Just Jackie (16 page)

Working together on Lafayette Square, Jack Warnecke and Jackie discovered they had a lot in common. She admired his knowledge of design, especially that of the Beaux Arts school, which emphasized historic forms and details. He admired her pluck and determination.

“No one in Washington gave a damn what happened to Lafayette Square,” he said. “Jackie was the only one.”

In her 1961 book
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
, Jane Jacobs had criticized the destructive American habit of razing large areas of cities and replacing them with sterile, modern buildings. Jacobs was not a preservationist herself, but she did sound a clarion call about the large-scale development that was ruining America’s cities.

Before Jackie entered the White House with Jack, public officials thought nothing of destroying beautiful buildings of historic value in the name of progress. By taking a stand on Lafayette Square, Jackie forced people to think in a new way. She was the first person at a high level to give support to the preservation movement that flowered in the early sixties. She legitimized a movement
that changed the face of urban America, and she continued to champion it for the rest of her life.

As a result of his work on Lafayette Square, Warnecke became the unofficial Kennedy family architect. He designed Teddy Kennedy’s house in Hyannis Port, and Bobby’s pool house. He worked on Hickory Hill, Bobby’s home in Virginia, and he was designing a new windmill to replace one that had burned down at the Auchinclosses’ Hammersmith Farm.

“I got all involved with Jack and the Kennedy Administration,” Warnecke said. “I was invited to Jackie’s private parties upstairs in the White House. I was a bachelor in the middle of the Kennedy White House, and I took part in some of Jack’s womanizing, too. A month before the assassination, I helped Jack pick out a site at Harvard University for the library and museum that would someday house his personal and official papers.”

The friendship between Jackie and Warnecke went completely unnoticed for a long time. At first they were so deeply engrossed in the design of the grave site that they themselves were unaware of what was happening to them. The only person who seemed to notice that they were developing feelings for each other was Bobby Kennedy.

“Jackie and I talked a lot about Bobby,” Warnecke said. “She’d show me family pictures and say, ‘Look, that’s Bobby. When he was growing up, they called him the little runt.’ She started telling me all kinds of strange things about Bobby. At the same time, she was telling Bobby about me. Bobby and I became close because of Jackie.”

As time went on, however, Jackie and Warnecke realized that their relationship was maturing into something more profound. This both surprised and alarmed them. They began to take precautions so as not to arouse Bobby’s suspicions. They used private code words, and arranged
to meet alone when no one else was around. The need for discretion added a new dimension to their budding romance—the delicious aura of secrecy.

T
he leaves were a brilliant red and gold along Ocean Drive, the boulevard of Gilded Age dreams in Newport, Rhode Island. John Warnecke turned his car up a long gravel driveway, past a herd of prize Black Angus cattle grazing on a vast lawn, and to the porte cochere of Hammersmith Farm, the Auchinclosses’ shingle-style Victorian manor.

A maid greeted him at the door and escorted him into the foyer, where she left him to examine a wall hanging with the Auchincloss coat of arms, which included the motto
Spectemur Agenda
(Judge Us by Our Action). It struck Warnecke as ironic that Jack Kennedy, the President who had unlatched the door of opportunity for so many millions of Americans, had married the stepdaughter of Hughdie Auchincloss, a man who epitomized the tradition of WASP exclusion.

In a few minutes, Janet Auchincloss came down the broad, red-carpeted stairway. She gave Warnecke a long, friendly hug.

“Dear Jack,” she said, holding him at arm’s length by his broad shoulders and looking him square in the eyes, “it is
sooo
good to see you.”

“I could never understand those people who put down Janet,” Warnecke said. “They described her treating
Jackie like a person whipping a horse. I never saw any of that. Janet had real sparkle, and great spirit. She liked me, and I adored her, and thought she was attractive. Quite frankly, I always felt that she favored the relationship between me and Jackie.”

Janet had been thinking a lot about Jackie’s future. Her daughter’s year of mourning was almost up, and it was time for her to get on with her life. Jackie needed a husband. And as far as Janet could see, Jack Warnecke was made to order.

He was forty-five years old and at the zenith of his personal and professional powers. He was tall and handsome, though not too handsome, the way Jack Kennedy had been. Warnecke was not as rich as the Kennedys, either, but he could afford to keep homes on two coasts. He led the life of a rich man, and he appeared to be in a financial position to care for Jackie and her children.

What was more, he was well-spoken, had good manners, and made the right impression in society. He was not mixed up in politics, which Janet always considered a dirty business. He was a creative person, and he shared Jackie’s passion for design, architecture, painting, and nature. They both had an eye for color, shape, and form. They had that most important ingredient for a good marriage—common interests.

If Warnecke harbored any doubts about Janet’s feelings toward him, they were dispelled on this visit to Hammersmith Farm. Motioning with the curved index finger of her right hand, Janet led him up the grand staircase to a large bedroom with a view of Narragansett Bay.

“This is where the President used to stay when he came to visit us,” she told him. “I want you to sleep here tonight in his bed.”

The symbolic meaning of Janet’s gesture was not lost on Warnecke. Over the past several months, he had made
a great effort to replace Jack Kennedy as the man in Jackie’s life. This goal was not as far-fetched as it might have seemed. Wamecke was often described in magazine profiles as a contextual architect, which meant that he designed buildings that fit into their environment, but he could just as accurately have been called a contextual
person
. He had the capacity to put himself into the place of others, to feel their emotions. His talent for empathy was just what Jackie needed at this time.

“In order to work full-time on the grave site memorial, I had moved my office from San Francisco to Washington, and set up my operation in Georgetown, within a block of Jackie’s house on N Street,” he said. “I moved three of my four kids east for the summer. We were all together that summer of nineteen sixty-four—my family and Jackie’s family. We went to Williamsburg together, and visited Civil War battlefield sites.

“Meanwhile, all kinds of people—Jack’s friends, and family, and political associates—were visiting my office to look at the design of the grave. Jackie came frequently. Her sense of grieving was always there. The passion we were beginning to feel for each other was all mixed up with the sorrow. We were going through a terrible experience together. I remember, Bobby would come to my office, and just stand there with his mouth open, not able to talk.

“By the end of the summer, I was ready to choose the stone that I would use for the engraved words of Jack’s Inaugural Address. I needed a great stone carver, because I did not want any joints in the stone. I found one living in Newport, and hired him. That’s why I had come back to Newport just a few weeks before the assassination anniversary, to get final approval of the stone from Jackie.”

The next day, Jackie drove down to Newport from Hyannis Port with two Secret Service agents. After lunch, Warnecke took her to inspect the stonecutter’s work. She
loved it. The approval of the stone meant a great deal to both of them.

“It was really the turning point in our relationship,” Warnecke told the author of this book. “Now I could schedule a press conference, and formally announce that the design had been approved before the first anniversary of the assassination. It put a closure to Jackie’s year of mourning.”

When they got back to Hammersmith Farm, Jackie announced that she planned to return to Hyannis Port the next day.

“Why don’t you dump the Secret Service and let me drive you back?” Warnecke said.

“That would be great, Jack,” Jackie said.

“I had learned early on how to handle the Secret Service,” Warnecke said. “Those guys liked and trusted me, because I was a football player, a jock, and one of them.”

The next day, Jackie and Warnecke got into her black Mercury convertible, put down the top, and headed off for the Cape. The Secret Service followed at a discreet distance.

It was a fine autumn day, as crisp as a Granny Smith apple, and Jackie and Warnecke felt exhilarated as they sailed along with the wind in their hair. When they arrived at Jackie’s house in Hyannis Port an hour and a half later, they found that Jackie’s Italian housekeeper Marta Sgubin had arranged for Caroline and John to spend the night at another house in the Kennedy compound.

“We were all alone,” Warnecke said.

Jackie showed Warnecke her collection of landscape paintings by Andre Dunoyer de Segonzac. Warnecke admired the seascapes that she had done herself. They had dinner, then Jackie gave him a tour of the rooms upstairs.

Warnecke’s head almost hit the sharply slanted ceiling in Jackie’s bedroom. He stood with Jackie for a few moments at the window, looking out at the choppy waters of Nantucket Sound. Then, wordlessly, he led her over to
the bed that she had once shared with Jack Kennedy, and they began to make love.

“After a year of pent-up feelings,” said Warnecke, “it was like an explosion. I remember saying to myself,
What am I doing here? What’s happening?

“A lot has been written about Jackie’s being cold,” he went on. “That image is all wrong. There was nothing inhibited or cold about her. All those aspects that made Jackie so delightful—her sense of fun and joy—were also part of her lovemaking.”

Afterward, Warnecke told Jackie that he loved her.

“I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you at the British Embassy,” he said.

“I love you, too, Jack,” she said.

“She was so excited by what had happened between us that she wanted to tell Bobby at once,” Warnecke said. “But I told her that I thought she should wait. I was sure Bobby would think that such a commitment was premature.”

A
few weeks later, Jackie suggested to Warnecke that they spend a night in a cottage on Bunny Mel-Ion’s property on the Cape, about twenty minutes away from Hyannis Port. Warnecke hesitated to accept Bunny’s invitation.

“I was getting a bit fed up with Bunny,” he said. “She had become a problem on the design of the memorial. Jackie had found it too painful to deal with the grave design
herself, and she had delegated a lot of authority to Bunny.

“Bunny thought she was in charge,” he continued. “Once I entered the picture, and became romantically involved with Jackie, Bunny felt that Jackie had been taken away from her. She had lost her control over Jackie. Bunny was very possessive.

“In any case, Jackie talked me into going to Bunny’s place. And when we got to this little cottage deep in the woods, we found that Bunny had decorated it for Halloween with pumpkins and candles and flowers. It was fixed up as only Bunny Mellon could do it. It was perfect, completely romantic. And it was a total surprise to both of us.”