America's Reluctant Prince Read online

  On November 23 Kennedy returned to Washington to spend Thanksgiving with Jackie and Caroline. Early the next day, Thanksgiving morning, the family drove to Virginia to scope out potential houses that could serve as a retreat from the White House. Mrs. Kennedy later recalled the bumpy roads and wondered if the jolts had impacted her pregnancy. They had Thanksgiving lunch at their home, and later that evening, JFK boarded the Caroline, the family’s twin-engine, forty-seat Convair 240 plane, to return to Palm Beach and continue interviewing people for his administration. A separate press plane followed.

  At approximately ten fifteen that evening, two hours after JFK left Washington, Mrs. Kennedy called her obstetrician, Dr. John W. Walsh, who had just finished enjoying his Thanksgiving dinner at home. She informed him that she was bleeding and enduring moderate pain. Walsh told her she needed to rush to the hospital, so he sent an ambulance to her home and jumped in his car to meet her there. The ambulance driver and his attendant found Mrs. Kennedy resting comfortably, wearing white socks, a pink nightgown, a white cardigan sweater, and a red overcoat. Walsh arrived five minutes later and, joined by two Secret Service agents, rushed to Georgetown University Hospital.

  Within minutes of giving birth, Mrs. Kennedy experienced the drastic lengths to which photographers would go simply to snap a candid picture. According to Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent assigned to protect Mrs. Kennedy, a photographer from the Associated Press snuck into Jackie’s hospital room in hopes of securing the first pictures of her following delivery. As she was being wheeled into the room, he jumped out of a closet and took pictures using a bright flash. Although still groggy, Jackie shouted, “Oh, no, not that!” The agents quickly seized his camera and exposed the film so that it could not be used.

  Within hours, congratulatory letters came pouring in, first from President Dwight Eisenhower, followed shortly thereafter by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. The birth made front-page headlines around the world. According to family friend Dave Powers, who was staying at the Kennedys’ Georgetown home, the family received approximately three thousand telegrams in the first twenty-four hours, and in less than a week had broken an all-time record for floral gifts. Within a few days, the Associated Press asked campaign press secretary Pierre Salinger for pictures of the already-famous baby, pointing out that the “first pictures of John F. Kennedy Jr. will be of world interest.” Salinger’s reply is not recorded.

  President-elect Kennedy, who arrived at the hospital at four thirty in the morning, spent a few minutes admiring his son through a thick glass window before visiting his wife. Legendary newsman Merriman Smith, who accompanied Kennedy that night, described him as “tired but unable to stop smiling as policemen and Secret Service agents softly called out their congratulations.” When people asked if he had chosen a name yet, JFK responded, “Why, it’s John F. Kennedy Jr. I think she decided—it has been decided. Yes, John F. Kennedy Jr.”

  The president-elect then went home to take Caroline for a walk around the block and to reveal that she now had a baby brother. In the weeks leading up to the birth, JFK and Jackie had promised their daughter, who had turned three in November, that her birthday gift that year would be a sister or brother. Once she learned that she had a baby brother, Caroline insisted on giving him a present: a silver brush and comb. According to Maud Shaw, the nanny, Caroline “always loved John very much. She was very dear with him.” A family member, however, remembers a different story. Years later, she claimed, Mrs. Kennedy showed her drawings of animals that she kept at her Manhattan apartment. “These are the drawings Jack did for Caroline,” she recalled Mrs. Kennedy saying, “because she was so jealous of John.”

  After only a few hours of sleep, JFK returned to the hospital for intermittent visits: twenty minutes just before noon; again at six; then shortly after eight o’clock for about fifty minutes. In addition to seeing his wife, he also stopped by to check on Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy, who was recovering from pneumonia, and a seven-year-old leukemia patient. A nurse had told JFK that the boy wanted to meet him, so he made a brief visit to his room and gave him an autograph.

  For the first nine days of her son’s life, Mrs. Kennedy had to visit him and administer his bottle in the nursery, which was across the hall from her room. On December 3 doctors finally removed John from the incubator and carried him to his mother’s room for the first time.

  On December 8 the fourteen-day-old was baptized in the hospital chapel. John wore the same white christening gown that his father had worn in 1917. Still weak from the delivery, Mrs. Kennedy needed a wheelchair to move from her hospital bed to the chapel. The happy occasion produced the first of many conflicts over how much access the media should have to their son. JFK saw the baptism as an ideal opportunity to show off his “all-American family” and to appeal to the working-class base that helped him win the election and that would be essential for supporting his presidential agenda. Mrs. Kennedy, on the other hand, insisted on a private event without cameras. Eventually they reached a compromise, allowing a few selected reporters to cover the event.

  As soon as John was able to leave the hospital, the family traveled to Palm Beach. Upon arrival, they encountered a crowd of photographers hungry to snap photographs of the future first lady and her newborn son. “Jackie! Jackie! Look over here!” they shouted. Mrs. Kennedy turned to her husband and said firmly, “I am not talking to the press. And I don’t want any photographs of the baby. I was hoping we would have more privacy down here.” Although he did not say it, Clint Hill knew that “the privacy Mrs. Kennedy sought would be elusive for the rest of her life. People were fascinated by her, and there would be few places she [could] escape.”

  Overnight, John became the most famous infant in America. Although they were only three years apart, John’s early childhood would be very different from that of his sister. When Caroline was first learning to walk, nanny Maud Shaw could take her on strolls to the local drugstore for ice cream. She could romp anonymously around local playgrounds. John would never be able to enjoy such privileges. “I think John suffered a great handicap by being brought up in the White House, surrounded by all the restrictions that have to be placed on the president’s children,” Shaw remarked.

  The next few weeks proved difficult for both Jackie and John. The expansive Kennedy Palm Beach house lacked air-conditioning and heat, so it would get warm and humid during the day and chilly at night. Making matters worse, John remained in poor health. Jackie claimed that a Palm Beach pediatrician, C. Jennings Derrick, “saved his life, as he was going downhill.” Jackie’s health was also precarious: she suffered from headaches and postpartum depression. “I didn’t come to meals. I couldn’t hold any food down,” she confessed. There was also little privacy. Jackie desperately needed rest, but aides kept coming in and out of their room offering suggestions for her husband’s upcoming Inauguration Day address on January 20, 1961.

  On January 18 Mrs. Kennedy returned to Washington for the inaugural activities, leaving John and Caroline behind with their nanny and nurse. JFK’s address, delivered on a cold, cloudless day, captivated the nation’s imagination and captured the hope and expectations of the decade. His vigor and youth stood in sharp contrast to the stodgy Eisenhower style. Calling for “a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war,” he promised a “New Frontier” of opportunity and challenge. The country, he proclaimed, was ready to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship.”

  Over the next few weeks, while the children remained in Florida, Mrs. Kennedy worked hard to make the White House more child friendly. She turned two guestrooms into bedrooms for the children, although the new first lady did not buy new furniture for the rooms. Everything came over from the Georgetown home. Caroline’s room was decorated in pink rosebuds with white woodwork, a canopied bed, and rocking horses. John’s room was blue and white, with a white crib and playpen, plenty of stuffed animals, and a
gas stove where Mrs. Shaw prepared his formula. Old-fashioned chintz curtains hung in both rooms. The children’s rooms were filled with dozens of toys, many of them presents from strangers. At one point, the president decided they would accept gifts only from close friends and family; the rest were donated to charity.

  Mrs. Kennedy also arranged to have an outdoor playground built near the president’s West Wing office, including a treehouse, playhouse, swing, and slide. Over time the family added a stable for their ponies, Macaroni and Leprechaun, and doghouses for Pushinka, a gift from Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev, and an Irish terrier named Charlie. The children were surrounded by a wide variety of other animals as well, including two canaries and three parakeets. White House electrician Traphes L. Bryant, who served as the unofficial Kennedy family dog wrangler, estimated that they had nine dogs at one point. Indeed, John’s first memory of living in the White House was watching Pushinka slide down the metal chute of their slide. Bryant had taught the dog to climb up by smearing some peanut butter on every step.

  On February 4 John and Caroline flew aboard the family plane from sunny Florida to frigid Washington, DC. The president and first lady went to the airport to greet them and bring them back to the White House in full view of photographers. Mrs. Kennedy held John close to protect him from the biting cold as they exited the plane and walked to the limousine. That evening marked their first time together as a family at the White House. But while the first lady was able to shield John from the cold, the question remained whether she could also guard him from the pressures of growing up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

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  While nursing both herself and John back to health, Mrs. Kennedy had to contend with her new, highly visible role as a future first lady. During her hospital stay, Jackie had read a letter from former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, whose two youngest children with Franklin D. Roosevelt had been in college when they entered the White House in 1933. Eleanor advised her that while “most things are made easier” living in the White House, “on the whole, life is rather difficult for both the children and their parents in the ‘fishbowl’ that lies before you.” Jackie understood the challenge. As Letitia Baldrige, the first lady’s social secretary, observed years later, it was like “trying to give one’s children a normal life in the middle of Disney World.” In keeping with her concern for privacy, Jackie informed the press that she would not be an active first lady and that she would devote her time to raising her children. There would be no press interviews and photo opportunities. When Angier Biddle Duke, the White House chief of protocol, asked Jackie what role she would like to play as first lady, she responded, “As little as possible. I’m a mother. I’m a wife. I’m not a public official.” White House Chief Usher J. B. West remarked that if she had her way, “the White House would be surrounded by high brick walls and a moat with crocodiles.”

  One of her strategies for protecting her children from the press was to stay away from Washington as much as possible. Desiring a country retreat where she could escape with John and Caroline, she planned to bring them to the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod over the summer. The family also rented the Glen Ora estate, which sat on four hundred acres in Virginia’s Hunt Country and boasted a colonial home and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. But after falling out with the owner, the first family went on to purchase Wexford, a sprawling ranch-style house with stunning views of the countryside in Middleburg, Virginia. While waiting for it to finish construction, they retreated to Camp David, the presidential country home in Maryland, and were left surprised by how much they enjoyed it. “If only I’d realized how nice Camp David really is, I’d never have rented Glen Ora or built Wexford,” Jackie later told West.

  Though the White House could restrict access to journalists, it was much harder to prevent tourists and photographers using telescopic lenses from taking candid photos of the children. At one point, White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger hashed out an agreement with professional photographers that they would not take pictures of the children through the fence, but he could not stop tourists from snapping revealing photos and then selling them to the wire services or newspapers. Mrs. Kennedy was so annoyed by the steady stream of photos of her children that she sent Salinger a stinging memo letting him know that he was not doing his job properly and that she wanted the pictures to stop.

  Oddly enough, although denouncing the way the media violated the privacy of public figures, Jackie remained an avid reader of gossip magazines. This quality helps explain her willingness to permit her staff to release regular press updates about John’s development as an infant. Given the public’s fascination with the Kennedys, and John especially, these tidbits made headlines around the country. On February 3 John weighed 9 ½ pounds and had six feedings a day. On May 1 John weighed 16 ½ pounds and was 23 inches tall. He had progressed to four feedings a day: “one bottle, and three meals of either strained fruit, meat, vegetables, cereal, cottage cheese.” The press reported that he slept well and “makes a lot of noise when he talks.” By October 1961, he weighed 23 pounds and had grown seven teeth. “He crawls, climbs, and stands up in his crib. Has a huge appetite, makes a lot of noise, laughs all the time.” By his first birthday, he weighed 25 pounds and was 29 ½ inches tall. “He is a very active boy and is into everything,” the White House detailed. “He loves to turn knobs, pull handles, [and] open boxes.” John had gained the ability to form sentences, his vocabulary was “rapidly expanding,” and he was even learning to hold out his hand to greet guests. Weather permitting, he spent most of the day outside in a small White House playground that Mrs. Kennedy had had built on the grounds.

  However, for most of the time the family lived in the White House, the press showed more interest in Caroline than in John. The Kennedys’ daughter, who was three years old when they moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, had begun developing a personality, and photographers enjoyed capturing the many faces that she made. John’s ability to make news was limited by the fact that he was so young. The New York Herald Tribune reported that Caroline “overshadows him.” She was, the Los Angeles Times observed, “the White House’s most popular attraction.”

  The extent of Caroline’s popularity even reached into the world of children’s toys. In October 1962 the chairman of the board of the Ideal Toy Company asked permission to make a commercial “Caroline” doll, which he compared with the popular Shirley Temple doll it had marketed in 1934. “Caroline is today the most loved child in the world, idolized by every little girl and an example of wholesomeness,” he wrote. “This presents an opportunity for good that should be carefully considered.” Baldrige called back to say that Mrs. Kennedy responded “in the negative,” to protect Caroline’s privacy.

  Despite rejecting such requests and prohibiting photographers from taking pictures of her children, Jackie was shrewd enough to know that one of the best ways to keep the members of the press satisfied was to feed them carefully scripted images. According to Clint Hill, “she would think up little stories, or agree to certain photographs, and filter them through the press. As long as she was the director, it was all right.” Indeed, Jackie was not opposed to pictures of John as long as she controlled what images the public would see. Her main concern was that the children not be captured at awkward moments or presented in a negative light. She feared they would be used as political props, tossed before a ravenous press to further a partisan agenda.

  Instead, the first lady preferred photos that highlighted their “happy” family life. She turned to Life magazine’s Mark Shaw to snap many of those photos, occasionally inviting him to the White House to take candid shots of the children. Shaw had covered her during the campaign, and she came to trust him because he gave her final approval of all pictures. In addition to feeling comfortable with Shaw, Jackie also preferred Life over the other major photojournalism magazine in America, Look, because Life appealed to a more sophistica
ted and better-educated reader.

  Meanwhile, the president and his media-conscious staff understood how photos of John and Caroline could influence the public’s perception of the administration. In their minds, the more pictures of the children, the better. “When the average person needed to be cheered up,” wrote Mrs. Kennedy’s secretary Letitia Baldrige, “it helped for him or her to hear the latest on those two children at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” Whenever JFK needed a media boost, she observed, “the powers that be in the West Wing would decide it was time to stage a photo-op with the children, with probable touchy-feely results.” Since they knew that Mrs. Kennedy would object, they waited until she was out of town, or even riding horses in Virginia, before inviting John and Caroline into the Oval Office for photos. “The photo results were inevitably adorable and made the front page of every newspaper in the world,” Baldrige recalled, adding that the president “always heard back from the first lady when this happened, in no uncertain terms.”

  In order to ensure that the public received a steady stream of flattering pictures from the White House, JFK hired Cecil Stoughton as the first White House photographer in history. Kennedy liked the photos that Stoughton, a retired officer with the US Army Signal Corps, took of Inauguration Day and hired him to work full-time in the administration, documenting both official events and behind-the-scenes family life. The president had a buzzer installed in Stoughton’s West Wing office and a special phone mounted at the photographer’s Virginia home so he could call on him at any time. “Prior to JFK,” Stoughton reflected, “we had Eisenhower, and there was no need for a photographer. He was about sixty-three years old, and he didn’t have the charm and charisma of President Kennedy, and he didn’t have a family that engaged the American public.”