The House of Kennedy(79)
But a 2010 opinion piece in Brookings notes, “One-quarter of the Kennedy cousins have been treated for drug or alcohol abuse, which is well above the national average. For all the glamour associated with the family, it seems that it is not easy, psychologically or emotionally, being a Kennedy.”
As Ethel Kennedy herself says, “Being a Kennedy isn’t for the faint of heart.”
PART EIGHT
The Prince
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr.
Chapter 53
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. has been famous since before he was born—on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1960, just weeks after his father is elected the thirty-fifth United States president.
The president-elect is riding in the Kennedys’ private plane (the Caroline, named for John Jr.’s older sister, who will turn three two days later), when he is briefed that “Jackie has been rushed to the hospital” and is undergoing an emergency cesarean section. “I’m never there when she needs me,” Jack is overheard to worry. Jackie’s pregnancies have been difficult before—although Caroline was born healthy, Jackie previously suffered a miscarriage along with the devastating stillbirth of their first child, Arabella (and will later endure the heartbreaking loss of yet another child, Patrick, in 1963). Though this baby is not due for another month, given her history of complications, a cesarean had already been planned for December 12. As soon as they land at Palm Beach International Airport, Jack immediately charters an American Airlines D-6 for a return flight to Washington. Shortly after 1:00 a.m., while still en route, the announcement of the baby boy’s birth is made over loudspeaker to applause from those on board. Captain Dick Cramer passes his headset to JFK so he can hear for himself that mother and child are “doing well.”
“It was really something, wasn’t it?” Jack says of his son’s unexpected arrival. Reporters standing outside the Kennedys’ home at 4:35 a.m. that morning note, “He was particularly pleased when asked the name of his son. ‘Why, it’s John F. Kennedy Jr.,’ he said, almost reverentially: ‘I think she decided—it has been decided—yes—John F. Kennedy Jr.’” Though it delights him, in years to come, Jackie tells several people that she regrets giving their son Jack’s name. “We would never have named him John after his father if we had known what was going to happen,” she says. According to biographer Steven M. Gillon, “The irony is that in the effort to honor her husband, she inadvertently made her son’s life more challenging.”
At thirteen days old, John Jr. is baptized at Georgetown University Hospital’s chapel. Jackie chooses her sister Lee’s husband, Prince Stanislas Radziwill, as godfather and Martha Bartlett—who first introduced Jackie to Jack—as his godmother. While posing for press photos, Jackie holds her son, saying, “Isn’t he sweet, Jack? Look at those pretty eyes.” John’s “pretty eyes” are brown like Jackie’s, not blue like Jack’s.
The first baby to live in the White House since 1893, John Jr. makes headlines with every move. “Gift for Kennedy Baby,” the New York Times reports on the stuffed donkey, rabbits, and dogs that Madame Charles de Gaulle presents the new parents at the French Foreign Ministry on May 31, 1961.
In advance of his first birthday, White House press secretary Pierre Salinger reports, “John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. still has a cold and will not be brought [to Hyannis Port] for a joint birthday observance with his sister Caroline,” who turns four on November 27.
Citizens even vote on John Jr.’s “Little Lord Fauntleroy” hairstyle, which Jackie allows to curl over his collar. Dollar bills arrive at the White House along with instructions for Jackie to cut John Jr.’s hair (she refuses, though Jack reportedly asks Maud Shaw, the children’s nanny, to at least trim his son’s bangs, and to blame it on the president if Jackie objects).
Jackie revels in her role as mother, setting up play groups and a small kindergarten for Caroline at the White House, along with a tree house and a swing set for both children on the South Lawn. Caroline is even allowed to ride her pet pony, Macaroni, on the White House grounds; the sight of the happy little girl on her horse delights tourists and visitors (including singer/songwriter Neil Diamond, who credits the image as providing the inspiration for his beloved hit song “Sweet Caroline”).
Jack is also an involved father, one who, Jackie says, “loved those children tumbling around him,” and is often seen teasing and playing with John Jr. and Caroline. “It was John’s treat to walk to the [Oval] Office with him every day,” Jackie recalls. He’d often let them romp around the Oval Office, resulting in a famous series of photographs of John Jr. playing under the president’s desk. He also enjoyed telling them stories. “He didn’t like to read books to them much. He’d rather tell them stories. He’d make up these fantastic ones…you know, little things that had to do with their world,” Jackie recalls.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. also remembers JFK telling the children stories that featured themselves on grand adventures—Caroline winning the Grand National or John Jr. sinking destroyers—and had one ongoing story about a white shark that ate socks. “One day, when the President and Caroline were sailing with Franklin Roosevelt Jr.,” Schlesinger says, Jack “pretended to see the white shark and said, ‘Franklin, give him your socks; he’s hungry.’ Franklin promptly threw his socks in the water.” Not only does this greatly entertain Caroline, but as biographers Collier and Horowitz point out, it’s “an oblique pun on that day twenty-five years earlier when his father [FDR] had asked Joseph Kennedy to drop his pants.” Crucially, Lem Billings notes, everyone learns that when Jack starts in on those tales, “it was time to move to another part of the yacht” or risk having to feed the sharks, too.