Jackie's Newport

by Raymond Sinibaldi

doctor’s eyes.

  85

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  “He’s small. We have some concern about his breathing. We’ve put him

  in an incubator, and we’ll know more in a while.”

  “I’ll make sure the president gets the news immediately,” Hill told the

  doctor. “He’s on his way and he should be here soon.” 212

  It was 1:40 p.m. when the president arrived. “Congratulations, Mr.

  President,” said Clint Hill.

  “Thank you. How’s Mrs. Kennedy?” came his quick reply.

  “I believe she’s still under sedation, but you should talk to Dr. Walsh.”

  Jack went to see his wife, and after a short conference with Walsh, he

  instructed Clint Hill to “find the base chaplain. We need to baptize the baby right away.” 213

  The president then placed a call to Kennedy family obstetrician Dr. Roy

  Heffernan. “Doctor,” the president went right to the point, “Jackie has just had a little boy, and he isn’t doing well. He has some respiratory difficulty.

  Would you kindly find the best man…to deal with this sort of situation, and I’ll have a plane at Logan Airport waiting for him, and he can come right down here. I would be grateful if you would do this.” 214

  In a matter of minutes Dr. James E. Drorbaugh was in a chopper bound for Otis Air Force Base. The president was waiting for Drorbaugh and immediately took him to examine Patrick. Finding him in moderate distress, “with a rapid respiratory rate, with grunting and lots of effort going into each breath,” he recommended Patrick be transferred to Boston Children’s Hospital. 215

  Jackie spent most of her afternoon in recovery, drifting in and out of

  sleep, catching but “brief glimpses of her new son.” The last one came when her husband “wheeled him into her room in a special incubator.” 216 She

  reached into the incubator and for ten minutes stroked his hair and held his tiny little hand, never knowing that this would be the measure of their lives together. Patrick was then placed in an ambulance bound for Boston.

  Just before 6:00 p.m., Jack and his sister Jean boarded Marine I for the 86

  MR. AND MRS. AMERICA

  short flight to the first family’s summer home on Squaw Island and a visit with Caroline and John. Jack then returned to Jackie before he was back in the chopper on his way to Otis and an awaiting plane to Boston. He arrived at the Boston Children’s Hospital just after 9:00 p.m., conferred with the doctors, and visited little Patrick before retiring to the Kennedy apartment at the Ritz Carlton, ten minutes away.

  The baby was suffering from hyaline membrane disease. Now called

  Infant Respiratory Distress Syndrome (IRDS), it is a structural immaturity of the lungs in premature births. John Jr. suffered the same affliction, and the first forty-eight hours were critical. The country, and indeed the world, now shared the vigil of President and Mrs. Kennedy.

  After breakfast with appointment secretary and longtime friend

  Kenny O’Donnell, the president went back to the hospital. Receiving

  encouraging news, he returned to Otis for an hour-long visit with Jackie.

  Patrick showed some improvement, fueling the hope that he could endure

  the respiratory malady as John had three years earlier. Although she would spend most of the day sleeping, Jackie did open congratulatory offerings and perused some newspaper articles regarding the arrival of her second

  son. Carrying the burden of his harbored concern, Jack protected Jackie

  from the severity of Patrick’s condition, preferring to provide hope fostered by the morning’s encouraging signs. At noon it was back to the kids on

  Squaw Island.

  A call soon came from Boston. The encouraging signs of the morning

  had dissipated, and Patrick was being placed in a hyperbaric chamber to

  force oxygen into his tiny little lungs. Jack called Jackie’s mom in Newport and then was back on Marine I bound for Logan Airport, where he met Janet Auchincloss and headed for the hospital.

  Twice he donned surgical gown and mask to visit with Patrick. He

  would slide his hand inside to simply hold his son’s tiny little fingers. At 87

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  one point he turned to Janet and said, “Nothing must happen to Patrick,

  because I just can’t bear to think of the effect it might have on Jackie.” It was unmistakably clear to Janet “the effect it might have on him too.” 217

  Following an 8:25 p.m. doctor’s conference, Jack decided to spend the

  night at the hospital. A fourth-floor room was procured, adding a cot for Special Assistant Dave Powers. Powers, a member of the Irish mafia, had

  been with Jack from the start. It was just after 2:00 a.m. when Secret Service agent Gerry Behn woke Powers, informing him Patrick had taken a turn for the worse.

  Dave awakened the president, conveying the sad news, and as the pair

  paced awaiting the elevator, Jack walked by a room in the intensive care unit.

  Inside lay a small child who had been severely burned. He called the nurse, asking the details of the incident. He then inquired about the mother. “How often does she visit?” he asked.

  Patrick lived only 39 hours, of which Jackie spent only minutes with him. She remained hospitalized following surgery and was unable to attend his funeral.

  Here press secretary Pierre Salinger announces Patrick’s death to the press, outside the hospital at Otis Air Force Base.

  88

  MR. AND MRS. AMERICA

  “Every day,” said the nurse.

  “Can you tell me her name?” 218 Jack then turned to Powers, who handed

  him paper and pen. Completing a short note of sympathy and encouragement for an anguished parent, he handed it to the nurse.

  Donning the surgical cap and gown, Jack reached into the hyperbaric

  chamber and grasped the tiny fingers of his dying son. There he remained, watching and hoping against hope, as Patrick battled for each breath. At 4:04

  a.m. on August 9, 1963, in the thirty-ninth hour of his life, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy’s battle ended. He drew his last breath while his daddy held his hand. “He put up quite a fight,” Jack said. “He was a beautiful baby.” 219

  The president and Powers returned to their room, and Jack turned

  to his old friend. “Would you go outside and call Teddy,” he asked, and as Powers left the room, the president sat on his bed and wept. “He didn’t want anybody to see him cry,” recalled Powers.220

  Gerry Behn called Otis informing Clint Hill and Tom Wells that

  Patrick had passed away. Wells then called Dr. Walsh, notifying him

  of Patrick’s passing and the president’s request that he tell Jackie. The Kennedys joined the John Adamses, the Jeffersons, the Lincolns, and

  the Coolidges on the unenviable list of families who lost children while occupying the White House.

  The day at Otis had been a beehive of activity, with phone calls and messages pouring in from all over the world, expressing concerns about the plight of baby Patrick. Jackie, still recuperating, slept on and off throughout most of it, still not totally aware of the gravity of her baby’s condition.

  The night proved to be a fitful one for Jackie, with Nurse Lumsden

  coming in and out of her room throughout. “Mrs. Kennedy is really having a tough time tonight,” Lumsden said to Agent Wells. “She’s been so restless all night, tossing and turning. She just can’t seem to get to sleep.” At just after 4:00 a.m. Nurse Lumsden emerged from Jackie Kennedy’s room. “She’s 89

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  finally gone to sleep,” she told Tom Wells. “She just fell asleep.” 221 It was within minutes of Patrick’s passing.

  In the predawn hours Jack placed a call to Cardinal Cushing, and the

  two old friends planned a mass of the angels to be said the following day at the cardinal’s r
esidence in Brighton, Massachusetts. The task of executing the plans went to longtime aide Frank Morrissey. “I remember Bobby

  calling, with the arrangements to be made.” Morrissey made his way over to Cushing’s residence, where the cardinal had decorated the altar himself. “We had to go with the undertaker, George Lacy, we got a beautiful little gown…

  all in white.” A vault was flown in from Cleveland, and baby Patrick was now ready to be laid to rest. 222

  Dr. Walsh arrived at 6:30 p.m. to deliver the crushing news to Jackie,

  and it devastated her. Mary Gallagher, Nancy Tuckerman, Pam Turnure,

  and Nurse Luella Hennessey provided as much comfort and support as

  possible, but it was impossible to know the palpable anguish that saturated her soul. It was her fifth pregnancy in eight years and her third lost child.

  Being thoroughly protected by the president left Jackie unprepared for

  the news of Patrick’s death. She did not know that he only had a fifty-fifty chance from the moment he arrived. She did not know that the first forty-eight hours would be critical. She did not know of, nor see, her husband’s utter torment as he powerlessly watched his tiny little boy battle for breath.

  She did not see the gentle tenderness that emerged from Jack as friends and staff alike witnessed a side of him they had not seen before. His emotions were raw and exposed, heard in his voice, seen on his face, and visible in his eyes. His stoic, protective demeanor, shown to Jackie throughout, left her to wonder if it marked the same indifference with which he had greeted the

  stillborn birth of Arabella seven years earlier.

  One can only wonder if her mind wandered back to the summer of 1956. It

  was but days after the Democratic Convention in which her husband had

  90

  MR. AND MRS. AMERICA

  lost his bid to land the second spot on the ticket with Adlai Stevenson. Jack was off on a pleasure trip to sail the European coast, accompanied by Senator George Smathers, Congressman and former Harvard classmate Torbet

  MacDonald, and younger brother Teddy.

  Jackie had returned home to Newport and Hammersmith Farm. A little

  over seven months pregnant, she was left behind while Jack cavorted, gallivanting about the Mediterranean, enjoying wine, women, and more women.

  Did she recall her first engagement to John Husted and ponder how

  things might have been had she chosen him instead of Jack? Or perhaps she remembered a conversation with Lemoyne Billings, her husband’s friend

  since their junior high school days at the Choate School in Connecticut?

  It was the night of the first Inaugural Ball of Dwight Eisenhower.

  Before the ball, Jack and his sister Pat hosted a cocktail party at their home in Georgetown. Billings took this opportunity to talk with Jackie about her pending nuptials to the country’s most eligible bachelor.

  The thirty-five-year-old senator was “crazy about girls, but he never

  really settled down with one girl…He was terribly interested in going out and having fun with them at night.” He was never really “terribly excited about having girls as friends.” As his wedding approached he was “worried about the responsibilities he was taking on as a husband…he was scared.”

  Billings sought out twenty-three-year-old Jacqueline Bouvier, for he “had known Jack a long time…and I felt as if I should prepare her a little bit for what I felt were some of the problems that Jack might have in marrying at thirty-five. She was terribly young and it might be best if she were prepared for it.” 223

  Billings minced few words in relating his friend’s predilection and

  penchant for women. And in this prenuptial conversation with this “awfully pretty girl, younger and prettier girl than most he dated,” he delicately informed her that she should not expect it to stop after they were married.

  “Jack…has been around an awful lot in his life…known many, many girls…

  91

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  You’re going to have to be very understanding at the beginning…he never

  really settled down with one girl before…A man of thirty-five is very hard to live with.” 224

  Twenty-three-year-old Miss Bouvier soaked in the words of Jack’s

  longest and most loyal friend. “She was very understanding” and “accepted everything I said,” recalled Billings. Jackie would re-visit this conversation with Billings after their marriage, telling him, “I realized all that and I thought it was a challenge.” 225

  On August 24, 1956, the front page of the Newport Daily News reported,

  “Senator Kennedy’s Wife Under Knife, Loses Her Baby.” Mrs. Kennedy was

  rushed to Newport Hospital after “she suffered an internal hemorrhage…

  the former Miss Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was visiting her step-father and

  mother Mr. and Mrs. Hugh D Auchincloss at Hammersmith Farm” when

  the incident took place, and “the emergency operation was performed at 7

  p.m….Family members today were seeking to reach Senator Kennedy, who

  is sailing with his brother Edward Kennedy off France…and is due in port sometime today.”

  Four days later, the Newport Daily News reported that Jack “arrived at 1:15 p.m. today after an air trip from Italy…He took a transatlantic plane to Boston today and immediately went aboard a chartered plane for Newport.”

  He was unreachable as “he was cruising off the coast of Italy and had not been aware of his wife’s illness.” Fortunately, he sent a “routine cable from Portofino, Italy,” which allowed his “exact location” to be learned. The cold, harsh reality was quite different.

  On the afternoon of August 23, 1956, Jackie was awakened from an

  afternoon nap bleeding and in excruciating pain. Her placenta had separated prematurely, causing the early onset of the birth process and taking the life of the baby girl she held within. Within a half hour she was in an ambulance speeding through the streets of Newport, bound for Newport Hospital.

  With Jackie’s life now endangered, an emergency Caesarean section was

  92

  MR. AND MRS. AMERICA

  performed. Janet placed a call to Hyannis Port to learn that Jack was

  inaccessible. When Jackie awoke at 2:00 a.m., it was Bobby she found at her bedside. It was Bobby who told her that she had given birth to a beautiful baby girl, and it was Bobby who told her that the girl they would have called Arabella had been born dead.

  Where was Jack? He was off sailing on a yacht with three buddies and

  enough women to go around. When word reached Jack’s secretary, Evelyn

  Lincoln, of Jackie’s plight and their stillborn baby, she placed a call to Jack, who said he’d “be right home.” However, in a moment of incalculable poor judgment, he reached the conclusion that “if I go back there what the hell am I going to do, I’m just going to sit there and ring my hands.” His callous disregard of Jackie’s grief and desolation caused one Washington Post reporter to write of “his terrible obtuseness, his willful insensitivity.” This prompted friend and fellow traveler George Smathers to offer, “If you want to run for president, you’d better get your ass back to your wife’s bedside, or else every wife in the country will be against you.” 226

  Before Jack returned, Bobby, along with Kenny O’Donnell, stood

  graveside while the tiny coffin marked “Baby Girl Kennedy” was lowered

  into the earth in St. Columba’s Cemetery, overlooking Narragansett Bay.

  When Jack arrived, Jackie was awash in a cauldron of emotions:

  heartache, anger, self-recrimination, despair, and all stops in between. For all of the warnings she had received from Lem Billings on that January night four years earlier, nothing had prepared her for the depth of the indignity which Jack’s cruel insensitivity placed on her through this crushing ordeal.

  All the fears she’d expressed to Father Leonard—he�
��s “like my father,” “loves the chase,” “bored with the conquest,” “flirts,” “resents you,” “it nearly killed mummy”—were now her reality.

  Patrick’s death devastated Jackie, leaving her inconsolable and unable to stop the tears. Just before 9:00 p.m., Mary Gallagher informed her that the 93

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  president was on his way. Not sure what to expect, Jackie wanted to put on her best face. Physically weak and emotionally drained, Mary and Luella assisted her, helping wash her face, comb her hair, and propping her up on the bed.

  There was nothing they could do to touch the sorrowful ache of her soul.

  Thirty minutes later, “looking like he had been to hell and back,”

  President Kennedy approached his wife’s room. “My condolences Mr.

  President,” said Clint Hill as he turned the door knob, allowing him to enter.

  “Thanks, Clint,” said the exhausted, heart-broken chief executive as he

  passed through the door. 227 “He walked… in my room and just sobbed and

  put his arms around me.” In all the time she’d known him, she had seen tears fall from his eyes only twice before. The first time was when he underwent back surgery in their first year of marriage; “he wouldn’t weep but some tears would fill his eyes and roll down his cheek.” The second time occurred with the realization that the Bay of Pigs invasion had turned to an ultimate disaster, and “he came over…to his bedroom…just put his head in his hands and sort of wept.” 228

  Today it was far beyond simply tears. It was the gut-wrenching sobs that emanate from the soul when sadness reaches to the core of one’s being. Jack and Jackie spent two hours in that room. Emotionally guarded through ten years of marriage, they melted together in a sadness only they could know.

  Jack then hopped aboard Marine I, bound for Squaw Island, where his

  children awaited him. Throughout the summer, they had been anticipating

  the arrival of a new baby, and it now fell upon their dad to tell them that Patrick would not be coming home. “John was not old enough to take in

  too much,” recalled nanny Maud Shaw, but Caroline completely understood

  what her dad meant when he told her that Patrick “had been sick and he

  had gone to heaven.” He spent the afternoon with his children, consoling Caroline and reveling in his little boy. Twice he returned to visit with Jackie, and he squeezed in a twenty-minute visit with his dad before returning home at just before 11:00 p.m.