Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (39 page)

“The Party’s Been Canceled— The President’s Dead”

M
other Odeide Mouton of the Stone Ridge County Day School was getting a world scoop. Ethel Kennedy was on the phone with her and she had just told the principal that the President was dead.

“The announcement hasn’t been made yet to the country,” Ethel informed the nun in a hushed but controlled voice. Then she added, “Please tell Kathleen and Courtney. I’ll come to pick them up.”

Mother Mouton choked back tears. “But you needn’t come,” she managed to tell Ethel. “Couldn’t I make some arrangement for someone else to take the children home?”

“No,” Ethel replied. “It’s my day for the car pool.” And then, remembering the grieving Eunice, she added, “And will you please tell my niece Maria [Shriver], I’ll pick her up too so that her mother won’t have to come out.” Ethel did not want the children to hear the terrible news from strangers, and began to compose herself as best she could for the task at hand.

The nuns at the school had heard on the radio that the President had been shot during the motorcade and had been rushed to Parkland Memorial, but no one knew how seriously he had been wounded. They had already taken the students to the chapel to pray for his recovery. When Ethel arrived to pick up the children, they were still in the chapel praying. Ethel herself knelt down in the back, deep in prayer. In actuality she was still in a state of near hyste- ria.

Just a short time earlier, Bobby had been dressing hur- riedly for the flight to Dallas when the phone rang and he was given the news. “Oh my God. He’s dead,” Bobby ex- claimed as Ethel burst into tears. “Oh those poor children,” she cried, referring to her young niece and nephew.

“My brother had the most wonderful life,” Bobby had said.

Now, in the chapel, Ethel prayed for her slain brother-in- law and the premature end to his wonderful, tragic, history- changing life. It didn’t seem possible he could be gone. She slowly rose and walked to the front pews where the children were praying. She walked her two daughters out to the car and told them that their uncle had been killed. As she was

hugging them, Maria was led to her aunt, and Ethel put her arms around her and told her niece the news as well.

Less than an hour after hearing of her brother-in-law’s murder, Ethel had been able to hide her suffering behind a shield of take-charge composure. As she drove away, Mother Mouton, who had been watching the scene, mar- veled at the strength and self-control of this religious woman in the face of such tragedy.

As Joan Kennedy was rushed to the lobby of the Eliza- beth Arden hair salon, Ted Kennedy’s aide, Milton Gwirtz- man, arrived to take her to her husband. In the car heading back to her home, Joan was told the news that Jack had been shot. By the time Gwirtzman pulled up to her home, Ted was waiting at the front door with tears in his eyes. He had been trying to call the White House, he said, but couldn’t get through. The lines were dead. No dial tones, no operators. Nothing. It was as frightening as it was unprecedented, and seemed to have some ominous connection to what had hap- pened to the President.

“What is going on?” Joan said, frightened. “Is there some kind of national reason the lines are down?”

“They’re not down,” Ted said, reassuring her. “The cir- cuits are busy.”

“He’s not dead, is he? Please, God . . .” Joan said, crying. “Oh my God! Oh no. Poor Jackie. Not Jack. Not Jack.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Ted said. It was decided that Milton Gwirtzman would stay with Joan while Ted and another friend of the family’s, Claude Hooten, ran around the neighborhood looking for an active phone line. The breakdown of the Chesapeake and Potomac telephone sys- tem was not due to any national crisis, but rather just a result

of overloaded circuits caused by the unprecedented de- mands upon them. Finally, going door to door, Ted found someone whose phone, mysteriously enough, did work. He immediately telephoned Bobby at Hickory Hill. “He’s dead,” Bobby said, succinctly. Bobby was too busy at that moment to provide details. “Better call Mother and our sis- ters,” he said before abruptly hanging up, leaving Ted with a dial tone. Then, mercilessly, the tone was suddenly gone and this phone, too, was dead—before Ted even had a chance to call Rose. Perhaps there was a sense of relief about that, though, for what would he have told Rose? She would have had a thousand questions, and he had no answers.

By the time Ted got back to his and Joan’s home, Joan and Milton Gwirtzman had heard the news on television that Jack was dead. As soon as Joan saw Ted, she ran to him sob- bing uncontrollably. Chalk white, her eyes wide and blank with shock, she went limp in his arms. Ted caught her just in time. “Oh my God, not Jack,” she said. “Poor Jackie. Poor Jackie.”

“Not now, Joan,” Ted said, seemingly frustrated with what he may have viewed as nothing but histrionics. He guided her back to the couch. Ted, perhaps feeling com- pletely isolated from the tragic events taking place, desper- ately sought more details of what had happened. Leaving Joan with Claude Hooten, Ted and Milton took off in Mil- ton’s Mercedes, again looking for a working telephone, first at Gwirtzman’s home and then, unsuccessful there, finally driving to the White House. Once there, he used a private White House line in Dr. Janet Travell’s office that went through the Army’s Signal Corps rather than the civilian telephone system, to call Rose at Hyannis Port. Rose had al- ready heard the news; with nothing else to do about it, she

was going for a walk on the beach to pray for her son. Soon Eunice showed up at the White House and, exasperated with Ted for not forcing more information from Bobby, called Bobby herself. The two then decided that she and Ted should take a private plane to Hyannis Port to be with Rose and the rest of the family. Ted called Joan from the White House to tell her he was headed for Connecticut.

To Joan, this was upsetting news. Of course, she wanted to accompany him. However, he wouldn’t hear of it. He ap- parently didn’t want to deal with what he viewed as Joan’s overwrought emotionalism at this time. “Let me help,” she begged him. “I know there’s something I can do.” There wasn’t, Ted assured her. “You’re too weak,” he told her. “Just go to bed,” he told her. “Take a pill, or something.” Cruelly, at least for now, Joan would be completely shut out—from his grief and the family’s.

Of course, the other Kennedy women were busy and in- volved. Ethel, seemingly in complete control, tended to Bobby’s needs and those of her children, and also tele- phoned different Kennedy aides and associates around the world, giving them details of the terrible news and assisting in making arrangements for them to get to Washington. Eu- nice Shriver had knelt in prayer in her husband’s Washing- ton office at Peace Corps headquarters and then gone to the White House, where she consoled members of Jack’s staff before heading to Hyannis Port with Ted. Pat Lawford, who was in Los Angeles, took the first flight to Washington, where she would join Jean and the rest of the family in mak- ing the dreaded funeral arrangements. Rose walked the sands in front of the Hyannis Port compound, determined not to buckle under the pressure, perhaps more certain than ever that God’s will—as difficult as it was to fathom—

would prevail. Jackie, of course, was doing her best to hold up, though she was clearly traumatized. Joan, left alone, was the only one who took to her bed.

In her solitude, perhaps Joan’s mind drifted back to a hap- pier time, just two years earlier in November 1961, a couple of days after Thanksgiving when the family had an im- promptu gathering at Joe and Rose’s. As well as the senior Kennedys and Jackie and Jack, present were the Kennedy sisters, Eunice, Pat, and Jean, and their husbands, Sargent, Peter, and Steve; Ethel and Bobby; Ted and Joan; and Paul “Red” Fay and his wife, Anita.

“We ended up playing one of those Kennedy living room games, but did it kind of like a variety show,” Joan would re- call. “I played some Chopin. Jackie read a poem, probably Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

After Jackie’s reading, Jack suggested that Paul Fay sing his campy, bombastic rendition of “Hooray for Hollywood,” always a family favorite. Joan accompanied Fay during his number, which received a wild ovation, as it always did. Then it was Ted’s turn. As Joan played, he sang his favorite, “Heart of My Heart,” just as off-pitch as ever, and to every- one’s delight. After Eunice performed a little number, every- one began insisting that the President offer up a performance. Smiling, Jack rose and walked over to Joan.

“Joansie, do you know ‘September Song’?” he asked her. Of course she did. She scooted over to allow room for Jack to sit on the bench next to her. He sat facing the family. Then, as she played, the President of the United States sang his song gently, almost ethereally, its poignant lyrics about the inevitable passage of time.

“The earlier performances had been greeted with boister- ous, friendly clapping,” Red Fay would recall, “but now, we

were all silent. Suddenly, I realized as I never had before that these days were rushing past, that we were living in a time that could never be regained.”

As Joan continued to play, Jack suddenly stopped singing and, turning serious, began reciting melancholy lyrics hav- ing to do with the dwindling down of days, “to a precious few.” The Kennedy family was held in rapt attention by Jack’s sensitive, heartfelt delivery. When he was done, there was a moment of contemplative silence before everyone broke out into rousing applause. Joan sat at the piano, dab- bing her eyes.

It was a wonderful moment, but Jack was obviously a bet- ter orator than singer. “I managed to follow his voice,” Joan would recall years later with a smile, “but Jackie knew what I was doing. She came over to me afterward and said, ‘Joan you are a terrific musician. You even made Jack sound good!’ ”

No one would have dreamed then that John Kennedy would not reach the September of his years but, rather, would be cut down in the prime of his life. Now, with his sudden death, the memory of that family night in Hyannis Port was just as painful as it was touching.*

At 3:30, Joan’s sister Candy telephoned her from the air- port. They had just arrived in Washington. Should they stay? Or turn around and go back to Texas?

*In a 1970 interview with Sylvia Wright of
Life
magazine, Rose Kennedy said, “Joan used to play the piano while we sang in the evenings in Hyannis Port. Once, after we had lost Jack, we tried to sing some of the songs that he had liked. But one of us got de- pressed and that was, well . . . we all collapsed. So we closed the piano quickly, and everybody went home. We discontinued our singing after that.”

“Oh, no, you must stay,” Joan said, her voice trembling. “There are going to be so many people calling. I’m going to be besieged by reporters. Ted is gone, and I don’t know what to do.”

An hour later, Joan’s sister and husband arrived. Soon after, there was a knock on the door. With Joan in bed rest- ing, Candy answered it.

It was the caterer, along with a truckload of food and sup- plies for Joan’s dinner party.

“The party’s been canceled,” Candy intoned. “The Presi- dent is dead.”

The next couple of days would be some of the most diffi- cult in Joan Kennedy’s life as she stayed behind in George- town while all of the other Kennedys were together at Hyannis Port and then at the White House. For the most part, Joan would be about as connected to these historic events as anyone else in the country—any other anonymous citizen—via televised news reports. She would lie in her bed watching the bulletins and the televised images of Jack’s flag-draped coffin in the East Wing of the White House.

Dejected, wondering how everyone else in her family was faring, and perhaps feeling inadequate, the weeping Joan would probably never feel less a part of the Kennedy family than she did the weekend after her friend and brother-in-law Jack’s death. As if somehow fulfilling her husband’s prophecy, she became weaker until, finally, she had become just what he said she was: helpless. Somehow, she would manage to drag herself to the private mass said by Father Cavanaugh for the family at the White House on Saturday, but by that time she wasn’t at all well.

At the service, Joan was too distraught to do anything but

stare ahead, as if in a trance, on the verge of collapse. Ted didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with her at the White House. To him she was apparently an embarrassment. While Jackie and Ethel, his sisters, and even his mother somehow managed to get through it all, Joan had crumpled. She wouldn’t be able to attend any of the White House func- tions prior to the funeral or even pay tribute to Jack by visit- ing his coffin as it lay in state, as would everyone else in the family. After the Mass, Candy took Joan back to her George- town home as quickly as possible, where she would stay as though in exile, until the funeral on Monday.

In Mourning

A
s Air Force One carried John F. Kennedy’s casket back to Washington from Dallas, his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, was sworn in on board as President of the United States. LBJ was under considerable pressure at this time, wondering whether or not an organized plot had been behind the death of the President, or even if such a conspiracy would also be suddenly carried out against the Vice Presi- dent. Johnson was well aware that the CIA had been in- volved in plots to kill Castro in Cuba and Diem in Vietnam. Suspecting that Kennedy’s death was the result of some form of retaliation, perhaps a Communist force coming against America, he was concerned about the United States appearing weak in the face of such an emergency. The new President was anxious to see the country move forward—or