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John and Caroline
Their Lives in Pictures
By James Spada St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2001 James Spada
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-13883-5
CHAPTER 1
PART ONE
1957–1963
"She's as robust as a sumo wrestler."
— JOHN F. KENNEDY on his infant daughter, Caroline, 1957
* * *
"John is a bad squeaky boy who tries to spit in his mother's CocaCola and has a very bad temper."
— Three-year-old CAROLINE describing her infant brother, 1961
* * *
"Isn't he a charge?"
— JFK on his toddler son, 1963
They were born into singularly charmed lives. Caroline, the first young child of a President in nearly a century; John, the Chief Executive's infant namesake, born just weeks after his father's election.
Charmed, too, were most of the people of America and the world, who watched these children develop adorable personalities and use the White House as a playhouse. They hid underneath the President's desk, danced as their father gleefully clapped his hands. Caroline rode her ponies into the mansion; John sat behind the controls of the President's helicopters and gave orders as Flight Captain John.
Their mother tried to protect them from the intrusions of paparazzi and curiosity seekers, with spotty success. Once, besieged by photographers with flashbulbs popping, Caroline slumped down in her car seat, out of view, and pleaded, "Please tell me when no one's watching."
The idyll came to an abrupt, shocking end when an assassin's bullet shattered the vital young President's skull. Six-year-old Caroline kissed her father's flag-draped coffin, aware of how much she had lost. John, three, saluted his passing caisson but was too young to comprehend just how much his life had been altered.
Now the children, and their mother, had become not just celebrities but icons, symbols as much as people. The President's widow wondered whether, under such circumstances, she could bring them up to be the good, responsible, and emotionally stable people she wanted them to be.
Her aunt Caroline Lee Canfield holds sixteen-day-old Caroline Bouvier Kennedy during her christening at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, December 13, 1957. Boston's Archbishop Richard Cushing officiates as the child's father, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, and her godfather, Robert F. Kennedy, look on. The baby wears the same christening gown her mother, Jacqueline, wore twenty-eight years earlier.
Caroline poses for a christening-day portrait. The baby's birth on November 27, the day before Thanksgiving, was a truly blessed event for the Kennedys after a miscarriage and a stillbirth. The child weighed seven pounds, two ounces, and was, according to her father, "as robust as a sumo wrestler." Her mother said the day of Caroline's birth was "the very happiest of my life." Jackie's mother recalled being impressed by the "sheer, unadulterated delight" Jack Kennedy took in his newborn daughter. "The look on his face, which I had never seen before ... was radiant."
Caroline Kennedy's first magazine cover, April 21, 1958. Jackie had initially refused Life's request to do a photo feature on her baby, telling Jack that "I'm not going to let our child be used like some campaign mascot" for his Senate reelection bid that November. But she relented when he promised to take a break from campaigning to spend time with his family that summer. The accompanying article ran a photo of Caroline, eyes as big as saucers, peering over her bassinet at her father. "I'm not home much," the caption quoted Kennedy, "but when I am she seems to like me."
During the same vacation, her father prepares to read to twenty-one-month-old Caroline. The child showed above-average intelligence, and an interest in reading, at an early age.
The Senator had made a stab at bottle-feeding the baby when she was an infant, but her nurse, Maud Shaw, recalled, "I fear the whole process was too slow for him, and after about ten minutes he handed her back to me with a smile. 'I guess this is your department after all,' he said. 'I had better leave it to you.'"
During a vacation at the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in August 1959, Jackie carries Caroline to shore after a sailing excursion on Nantucket Sound. The Kennedys loved these carefree days with their daughter, but knew that they would soon be rare, since Jack, reelected to the Senate in a landslide, planned to announce his candidacy for President in January. Jackie fretted about the campaign's possible effect on Caroline. "I get this terrible feeling," she said, "that when we leave, she might think that it's because we don't want to be with her."
Holding Caroline's oversize Raggedy Ann doll, "Mother Annie," Jackie kisses her husband farewell as he leaves Hyannis Airport for a campaign trip in October 1960. Caroline waits her turn to say good-bye to Daddy. Kennedy had won the Democratic nomination for President in July after a bruising series of primaries. Jackie reported that Caroline's first words were "good-bye," "New Hampshire," "Wisconsin," and "West Virginia."
"I am sorry so few states have primaries," Jackie quipped, "or we would have a daughter with the greatest vocabulary of any two-year-old in the country."
The Kennedys beam at a press conference in Hyannis Port the day after Jack won election as the thirty-fifth President of the United States. Mrs. Rose Kennedy, the President-elect's mother, sits at left. According to Maud Shaw, it was Caroline who had informed her father that he had won the election — which was still undecided when Kennedy went to bed at four in the morning — by entering his bedroom and declaring, as Miss Shaw had instructed her to, "Good morning, Mr. President."
At the conclusion of this press conference, Jack gestured at his eight-and-a-half-months pregnant wife and said that they would now begin to prepare "for a new administration — and a new baby."
Friday, November 25, 1960: Caroline and her father stroll the streets near their home in Georgetown hours after Jackie gave birth to a six-pound, three-ounce son — and Presidential namesake — John F. Kennedy Jr.
Two days later, Caroline's third birthday, she and her father leave home for church services. Caroline is dressed in a pink coat and bonnet, blue dress, and knit leggings, and clutches her doll, "Raggedy Annie," and a church book. Jackie would remain in the hospital for another two weeks after a difficult cesarean delivery.
The proud parents show off John Jr. after his baptism in the chapel of Georgetown University Hospital on December 8. Two weeks premature, the child spent his first six days in an incubator, and his mother was unable to hold him until doctors deemed him able to breathe on his own.
"Look at those eyes," Jackie marveled when John Jr. first opened his. "Isn't he sweet?" The President-elect agreed. "Now, that's the most beautiful boy I've ever seen," he said when he first saw his son. Then he joked, "Maybe I'll name him Abraham Lincoln."
John's temporary nurse, Elsie Phillips, carries him as he and his father arrive in Palm Beach on December 9. The extended Kennedy family traditionally spent the Christmas holidays at the family patriarch, Joseph Kennedy's, Florida beach house. During this visit Jackie recuperated from the delivery, Jack put together his cabinet, and Caroline got to know her baby brother. Maud Shaw told Caroline that the baby was a "birthday present" for her, and "she always thought for a long time after that that he sort of belonged to her."
Caroline interrupts her father's December 29 press conference in Palm Beach to ask for assistance with her mother's high heels. A stenographer and Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas (right) enjoy the diversion.
America quickly became enchanted with this adorable little girl her father called "Buttons" — much to the frustration of the new President's political foes. "How the hell do we compete with Caroline?" one of them grumbled. His daughter's appeal wasn't lost on Kennedy, who told Maud Shaw, "Caroline is a great hit with everyone. I think she could be the greatest vote-getter of all!"
The First Lady holds John Jr. as Caroline excitedly awaits their departure from Washington National Airport for the White House on February 4, 1961. While their parents had settled into their new home after the President's inauguration on January 20, the children remained in Palm Beach. During that time, baby John's health took a turn for the worse when he developed a lung inflammation (the same illness that would later claim the life of his newborn brother, Patrick Kennedy). Luckily, Jackie said, a "brilliant" Palm Beach pediatrician "really saved his life, as he was going downhill."
Caroline made a dash for this snowman next to the White House driveway as soon as the limousine doors were opened. After settling into her bedroom, Caroline complained to her grandmother Rose about baby John's behavior during the trip from Palm Beach. "John is a bad squeaky boy who tries to spit in his mother's Coca-Cola and has a very bad temper."
Caroline was thrilled when she saw the White House. "There's so much room to play — and a great big garden, too!" she exclaimed.
On March 5, Caroline carries a toy pistol as she leaves the Georgetown home of her aunt and uncle Jean and Stephen Smith to rejoin her father on his way back from Sunday services. Now almost three and a half, Caroline had begun to show a tomboy side.
Six months later, as the Kennedys vacationed again in Hyannis Port, Caroline and several of her cousins rode the "Toonerville Trolley," the children's preferred mode of transportation around the sprawling grounds of the Kennedy compound and beyond. This trip was to a candy store.
September 9, 1961: The John F. Kennedys pose on the staircase of Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island, where Jackie spent the latter half of her teenage years after her mother married multimillionaire Hugh D. Auchincloss. It was at the top of these steps that Jackie stood to throw her bridal bouquet after her wedding eight years earlier.
The official White House portrait of John F. Kennedy Jr., released on November 16 in anticipation of his first birthday nine days later. The boy had already evinced a rambunctious personality and curiosity. Watching his son get into everything within reach, the President looked at an aide and said, "Isn't he a charge?"
Caroline displayed a little rambunctiousness herself on November 27, her fourth birthday. Descending the ramp of Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, after their arrival from Hyannis Port, Caroline balked at her mother's tugs after something on the tarmac caught her eye.
The enormous, festive White House Christmas tree dazzles Caroline after its lighting on December 9. Peering out from behind the tree are Jean Kennedy Smith and her son Stephen Smith Jr. Around this time Caroline expressed a desire to telephone Santa Claus with her holiday wish list. The President arranged for the White House switchboard to put through a call to the North Pole. "Miss Shaw! Miss Shaw!" Caroline bubbled to her nurse. "I just talked to Mrs. Santa Claus! I left a whole list of presents for me and John!"
Easter Sunday, April 22, 1962: The First Lady carries barefooted John from the Kennedy home in Palm Beach after a private family Mass. John had been a little late in learning to talk, and the President once expressed concern. "Oh, but he does talk," Maud Shaw replied. "It's just that you don't understand him."
"That's right, Daddy," Caroline piped up. "He does talk to me."
"Well, I guess you'd better interpret for me," the President said with a laugh.
John gives White House photographer Cecil Stoughton a big smile from his carriage on May 17. After limiting the official photographers' access to her children their first year in the White House, Jackie allowed Stoughton and his colleagues Abbie Rowe and John Knudsen fairly free rein after that. John Jr. had begun to enjoy being photographed, and loved to mug for the cameras. Whenever he saw Stoughton, an army captain, John would call out to him, "Take my picture, Taptain Toughton!" Stoughton did, hundreds of times. "I never made a bad picture of the children," he said. "You couldn't. All you had to do was aim the camera and shoot."
The President keeps an eye on Caroline as she guides her pony along the West Wing portico on June 23. Like her mother and maternal grandmother before her, Caroline was groomed as an equestrian at an early age. "Caroline was a natural horseback rider because she moved so well and so gracefully, with a wonderful sense of balance," Maud Shaw recalled.
Caroline and John kept a virtual menagerie in the White House, which included — in addition to horses — dogs, canaries, parakeets, hamsters, and two deer.
In August 1962, the Presidential family poses for Cecil Stoughton in the White House nursery. While John plays with his toys, Caroline models a ceremonial dress given to her mother as a gift for the little girl during Jackie's trip to India earlier in the year. The President had dropped by the photo shoot at the last moment.
Caroline lets photographers know how she feels about their constant presence during a five-week vacation with her mother in Ravello, Italy, on August 19. The two were guests of Jackie's sister Lee and her second husband, Prince Stanislas Radziwill. Mother and daughter water-skied, sailed aboard a yacht, shopped, toured ancient cathedrals, and were serenaded by an Italian military band.
Meanwhile, back in the States, President Kennedy frolicked with his son at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, urging him to take the plunge into the family swimming pool. "John was never scared of the water," Maud Shaw recalled. Often, after John had been for a swim at the beach, Shaw would dry and dress him, turn to do the same with Caroline, and soon find that the boy had run back into the water, fully clothed. "Then I'd just have to take him back to the house dripping wet, his little feet squelching in their shoes."
The children "dance" for their father in the Oval Office on October 10. The President inscribed a similar picture to Captain Stoughton, "who captured beautifully a happy moment at the White House." Years later Caroline said, "I remember many of the same things people remember about me [as a child]: hiding with my brother under my father's desk, riding my pony, watching the helicopters take off and land. I also remember other things that people don't know about, like the bedtime stories [my father] made up especially for me."
Halloween 1962: President Kennedy (disguised as President Kennedy) joins Jackie, her sister Lee, Lee's son Tony Radziwill (in skeleton costume), and Caroline on the West Wing portico. Jackie took the children trick-or-treating in Georgetown, but their hoped-for anonymity was shattered by the presence of the stern Secret Service agents who accompanied them.
Jackie stands by ready to help as Caroline blows out the candles on her fifth birthday cake, November 27, 1962. The children of White House staffers joined in the celebration.
And so did John, whose second birthday was also celebrated that day. A pair of mariachis captivated him for a while, and he joined the musicians in a spirited, if discordant, performance.
John and Caroline play with a coloring book amid strewn gift-wrapping as they open the dozens of presents they received. Caroline's name was a little difficult for John to say at this point, so he called her "Cannon."
Caroline looks a tad guilty as she's caught cadging some Christmas chocolates in one of the White House offices on December 4.
The first light dusting of snow in Washington early in December prompted Jackie to take John on a sled ride around the White House grounds with their dog, Clipper. Later the President joined them.
Christmas Day in Palm Beach: Joe Kennedy looks on as the President plays with John and one of his cousins. His bad back prevented Jack Kennedy from picking up his children, so he frequently gamboled on the floor with them instead.
Caroline plays the Virgin Mary and Gutavos Parades, the son of Jackie Kennedy's personal attendant, Providencia Parades, is a wise man during a Christmas play put on by Jackie for her father-in-law.
After the play, Jackie provides John with a comfortable resting place. Caroline seems to be beseeching her mother for a critique of her performance.
In President Kennedy's secretary Evelyn Lincoln's office on January 21, 1963, John plays with a toy helicopter and a picture of the Presidential chopper — and shows off the gap in his smile caused by a tooth he lost in a fall outside the White House a few days earlier. The mishap left the child in tears, but once Maud Shaw had calmed him down, he ran back to recover the tooth, and spent the next months smiling broadly at anyone who looked his way.
March 31, 1963: John delighted in the airplanes and helicopters that frequently transported the Kennedys. He never failed to ask if he could "take the controls," and the pilots were happy to oblige if time permitted before takeoff. He called the helicopters "lo-pacas" and would jump with delight and scream, "The choppers are coming! The choppers are coming!" whenever he saw them. At Camp David, when the President usually had more time to spend with his children, he and John could frequently be found in a hangar, behind the controls of a helicopter, both of them wearing flight helmets, the leader of the free world taking orders from his son, Flight Captain John.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from John and Caroline by James Spada. Copyright © 2001 James Spada. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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