Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (53 page)

Jackie feared that once Johnson read this story, whether in this magazine—as if the President actually read
Modern Screen
!—or elsewhere, his feelings about her might change. The fact that she would be worried about such a thing not only demonstrated her concern for the feelings of people she cared about, but perhaps it also spoke volumes about her own insecurity.

To set things straight, she wrote Johnson a letter (address- ing the envelope simply to “The President; The White House, Washington, DC”) and sent it off on January 6, 1967, from Antigua in the West Indies, where she was vacationing after New Year’s.

She started by saying that she feared he would think she was “childish” by sending the letter, and she understood that he had more important matters on his mind other than what she was about to express to him. She then explained that she had been misquoted in the magazine article as hav- ing said that she objected to his use of the term “honey” when speaking to her. It may have said something about the state of Jackie’s emotions when she then wrote, “The rage I have been trying to suppress and forget down here boiled up again.” She conceded that the misquote was probably inconsequential, but was typical of the way Man- chester had, in her view, “twisted” whatever she may have told him.

Jackie assured Johnson that any term of endearment he had ever used with her over the years was genuinely re- ceived, and she noted that she thought of “honey” as being a term that she appreciated hearing from him. She further wrote that she wished there were more people in her life who would use that term when referring to her and that she hoped Johnson would continue to use it. She also hoped that

he would “not become embittered by all this [the article], and by all life, really.”

Jackie apparently had second thoughts about drawing at- tention to what was probably a trivial matter because, in her letter, she then asked LBJ to forgive her for even hav- ing written it, and said that she would probably later regret not having torn it up rather than sending it off to him. However, in what she termed as “some blind way,” she said that she just wanted to reaffirm her great affection for him. “No matter what happens, no matter how your feel- ings might change towards me. Once I decide I care about someone,” she concluded, “nothing can ever make me change.” (Perhaps Jackie’s comment to LBJ about her loy- alty to her friends was ironic, considering the way she would ostracize those she felt had talked about her to the press.)

When these same kinds of fan magazines began publish- ing stories about Bobby and Jackie, Jackie didn’t mention anything about them to Ethel, at least not to anyone’s recol- lection. Perhaps she never imagined that Ethel would be- lieve such stories to be true. However, Ethel did seem upset about the rumors. Her secretary arrived for work at Hickory Hill one day to find a stack of fan magazines on her desk, each with a Bobby-Jackie headline. “Just look at those,” Ethel said, clearly exasperated by the press coverage. “Look at what they’re writing about Bobby and Jackie. Do you think any of it is true?”

The secretary didn’t respond.

“This is so unlike Jackie,” Ethel continued. “I don’t know what to think.” She then gathered the magazines and hurled them into the trash can. “Why do I read this garbage, any- way?” she asked, rhetorically.

Joan Braden and a number of other family friends said that Ethel, perhaps in some desperation, asked her brother George to talk to Bobby about the stories, which was odd in that the two men disliked each other. Predictably, George re- fused to become involved. When Ethel then asked Ted for his opinion of the matter, he told her to “forget about it. It’s ridiculous.” Finally, Ethel decided to just confront Jackie about the rumors, but both Joan Braden and Lem Billings, in separate conversations with her, managed to persuade her not to do so. Years later, Braden recalled convincing Ethel that Jackie would be hurt by the insinuation, and that the re- sult of such an inquiry would only permanently damage their relationship.

Two weeks later, Ethel saw Jackie at a party. Afterward, she told her friends of “an epiphany” that had occurred at the gathering. Joan Braden recalled, “She told me that she looked Jackie straight in the eye until it suddenly hit her: It couldn’t be true. ‘It just
couldn’t
be,’ she said, reaching out for me. We embraced, and she held on as tightly as she could.” As she hugged her, Joan sensed that Ethel was sob- bing. “It’s very stressful, very upsetting for a woman to go through this kind of thing, what with all of the terrible inde- cision and worry,” Braden said. “However, when Ethel pulled away, she turned quickly. She wouldn’t let even me see her tears.”

RFK for President

B
y early spring 1968, Bobby Kennedy still had not made up his mind about running for the Presidency. The family was split in its opinions. With the exception of Jackie, the women all seemed to agree that he should run. Ethel wanted nothing more than for him to one day be President. It had been her dream for years.

Rose, along with Eunice, Jean, and Pat, and their hus- bands, all had that “ol’ Kennedy spirit” as well, and felt that Bobby had much to offer the Democratic Party. Ted, how- ever, disagreed, fearing that Bobby’s life would be in jeop- ardy should he ever become President. He now seemed to actually believe in the Kennedy curse Joan had spoken to Jackie about at the hospital after Ted’s plane accident. Jackie agreed with Ted, saying that the thought of Bobby as Presi- dent was chilling to her. She said that she couldn’t bear the idea, and when anyone wanted to discuss it with her, she would become grim.

Because the race had already begun (it was too late even to enter most of the primaries), Bobby feared that his late entry might split the party and perhaps even strengthen Re- publican support. He was also afraid that his running would appear to be a vendetta against Johnson. LBJ’s pop- ularity was all but completely ruined, anyway, by the Viet- nam War, as well as the protests and violence across the country.

In the end, it would be Ethel who would convince Bobby to run. “She believed he should do it, and she pushed for it,”

said Ted Sorenson. “She wanted it for him, and perhaps for herself.”

Sorenson, who opposed Bobby’s candidacy, recalled one meeting with the family at Hickory Hill in which he voiced his opinion. Ethel railed against him. “But why, Ted?” she demanded to know. “And after all of those high-flown praises you wrote for President Kennedy?” As the meeting went on, Ethel and some of her children disappeared and went to an upstairs bedroom. From a window, they rolled down a banner that read “Kennedy for President.” Then, Ethel put “The Impossible Dream” on the record player. It would later become the campaign theme.

“She was a major factor, without question,” said Freder- ick P. Dutton, Bobby’s political campaign adviser, of Ethel’s influence on Bobby’s decision.

“She wanted to be First Lady, that’s true,” concurred Bar- bara Gibson. “But she also believed that Bobby had so much to give, that he could make changes, do good things for the country. She was his main cheerleader, most definitely.”

Bobby made his announcement on Saturday, March 16, 1968. (At about this same time, Ethel learned she was preg- nant with her eleventh child. The pregnancy would be kept a secret for the time being.) The road to the 1968 Democratic nomination had been a long one for this young Kennedy, a man who had undergone authentic interior changes and growth. The once-puny-but-pugnacious member of the tight-knit Kennedy clan was a sibling who now spoke from the same podium where his brother, Jack, had announced his campaign just eight years earlier. If he were to win in No- vember, Bobby would be the youngest man ever elected to that office; 175 days younger than Jack when he was sworn in.

Bobby’s historic announcement would once have been greeted with wild enthusiasm by the anti-war movement. But now, to many, his candidacy seemed opportunistic. Some felt he’d had his chance; when his supporters had wanted him to run in 1964, he hadn’t. In the end, there would be no time to build the kind of mammoth political machine that had characterized past Kennedy campaigns. Ted Sorenson recalled that allies had to be lined up at a mo- ment’s notice without much effort to determine who was best for the job, “who could deliver and who was full of hot air.”

Meanwhile, Kennedy took a strong position against Lyn- don Johnson and the bombings in Vietnam. “Some of his speeches got very close to demagoguery,” recalled Richard Harwood of the
Washington Post,
who traveled with the Kennedy campaign. “And I said so in a couple of pieces in the
Post.
When I went back to the airplane to take off on the next leg of the trip, some young woman tried to stop me from boarding the plane, saying I wasn’t welcome there. But I got aboard. And a little while later, Ethel Kennedy came down the aisle, with my story wadded up, and she threw it in my face.”

On the evening of March 31, things changed when John- son finally bowed out of the race. A Gallup poll showing that only 26 percent of those questioned approved of his handling of the war seemed to seal his fate, at least in his own mind. The Democratic race would now be between Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

Ethel accompanied Bobby on his campaign tour, leaving her children at Hickory Hill, where they were being cared for by the couple’s servants. Two of the oldest were at

boarding schools: Kathleen, seventeen, was finishing her final year at Putney School in Vermont, and Joe, now almost sixteen, attended his father’s alma mater, Milton Academy. The rest—one-year-old Douglas, three-year-old Matthew Maxwell, five-year-old Chris, eight-year-old Kerry, ten- year-old Michael, twelve-year-old Courtney, thirteen-year- old David, and fourteen-year-old Bobby Jr.—would watch their father on the nightly news and cheer mightily at his image on the screen. The children missed their mother, how- ever, and made life difficult for the servants, acting in an undisciplined manner and, as one who also worked for Jackie from time to time put it, “raising so much hell, we were afraid there’d be nothing left to Hickory Hill by the time Mrs. Kennedy returned.”

While on the campaign trail, Ethel would visit hospitals, industrial plants, and children’s institutions, make speeches, sign autographs, shake hands, and do whatever necessary to support her husband. She was usually gregarious in front of a crowd, displaying a great sense of humor. “This is my first day speaking,” she said at Marion, Ohio, “so I confess I’m a little hesitant. In 1960, Bobby sent me to Kentucky, Utah, California, Oregon, Virginia—and we didn’t win one of those states.”

She wanted to do her best, but this campaign meant a lot. Nervous, she made some embarrassing gaffes. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, she relied on a taxi driver to give her infor- mation that the city was named after “Mad Anthony” Wayne, the American patriot who had fought the British in the War of 1812. Later that day, in giving a speech to stu- dents, Ethel mentioned the bit of trivia to them. Later, their teacher informed Mrs. Kennedy that not only was Wayne re- ally a famous Indian fighter, but that by 1812 he had been

dead for sixteen years. “Oh no!” Ethel exclaimed. “That cab driver had it all wrong!”

Later, when she landed in Los Angeles, she announced to a crowd how happy she was to be in Anaheim. “For Christ’s sake, Ethel,” Bobby said, scolding her. “If you’re going to get the name of the town wrong, at least say it in a whisper.” While she gave a few on-air television interviews, she ap- peared wooden and clearly afraid of saying the wrong thing and hurting Bobby’s chances. For Ethel, the pressure was on

like never before.

The atmosphere of Bobby’s campaign was electric. With the fury and hopelessness that set in among the black com- munity following the murder of Martin Luther King, mi- norities became even more passionately devoted to Bobby. In turn, Bobby was more devoted to civil rights than ever. His energy seemed ceaseless, as if he thrived off the frenzied admiration from the zealous crowds. The country seemed at the dawning of a new era and it was Bobby, the oldest sur- viving Kennedy brother, who became the personification of the nation’s deliverance.