Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy (42 page)

8
. In 1956, the chairman of the state Democratic party was a loud conservative named William "Onions" Burke (1906-1975), an onion and tobacco farmer and barkeeper from Hatfield, Massachusetts. Burke was plotting to keep the state's delegation out of Adlai Stevenson's hands at the Chicago convention by having it vote for House Majority Leader John McCormack of Boston (1891-1980) as a "favorite son." McCormack was delighted, but JFK considered the move a slap in his face. As he later explained, "I had publicly endorsed Stevenson and I wanted to make good on my commitment." Kennedy wished to avoid putting an illiberal face on the Massachusetts party, and he feared looking powerless in his home state in case Stevenson considered him for vice president. In May 1956, he launched a major effort to depose Burke in favor of the former mayor of Somerville, Pat Lynch. This culminated in what Sorensen called "a stormy meeting—complete with booing, shoving, name-calling, contests for the gavel, and near fistfights." Since Kennedy's first election to the House in 1946, McCormack had viewed the young tiger as a threat to his dominance, and now his dread had come to pass. Burke was ousted, and JFK assumed effective control of his party in Massachusetts. The Kennedy-McCormack schism divided the state's Democrats until 1962, when Edward Kennedy defeated then Speaker McCormack's nephew Edward to win the party's nomination for JFK's old Senate seat.

9
. P
ATRICK
M
C
C
ARRAN
(1876–1954) was a Democratic senator from Nevada from 1933 until his death in 1954. Scourge of potential Communists in government, admirer of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, he commanded influence in his state far beyond that suggested by his job title.

10
. N
ORMAN
B
ILTZ
(1902–1973) was known as the "Duke of Nevada." A Republican with many Democratic cronies, he was one of the most powerful tycoons and largest landowners in the state.

11
. K
ENNETH
O'D
ONNELL
(1924–1977), son of the Holy Cross football coach, had been a Harvard roommate and football teammate of Robert Kennedy's and World War II bombardier in England. Since JFK's 1952 Senate campaign, he had been a key member of the circle of Kennedy aides known as the "Irish Mafia," serving as appointments secretary in the Kennedy White House. Lawrence O'Brien (1917–1990) of Springfield, Massachusetts, labored on JFK's campaigns for the Senate and presidency, then as the President's liaison to Congress.

12
. J
EAN
A
NN
K
ENNEDY
S
MITH
(1928– ) was JFK's youngest sister. Her husband, Stephen Edward Smith (1927–1990), shrewdly managed the Kennedy family finances and served all three Kennedy brothers as political strategist and behind-the-scenes troubleshooter.

13
. Terms used by many in the Kennedy circle to refer to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

14
. This McLean, Virginia, estate was briefly occupied by Union Army General George McClellan during the Civil War. Jacqueline and her husband sold it to Robert and Ethel Kennedy in 1956 for $125,000, the same price they had paid for it. Especially compared to Georgetown, driving from the house to Capitol Hill took considerable time in traffic.

15
. Referring to JFK's serious back surgery of 1954.

16
. On August 23, 1956, Jacqueline gave birth to her first baby, a daughter, who was stillborn. Her husband wanted a large family, and her difficulty producing children, especially in contrast to Kennedy sisters and wives who did so with little apparent effort, led to frustrations that inevitably affected her morale, her marriage, and her ability to make frequent trips with her husband during the 1960 presidential campaign and as First Lady. This made the stillbirth of their first child, three years into their marriage, and the death of the premature Patrick Bouvier Kennedy two days after his birth on August 7, 1963, all the harder for both Kennedys to bear.

17
. The Kennedys bought the three-story Federal redbrick edifice at 3307 N Street in Georgetown (of which she said, "My sweet little house leans slightly to one side") and stayed there until they left for the White House.

18
. M
AX
F
REEDMAN
(1914–1980) was Washington correspondent for the Manchester (England)
Guardian.

19
. E
DMUND
G. R
OSS
(1826–1907), Republican senator from Kansas, won his place in
Profiles in Courage
by casting the decisive vote in 1868 against President Andrew Johnson's impeachment, which cost Ross reelection.

20
. E
PHRAIM
S
HORR
(1896–1956) was a New York Hospital endocrinologist. Philip Wilson (1886–1969) was chief surgeon at the city's Hospital for Special Surgery, where the operation was performed, and a Harvard classmate of JFK's father.

21
. J
ANET
T
RAVELL
(1901–1997) later became JFK's White House physician, the first woman to serve in that role.

22
. JFK's double spinal fusion operation at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York was actually on October 21, 1954, and included insertion of a metal plate to support the lumbar spine. That August, he had been warned by Lahey Clinic physicians that without such an operation, he might lose the use of his legs—and that for an Addison's disease patient like JFK, the surgery might produce an infection that could kill him. When the doctors operated, the latter occurred, leaving the senator in a coma. Last rites were administered. The following February, when doctors feared that the plate was infected and recommended another operation to remove it and perform a bone graft on his spinal column, Jackie wanted a second opinion, but doctors persuaded her not to seek it. The second surgery threw her husband into three months of agony and depression while recuperating in Palm Beach; she wished she had fought the doctors. After JFK's first operation, when he was on the brink of death, she had heard him calling for her but was barred from the room. She resolved never to let it happen again. Therefore on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, when a Parkland Hospital nurse tried to prevent her from entering the chamber where her husband was receiving desperate measures, Jackie told her, "I'm going to get in that room," and she did, which enabled her to be with him when he died.

23
. The Carroll Arms Hotel was across the street from the Old (now Russell) Senate Office Building, in which JFK had his office.

24
. RFK wrote the foreword to a memorial edition of his brother's book, which was published in 1964.

25
. JFK played softball at a Georgetown park with Senate colleagues.

26
. F
RANCIS
X. M
ORRISSEY
(1911–2008) of Charlestown, Massachusetts, a dockworker's son who put himself through night law school, worked in JFK's campaigns for the House and Senate, and won appointment as a Boston municipal judge.

27
.
The Last Hurrah
(1956) by the Boston novelist and newspaperman Edwin O'Connor re-created the old, dying Irish-American politics of his city and was made into a 1958 feature film starring Spencer Tracy.

28
. J
OHN
F
RANCIS
F
ITZGERALD
(1863–1950) was JFK's maternal grandfather and namesake, briefly a congressman from Massachusetts, then the first Irish-American mayor of Boston, known for his renditions of "Sweet Adeline." On the night in 1946 when JFK was elected to the House, "Honey Fitz" performed an Irish jig and forecast that his grandson would someday be President. Kennedy admired the upward mobility of his grandfather's political generation and enjoyed its folktales, but his own identity was so conspicuously different that some in his state called him "the first Irish Brahmin."

29
. D
AVID
P
OWERS
(1912–1998) was another Irish-American from Charlestown, jovial and unflappable, who started with JFK during that first House campaign and stayed with him for the rest of Kennedy's life, as friend, raconteur, traveling companion, and man-of-all-work.

30
. The three-story Boston apartment houses known for housing newly arrived immigrants and factory workers and their descendants, especially Irish-American ones, such as Morrissey and Powers.

31
. J
OHN
K
ENNETH
G
ALBRAITH
(1908–2006), born in Ontario, was a Harvard economist and liberal activist, best known in the late 1950s for his book
The Affluent Society
. He supported JFK in 1960 and became his ambassador to India.

32
. C
HARLES
B
ARTLETT
(1921– ) was a Washington columnist for the
Chattanooga Times
, later nationally syndicated, who, with his wife Martha, introduced JFK to Jacqueline in 1951 and remained a close friend of the President's. A fellow Catholic, Bartlett had served in naval intelligence in the Pacific during World War II. Mrs. Bartlett was godmother to John Kennedy, Jr.

33
. B
ENJAMIN
B
RADLEE
(1921– ) was Washington bureau chief for
Newsweek
. He and his then wife Tony were Kennedy neighbors in Georgetown, became fast friends, and spent considerable leisure time with the Kennedys in the White House and other venues.

34
. Two months after losing her prematurely born second son in August 1963, Jacqueline and her sister Lee Radziwill sailed with Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., and his wife on the Aegean as guests of the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

35
. O
LEG
C
ASSINI
(1913–2006) was a New York couturier whom Jacqueline asked to design most of her White House wardrobe and who also participated in the Kennedys' social life. She wrote him that she wished to dress "as if Jack were President of FRANCE." She added, "Plan to stay for dinner every time you come to D.C. with sketches." "Steve" refers to Stephen Smith.

36
. J
OSEPH
A
LSOP
(1910–1989) was a Washington political columnist, Anglophile, Roosevelt cousin, and esteemed Georgetown host. He backed JFK in 1960 as "a Stevenson with balls." Alsop and his new wife Susan Mary, a descendant of John Jay, entertained a diverse mixture of guests during the Kennedy years, and theirs was one of the few private homes at which the President and First Lady dined while in the White House, which began with Kennedy's impromptu visit to Alsop late on his inaugural night.

37
. Meaning JFK's sign of the zodiac.

38
. Referring to reports of President Johnson's volcanic temper.

39
. S
TUART
S
YMINGTON
(1901–1988) was an Eastern-born patrician businessman, the first secretary of the air force, under Truman, and senator from Missouri from 1953 to 1976. Symington and his wife Evelyn lived four doors down from the Kennedys on N Street. John Sherman Cooper (1901–1991) was a Republican senator from Kentucky and had been Symington's classmate at Yale. Before both couples were married, Jacqueline and Jack had more than once gone out with the courtly Cooper and his wife Lorraine. John and Lorraine Cooper were also guests at the first dinner the Kennedys had at home after their honeymoon. George Smathers (1913–2007) was a conservative Democratic senator from Florida from 1951 to 1969.

40
. H
UBERT
H
UMPHREY
(1911–1978), liberal senator from Minnesota, ran against JFK in the Wisconsin and West Virginia primaries of 1960 but pulled out after losing both. During the latter effort, he publicly carped about his campaign's relative poverty in contrast to what he thought to be the free-spending ways of Kennedy's side. After his withdrawal, Humphrey and JFK resumed their old friendliness.

41
. Mr. and Mrs. Blair Childs. The address was actually 3321 Dent Place.

42
. M
IKE
M
ANSFIELD
(1903–2001) became Democratic senator from Montana in 1953, and served as majority leader from 1961 until 1977. The quiet, upright Mansfield had played softball with JFK and other senators in the early 1950s. One reason why Kennedy was glad to have Lyndon Johnson as vice president was that his Senate leader would not be the brash Texan but the loyal Mansfield. When Mansfield retired from the Senate, he said that of the presidents he had known, Kennedy was "the best of the lot." Honoring Mansfield's expertise on Asia, two presidents later made him ambassador to Japan.

43
. E
UGENE
M
C
C
ARTHY
(1916–2005) was senator from Minnesota from 1959 to 1971. He resented JFK, whom he considered his intellectual inferior, and, at the 1960 convention, gave an impassioned nominating speech for Stevenson. Kennedy suspected that McCarthy's real purpose was to stop his bandwagon so that Lyndon Johnson could win the prize.