Producer (6 page)

I
was still working at the art gallery when I got a call from a woman I didn’t know named Suzy Wills. “Is this Wendy?” she
asked in a fast-paced voice.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

“I work for Ethel Kennedy,” Suzy said, “and she was wondering if you were interested in becoming her private secretary. She
needs someone to basically run her life. You know, make calls, set up meetings, help her with social events, carry out her
correspondences, things like that.”

Suzy went on to inform me that Ethel, a woman of about fifty, was extremely active and extraordinarily focused on details.
I recalled her high energy level when I had waited on her at Brooks Brothers and at the dinner I had attended at her home.
She got loads of phone calls every day, Suzy explained, and she was very busy with her huge family and running her charity—a
humanitarian foundation dedicated to the memory of her late husband, Robert F. Kennedy, gunned down by an assassin’s bullet
on June 5, 1968. Ethel had been forty years old
at the time. Now, in 1978, ten years later, was I interested in the position?

I didn’t take long to answer. I was making so little money at the gallery, I could barely eat, and I was getting more bored
every day. So I listened carefully when Suzy explained what the job would entail. “You’ll be keeping track of what’s going
on at the house,” she said. “Ethel needs all her calls, appointments, and phone numbers organized. There are a million details.”

I smiled. I always had excelled in organizing. Maybe this would be a good job for me.

“For example,” Suzy said, “Mrs. Kennedy needs help putting on a charity tennis tournament this summer where pros will play
celebrities. It’s a fund-raiser for her late husband’s charity,” Suzy continued. “It’s happening in Forest Hills, New York,
in August, and it’ll be televised by ABC. Does that interest you?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“There’s just one thing,” Suzy added.

“What is it?” I asked, ready to hear the caveat that could burst the bubble of my sudden good fortune.

“You’ll have to go to Hyannis and stay at the Kennedy compound for the summer,” said Suzy. “Would that be a problem for you?”

I could hardly believe my ears. Staying at the Kennedy compound for the summer was no problem for me, I assured her.

She filled me in on some more details, like my salary, which would be $15,000 a year. Believe it or not, fifteen was a significant
raise from the art gallery pay, and yet I saw the irony in the fact that when I was serving Ethel Kennedy as a customer at
Brooks Brothers, I was making $34,000 a year. Now, as her private secretary, handling her personal affairs, my salary would
be less than half that much. But compared to the
gallery, this was a step up, both in salary and in excitement. I took the job, hung up the phone, and ran to my closet to
evaluate my clothes. I had to make sure I had appropriate clothes to work as Ethel Kennedy’s private secretary.

When I got into my light blue Chevy Chevette and drove up to Hickory Hill for my first day of work, I marveled at how much
I hadn’t noticed when I’d arrived at dusk for dinner just a few weeks earlier. I pulled into the parking area, got out of
my car, and gazed admiringly at the beautiful white colonial home with soft blue shutters, glowing in the morning light. At
least I was dressed more appropriately than the last time.

When I was shown inside my new workplace, the first thing I saw was Joe sitting all by himself in the dining room, having
breakfast. We greeted each other and he said, “I hear you’re going to work for my mom.”

“Yeah, I am.” I was relieved that my awful granny gown was not the last outfit he ever saw me wear.

Joe smiled, wished me good luck, and I was suddenly overwhelmed. Yesterday, I had worked at a mediocre art gallery that hardly
saw a customer. Today, at age twenty-three, I was private secretary to Ethel Kennedy, whose name alone was completely daunting.
But I had no time to wallow, thank goodness, as a house employee showed me the front room, my headquarters where I would be
working for Ethel. I smiled at the decorations and fabrics in pastel peaches and pinks, colors for which my new boss and I
clearly shared an affinity. I settled in for my first day and found that the work, although piled high, was pretty straightforward.
And did Ethel ever need me!

I began by tackling her Rolodex that was utterly disorganized. I also helped with her concerns about the upkeep of her home.
She liked that I was meticulously neat and artistic by nature, and I placed calls to her friends and to celebrities
who were part of her latest charity event. How cool was it to get Chevy Chase on the phone and have him call me “dear.” I
was having so much fun organizing, and now, there was Chevy Chase. Wow! To me, comedians are more interesting than royalty.

When I had a break, I walked into the backyard to admire the towering old trees and the old Coca-Cola dispenser by the pool
where you could get a frosty Coke. Strains of music from an old jukebox wafted across the property, Dolly Parton singing “Here
You Come Again,” and the Bee Gees’ hit song “Stayin’ Alive.” There was also a Warhol photo screen print in the pool house
of Jane Fonda, who would later marry Ted Turner. Who could predict that I would get to know her when I worked for CNN? It
was another clue on the roadmap to my future.

I especially loved the drawing room where people gathered for events and entertainment. It seemed to have a life of its own.
But I spent most of my time in the front room, on the phone, working for Ethel, a strong and demanding presence. She scrutinized
everything I did to the tiniest detail, and the finished products of whatever she asked me to do were finely crafted and well
thought out. She would accept nothing less, and this made a great impression on me.

When we left for Hyannis for the summer, I could only anticipate what was coming. In the largest of seven villages on Cape
Cod, Massachusetts, the Kennedy name and Hyannisport had been synonymous starting in 1926, when patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy
had first rented and then purchased a summer cottage there. Over the years, various family members such as President John
F. Kennedy and his brothers Bobby and Ted also purchased properties, eventually creating the family compound that spread out
over six acres of waterfront property.

The beauty of the setting was matched only by its historical significance. The JFK Hyannis Museum in the old town hall on
Main Street featured the years that the president spent there. To this day, a waterfront memorial includes a fountain and
a fieldstone monument with the presidential seal and the inspiring JFK inscription, “I believe it is important that this country
sail and not sit still in the harbor.”

Into the heart of the Kennedy legend I was headed, as my new friend and coworker, Suzy Wills, and I moved our things into
the dorm that was located on the property (I had my own small room), between the residences of Ethel and Jackie Onassis. The
bed linens in the rooms were hand-me-downs from various bedrooms past. They were feminine with flowers and scallops and they
had been expensive. Now they were just a little bit worn. But so pretty. It was shabby chic style.

The homes within the compound were typical Cape Cod white frame clapboard, with well-tended lawns, sumptuous gardens, and
a sweeping view of the ocean. I walked around the property, taking in the two circular driveways, flagpoles, a boathouse,
and stretches of lawn where the family famously played touch football.

I remember early one afternoon, when I was in Ethel’s kitchen, working on her mailing list. Just before his daily sail, Ted
walked unannounced into the kitchen in baggy pants and a pair of old sneakers. He headed over to the stove and stirred a pot
of clam chowder that was brewing. He took a taste and said, “Ethel, that’s good chowder.” Plain and simple. But it was one
of those events in which my brain took a permanent picture of everything—the room, the chowder smell, and Teddy’s voice. I
was actually in Hyannisport in the kitchen with Ethel and Ted Kennedy talking about chowder! I just couldn’t help
marveling that this was the Kennedy family, and everything they did, including stirring the soup, seemed so exciting.

The preparations for the tournament were all-encompassing as I worked with Ray Benton, a sports attorney from Washington DC,
who, incidentally, I already knew. It was another of those odd serendipitous occurrences, since I’d met him years before when
I was growing up in Dubuque, Iowa. He happened to be the tennis pro at our local country club and I was his worst student.
Really, I was horrible at tennis. In fact, I was bad at most sports except when it came to swimming and dancing. Those two
things I could do, but just about any other sport, well, forget it. In school, I was the last to be picked as a member of
any sports team for good reason. I was prissy and a lousy athlete.

I remembered Ray before his name carried much sway, trying to get through to me as the ball would come speeding at me and
end up getting stuck in my curly hair. “Okay, Bird Legs,” he used to call me for obvious reasons, “let’s try it again.” It
was a humiliating period, since my boyfriend at the time, John Schrup, and some of my closest friends excelled at tennis.
I was a dork, my forehand and backhand were equally ineffective, and Ray couldn’t help but laugh at me. I decided to overlook
it now as Ray and I joined forces to work on this RFK Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament.

“Oh, my gosh! Hey, Ray,” I called to him. “It’s me! Bird Legs!”

He broke out into a huge smile and I marveled that he hadn’t changed a bit. He still remembered my nickname, but I must have
looked completely different to him, since the last time he saw me, I was a kid. Now, with Ray coordinating the tennis talent,
Suzy and I set up shop in a small garage on the compound that had been converted into an office. Suzy would
go sailing with the Kennedys most days but I was usually too busy working, besides the fact that I wasn’t invited. But when
I think back, that was a blessing in disguise. The one time I was included in a sailing trip on the spur of the moment, I
got so seasick, I couldn’t speak. Worse than being seasick, which is hideously unpleasant, is trying to pretend you’re not.
I would have been mortified if they knew, especially Ted and Ethel, who were hard-core sailors. When we finally got back onto
terra firma, I had done enough sailing for one summer.

I was generally holed up in the small garage all by myself to do the massive job of working on the tournament and type piles
of personal letters for Ethel that never seemed to end. Admittedly, I was not the greatest typist in the world, and when I
misspelled a word (there were no spell-check features on typewriters) and gave it to Ethel, it was right back on my desk.
“I can’t sign this,” she’d say. “You misspelled a word.”

I felt the sting of her judgment and I quickly made the correction, always eager to please. I felt a little better when I
recalled a document framed on the wall back at Hickory Hill that had been written in President Kennedy’s own hand. Jackie
had scribbled on it, “Can you pick out the misspelled words?” Apparently, JFK had been dyslexic and when Ethel said, “Don’t
worry about it, Wendy. Jack couldn’t spell, either,” I felt redeemed by being compared to a president—especially that one!

As I was dyslexic, too, typing was my major challenge. I never formally studied typing, and it was a tedious affair since
standard typewriters were not self-correcting and each mistake had to be whited out and typed over. Then I heard about a brand-new
invention called the IBM Correcting Selectric typewriter. I had repetitive letters to send out and the idea of correcting
each one separately sounded unbelievably work-
intensive, especially since I was not a crack typist. I simply had to have one of those typewriters.

The part of me that would serve me as a future producer kicked in as I picked up the phone, called IBM, and said, “I’m calling
for Ethel Kennedy. I hear you have a great typewriter with a memory.”

“We do,” they said proudly. “It’s our Correcting Selectric version.”

“How about donating one to the RFK Foundation for the summer?” I asked boldly. “We’re putting together a celebrity charity
tennis tournament.”

The next thing I knew, the donated typewriter magically took its place in the garage right beside Ethel’s newly organized
Rolodex and the tennis tournament guest list.

And then there was Jackie. There are few times in this life I’ve been totally blown away about meeting someone. If I were
the type to be regularly starstruck by celebrities or politicians, there is no way I could ever do the job I’ve done over
the years, both as CNN White House producer and then producing
Larry King Live
. I was basically immune to celebrity worship and mostly I still am—with a few exceptions, mostly comedians.

The point is that each time I saw Jackie Onassis, the way she walked and dressed, I was instantly overwhelmed. There was simply
no one like her, with her grace, her beauty, and her extraordinary and legendary fashion sense. She was a trendsetter from
the moment we first found out about her, and I loved watching her leave her house and pass Ethel’s house in her bathing suit,
when she took her daily walk to the ocean. As hard as I was working on the upcoming tennis fund-raiser, I tried never to miss
seeing Mrs. Onassis elegantly stride by Ethel’s home to the beach. Always graceful, never in a hurry,
she seemed to float from place to place and I never got tired of watching her. I know that many people share this feeling
about her, because whenever I mention knowing the Kennedys, everyone wants to hear about Jackie.

One day when the electricity went out in Ethel’s house, she said, “Wendy, go to Jackie’s house and ask her if you can call
the electric company.”

Okay
, I thought,
I’m on my way to Jackie’s house.
I slowly walked over there in my pink flowered Lilly Pulitzer short shorts and knocked at her door. When she opened the door
with a smile, I said, “Hello, Mrs. Onassis. May I use your phone? The electricity is off at Mrs. Kennedy’s house and she’d
like me to call the electric company.”