinquishing control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1932 as the GOP gained twelve seats in the Senate and a whopping fifty-five in the House. In California’s Twelfth District, an ambitious Republican Navy veteran named Richard M. Nixon rode the anti-incumbent wave to victory, falsely accusing his Democratic opponent, Representative Jerry Voorhis, of being a Communist, or at least of working with a political action committee that was infiltrated by Communists. In Wisconsin, another Republican, ex-Marine Joseph R. McCarthy, won election to the U.S. Senate, partly by playing the anti-Communist card and partly by misrepresenting his military service. (He exaggerated the number of combat missions he had flown in the Pacific.) Overall, some forty veterans won election to the House, and eight more in the Senate.

  For John F. Kennedy, age twenty-nine, an extraordinary moment had come. He was a United States congressman–elect. He had overcome his precarious health and political inexperience, as well as his father’s humiliating exit from public life, to win a seat in the Eightieth Congress. If his success stemmed in part from his family name and family wealth, it also had deeper roots. Say what one will about Joseph P. Kennedy, it’s not every multi-millionaire father who takes such broad interest in his children, who believes in them so fervently, and who, together with his wife, instills in them, from a young age, a firm commitment to public service. Joe Kennedy did. From his mother, meanwhile, Jack inherited a lasting interest in history and in books, and an abiding curiosity about the world.

  Yet Jack’s victory was also very much his own. His war story from the Pacific resonated with voters, as did his quiet charm and dignified affability on the campaign trail. As aide after aide quickly saw, voters just liked him, plain and simple. He also campaigned hard, taking nothing for granted, and motivated people to want to work for him. In substantive terms, he had fashioned, through his writing and his speechmaking, a political philosophy that transcended the narrow, selfish vision of his father and elder brother, in the form of a pluralist, liberal internationalism—idealistic yet infused with pragmatic realism—that would in time resonate with a broad cross section of Americans. Already in his senior thesis in 1940, Jack Kennedy had depicted a more messy and congested world than did either his father or his older brother, and in the event-packed half dozen years that followed, he’d honed and expanded that worldview. All the while, he conveyed a dedication to ideals larger than self.

  Thus was established the prototype for all future Jack Kennedy campaigns: a disciplined and efficient organization, energetic family support, a campaign war chest bulging with resources, and, most important of all, a talented, winsome, hardworking candidate, highly adept at using others to the extent they were helpful to him.

  “You have my best wishes for success in the tough job with which you have been entrusted,” journalist Herbert Bayard Swope wrote to Kennedy the day after his victory. “My crystal ball reveals you as the center of a fascinating drama—one that carries you far and high. I hope I am a true prophet.”50

  And so Swope was. In November 1946, it may be said, came the end of the remarkable early life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. His even more extraordinary public life was about to begin.

  *1 Campaign aide Bill Kelly recalled the pattern for East Boston: “We’d set up six to nine parties—or more—for a single evening, with anywhere from twenty-five to seventy-five people at each. Jack, Pat, and Eunice would set out for party number one. They’d drop Pat or Eunice at number one. Then Jack would go on to number two and drop another sister. Then Jack would go alone to number three. The sisters would circulate, shake hands, and talk. Then we’d backtrack to number one, pick up the sister, and take her (and Jack) to number four and drop her and so on and on, carrying this on for hours.” (William F. Kelly oral history, JFK Library.)

  *2 Before venturing to Missouri for his speech, Churchill visited Florida to receive an honorary degree from the University of Miami. While there he bumped into Joe Kennedy at the Hialeah Park racetrack, a few miles outside town. An awkward encounter ensued, according to Kennedy’s notes of the conversation. “You had a terrible time during the war,” Churchill said. “Your losses were very great. I felt so sad for you and hope you received my messages.” Kennedy replied that he had received them and was grateful. “The world seems to be in frightful condition,” Churchill added. “Yes,” Kennedy replied. “After all, what did we accomplish by this war?” “Well,” the prime minister said sharply, “at least we have our lives.” “Not all of us,” Kennedy answered. (Joseph P. Kennedy, memo of conversation, January 31, 1946, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 622–23.)

  *3 Fay’s bitterness did not last, it seems. In an effort to make amends, Jack sent him a multivolume biography of Benjamin Franklin, and Fay responded with an affectionate handwritten letter. (Paul “Red” Fay to JFK, December 13, 1946, box 4A, JFK Personal Papers.)

  SIXTEEN

  THE GENTLEMAN FROM BOSTON

  On January 3, 1947, John F. Kennedy was sworn in as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing the Eleventh District of Massachusetts. With his boyish smile and big shock of hair, he looked even younger than his almost thirty years, and more than a few old hands on Capitol Hill mistook him for a college student on hiatus from his studies and working as an aide. Even those who knew him to be a congressman took scant notice—the Kennedy name that meant so much in his home state here signified little, for the capital was filled with scions of the rich and prominent.

  If Kennedy was bothered by the lack of attention, he didn’t show it. “Well, how do you like that?” he declared with mock indignation as he burst into his office one morning. “Some people got into the elevator and asked me for the fourth floor!” He maintained his sloppy sartorial style, frequently showing up to work in wrinkled khakis and a rumpled seersucker blazer, his tie askew. Sometimes a shirttail would hang out. To the exasperation of his valet, George Thomas, a stocky, baby-faced bla
ck man who’d been recommended to him by Arthur Krock (and who should not be confused with George Taylor, his previous valet), Jack would often don whatever piece of clothing was within reach, including suits that the fastidious Thomas had set aside to be laundered.1

  It was a heady time to be in the nation’s capital. The Washington in which Kennedy had lived five years before, at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, was a sleepy, parochial place; the city to which he now returned was the capital of the free world. For his residence the young lawmaker selected a gracious three-story townhouse in Georgetown, at 1528 Thirty-first Street, that had formerly been the home of a Polish military attaché. It had a small garden and patio in the rear. Rent was $300 a month. There Jack lived with his sister Eunice, who, through her father’s connections, had secured a job as special assistant to the Justice Department’s juvenile delinquency committee. They shared the place with aide Billy Sutton and the doting housekeeper and cook Margaret Ambrose, and Thomas was ever present, too, driving Jack to work and bringing home-cooked meals to his office.

  Visitors to the townhouse were constant, and the feel was hectic, casual, collegiate. Joseph Alsop, the journalist, is said to have looked behind some books on the mantelshelf and found the remnants of a half-eaten hamburger. Billy Sutton likened the atmosphere to a “Hollywood hotel,” with people coming and going. “The Ambassador, Rose, Lem Billings, Torby, anybody who came to Washington. You never knew who the hell was going to be there but you got used to it.” Fellow lawmakers soon began dropping by as well, including Florida congressman George A. Smathers and Representative Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson of Washington State. Senator Joe McCarthy, a fellow Catholic and bachelor, also came for dinner more than once. R. Sargent Shriver, a handsome Yale graduate and Navy veteran who had been a student at Canterbury School with Jack and was now working for Joseph Kennedy, was a fixture at these evening salons, in good part because he had fallen hard for Eunice and was wooing her.2

  The youthful freshman lawmaker in his office, early 1947.

  Most of all, a steady stream of young women darkened the doorway of the home, there to see Jack. His Choate friend Rip Horton recalled the scene: “I went to his house in Georgetown for dinner. A lovely-looking blonde from West Palm Beach joined us to go to a movie. After the movie we went back to the house, and I remember Jack saying something like, ‘Well, I want to shake this one. She has ideas.’ Shortly thereafter another girl walked in….I went to bed figuring this was the girl for the night. The next morning a completely different girl came wandering down for breakfast. They were a dime a dozen.”3

  And a varied mix they were: in addition to secretaries and stewardesses, in this period he still saw actress Gene Tierney and sultry, dark-haired fashion editor Flo Pritchett, whom he had first dated in early 1944, as well as Kay Stammers, a glamorous English tennis player who had reached number two in the world in singles and won the Wimbledon women’s doubles trophy. Famous for wearing her tennis skirts and shorts a full four inches above the knee, Stammers later said Jack was “spoilt by women. I think he could snap his fingers and they’d come running. And of course he was terribly attractive and rich and unmarried—a terrific catch, really….I thought he was divine.” Journalist Nancy Dickerson, who also dated Jack, put it similarly: “He was young, rich, handsome, sexy, and that’s plenty for starters. But the big thing about him was that he was overpowering—you couldn’t help but be swept over by him.”4

  The women Kennedy dated had several things in common: they were pretty, bright, and amusing. The sense of humor was key—one guesses he got a kick out of Pritchett’s racy letter to him dated June 5, 1947: “Instead of making history with the Knights of Columbus, why not make something of your nights. The summer will be long and hot. So [I] think you should adjourn occasionally and help make [June] hotter….I hope you will be up this way again, and that when you do, we can play.”5 Importantly, too, they were “safe” girls he would face no pressure to marry.6 Pritchett, for example, was divorced, while Tierney was in the process of parting with her husband, the designer Oleg Cassini; as a Catholic, Jack could never marry a divorcée and hope to sustain his political career. He seemingly had learned from his father’s near-disastrous affair with Gloria Swanson two decades prior—ever after, Old Joe had kept his affairs fleeting and numerous. His son did the same.

  Not infrequently, father and son played the same field—or, more accurately, the father played the son’s field. Washington socialite and longtime Kennedy family friend Kay Halle remembered an evening at a posh restaurant in the capital when a waiter brought her a note saying friends at another table wanted her to join them. It was Joe, Jack, and Bobby. “When I joined them the gist of the conversation from the boys was the fact that their father was going to be in Washington for a few days and needed female companionship. They wondered whom I could suggest, and they were absolutely serious.”7

  Mary Pitcairn, a friend of Eunice’s who dated Jack Kennedy on occasion, offered more disturbing detail:

  Mr. Kennedy always called up the girls Jack was taking out and asked them to dinner. He came down and took me to the Carleton Hotel—then the fanciest dining room in Washington. He was charming. He wanted to know his children’s friends. He was very curious about my personal life. He really wanted to know. He asked a lot of personal questions—extraordinarily personal questions….

  He did something that I heard he did to everyone. After dinner he would take you home and kiss you goodnight as though you were a young so-and-so. One night I was visiting Eunice at the Cape and he came into my bedroom to kiss me goodnight! I was in my nightgown, ready for bed. Eunice was in her bedroom. We had an adjoining bath. The doors were open. He said, “I’ve come to say goodnight,” and kissed me. Really kissed me. It was so silly. I remember thinking, “How embarrassing for Eunice!” But beyond that, nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  I think all this confused Jack. He was a sensitive man and I think it confused him. What kind of object is a woman? To be treated as his father treated them? And his father’s behavior that way was blatant. There was always a young, blonde, beautiful secretary around. I think it was very confusing to Jack.8

  How Eunice felt about the fraternity-like atmosphere in the Georgetown house is not clear. She adored her brother; in her eyes he could do no wrong. Though she always indignantly dismissed the stories of their father’s extramarital flings—they were unfounded rumors, Eunice insisted, spread by people who mistook innocent flirting for immoral behavior—she saw little of concern in Jack’s dalliances. He was single, after all; this was how unmarried men behaved.

  For that matter, Eunice was too busy pursuing her career to pay much mind to the comings and goings on Thirty-first Street. Tall and thin, with reddish-brown hair and high cheekbones, the fifth child of Joe and Rose had from a young age stood out for her deep religious conviction, fierce intelligence, and almost superhuman willpower. Like Jack, she had suffered chronic health maladies throughout her life, including back problems and stomach ailments that left her perpetually underweight (the family nickname for her was “Puny Eunie”), and, like him, she had willed herself through the pain, ignoring doctors’ pleas to slow down, put on weight, and get adequate rest. Instead she pressed on, racking up sporting trophies left and right (she was a superior athlete) and exuding seriousness of purpose. “Eunice was born mature,” her mother later said, “and because she was so close to Rosemary a special social responsibility developed within her, which later showed up when she went to Harlem to do social work.”9

  “Of all the kids in the family, Eunice was far and away the strongest-minded,” George Smathers would observe in 1976. “Sort of the leader of the clan. Very tough when she wanted to be.” He added that the twenty-five-year-old Eunice would have loved to be the Kennedy to run in the Eleventh District in 1946: “If she’d been a little older, and if it had been today, when a lot of women are running for office, I suspect the histor
y of the Kennedy clan would have been quite different.” Mary Pitcairn said: “She was highly nervous, highly geared, and worshiped Jack. I always thought she should have been a boy.” In the Georgetown salons, when the men adjourned for political talk and cigars after the meal, Eunice often went with them, lighting her own stogie, rather than join the women in the drawing room. She shared with her brother a keen political sense, which is one reason they got on so well. Both of them had a singular ability to size up a political situation almost instantly.10

  In Washington she threw herself into her work on behalf of troubled youth, even bringing boys and girls home to Georgetown for dinner on occasion. She organized a celebrity golf tournament to raise money for projects helping local youth offenders, and encouraged a national organization of sportswriters and broadcasters to have its members write about the matter and coach troubled youths in sports they themselves played. She even took to the road, speaking in various locales around the country on the plight of children languishing in juvenile detention centers such as the DC Receiving Home in Washington. Shriver assisted her in these efforts, having been dispatched to Washington from Chicago by Joe Kennedy to serve as her all-purpose aide. (Thus the peculiar characteristics of Shriver’s position: working for Eunice, and courting her, while being paid by her father.)11

  Shriver, naturally, saw a lot of the townhouse, and therefore of Jack. He found he liked the congressman, liked his intelligence and charm and self-possession, and enjoyed spending time with him. Shriver also relished attending the dinners over which Jack presided, since they afforded a chance to meet politicians from various parts of the country.