Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy (6 page)

Yeah. You know, but Pat McCarran and all these sort of types were all, I don't know, rather—I don't know if he's "shady," because I love him, but he's certainly someone to know in Nevada. And he said, "All right," because Nevada hadn't been for Jack, and the next day, all Nevada's votes were for Jack.
[Schlesinger laughs]
So all I know is that when he decided, I don't know, but I just know that I knew that he was going for vice president that day—that night. And before—I suppose Torb could tell you that, because he was closeted in the room with him.

Yes, we'll talk to Torb. That's my memory, because I can remember Stevenson's decision to throw it open, and then again Ted or someone from the President's staff getting in touch with me about things, and I think, obviously it was in the mind of some people around—before, I think, it had become dormant and then it was suddenly revived. Let's talk about the fight against Bill Burke. It was really a fight against John McCormack, wasn't it?

Yes, and again, you'd have to tell me about it, and I could tell you things that rang bells, because it's—

The great problem was the control of the Democratic state committee, and Burke had been—

And Lynch there was—

There was Lynch, who was our man—

Yeah.

And who has been state chairman through the years since. Kenny and Larry
¹¹
were in that fight, were they?

SENATOR KENNEDY WITH KENNY O'DONNELL, 1960
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

I think so, yes.

They were. But I think that neither of them yet had come on the senator's staff—Senate staff.

That's right. I think Kenny told me about that just now—I mean, just a couple of weeks ago. But—first, that Jack was traveling a lot then, but I can just remember every night talking. I remember at Jean's wedding—he was so busy up in Massachusetts, and she came—she had a dinner the night before she got married.
¹²
Well, even Jack was going all around at that dinner, talking to his father, talking to Bobby, Torb, everyone. It was sort of about this thing—it was just obsessing him. Because it was going to be known—she was married on May
6
—something like that—May
19
she was married, and, I guess, the vote or whatever it is was going to come up a few days later, and I remember thinking—the only time in my life I've ever thought that Jack was a little bit thoughtless. But I didn't really think that, because you could see how worried he was, because all that night, when everyone should have been making little toasts to Jean and things—which they were, and he made a touching one—he was talking to everybody at the dinner about that fight. I mean, it was just on his mind, and I've never seen him like that—in the first Cuba, the second Cuba,
¹³
any election—I mean, the election—the presidential election, when I think of how calm he was that night—whether it would come out well or not, but still—but that was just all that spring. And as I have—you know, you musn't think it bad that I don't have all of these political memories, because I was really living another side of life with him, but I just remember that was a terrible worry of all that spring.

I had the impression it must have been an awfully critical thing. It was the first big test of strength within the party organization. I know Kenny's told me from time to time when we've been talking about people in politics, and he would say, "So and so, he was for us in the Burke fight," which meant, we forgive him everything else. Or someone, "He was against us in the Burke fight." And this became the standard of judgment, which, years later, in the presidential years, would still be very much in everyone's mind.

And I remember all the people—it fascinated me because when I came back from my honeymoon, I was taken immediately to Boston to be registered as a Democrat by Patsy Mulkern, who was called "the China Doll," because he was a prize fighter once, and he took me all up and down that street, and told me that "duking" people means shaking hands, and things. And then there was another man with "Onions" Burke, named "Juicy" Grenara. Well, I mean those names just fascinated me so. You know, to sort of see that world, and then we'd go have dinner at the Ritz.
[both Jacqueline and Schlesinger laugh]
Then you'd be going someplace else. It just seems it was suitcases, moving, and then you'd go to New York for a couple of days. We never had our own house until we'd been married four years. So I can't tell you—

That was in Georgetown, or out in McLean?

Oh no, that's right. We had one—for three years in Hickory Hill.
¹⁴
We didn't buy a house. You know, we'd rent January until June, then we'd go live at my mother's house, which was in Virginia, for the summer, because we didn't have a child for four years. So the summers we'd spend at her house, going up to the Cape when we could on weekends—and in the fall, we'd stay with his father—you know, living right with our in-laws. And then we'd go to his apartment in Boston or we'd go down to New York for a couple of days. It was terrifically nomadic, you know. And then we'd go away after Christmas or something for a few days to Jamaica or something. Such a pace, when I think of how little we were alone, or always moving.

I know, in the political life—you are never alone in politics. It's terrible.

And never alone. Later on, Jack said, when Teddy got married and got his house right away, "What was the matter with me? Why didn't I get our house sooner?" And I thought, why didn't I? But you were just moving and everything was so fast. And then we got Hickory Hill, but that turned out to be a mistake because it was so far out of town. That was the year after Jack's back.
¹⁵
Well, again we spent a lot of money to buy this house in Virginia, and I thought it would be a place where he could rest on weekends the year where he would be recovering from his back. And we discussed that when we bought it. Again this shows you how he didn't sort of tell me what was ahead because once we got to the house, he was away every weekend, traveling. And it was no good to him during the week—it was that much farther from his office. And then, when I lost the baby—you know, that I had made nurseries and everything for there, I didn't want to live there anymore, so that's when we moved.
¹⁶
We rented a house—no, the next year we rented a house on P Street, and then had Caroline and bought our house in
1957
.
¹⁷
Yeah, we must have had Hickory Hill—no, when did we have Hickory Hill? His operation was '
55
. Yeah, I guess it was two years before we had a house.

You got the N Street house in '57.

'Fifty-seven. And, I guess, we got Hickory Hill the winter after his back, which was '
55
.

Some people have speculated, and I have written, that the operation and the sickness of the back was kind of a turning point. I have never known whether there was anything—whether this was kind of a false knowledge of FDR and really whether there was anything in that.

No, I don't think there's anything in that. And it's just so easy. Max Freedman
¹⁸
said to me the other night, "And when do you think the dedication started?" Well, that just irritated me so. It was always there. You know, the winter of his back, which was awful, just to keep himself from going mad, lying there, aches and pains, and being moved over, side to side, every twenty minutes or something, or beginning to walk, and just as he was starting to walk on crutches, one of his crutches broke, so then he was back in. You know, then he started to write that book which he'd always had in his mind a long time—he'd had Edmund Ross—he talked to me about that a year or so before as the one classic example of profiles in courage.
¹⁹
And he'd always thought of writing an article or something on that, and then so that whole winter, he started to search out other people—enough to make a book. So, that wasn't any changing point. He was just going through that winter like he did everything—getting through an awful winter of sickness and doing the book.

The back had been an overhanging thing for some time before.

Yeah, with the back, it had just gotten worse and worse. I mean, the year before we were married, when he'd take me out, half the time it was on crutches. You know, when I went to watch him campaign, before we were married, he was on crutches. I can remember him on crutches more than not. And then, in our marriage, he'd be off it a lot, and then something would go wrong. It was really—I mean, the problem everyone found later—he didn't even need the operation. It was that he'd had a bad back since college, and then the war, and he'd had a disk operation that he never needed, so all those muscles had gotten weak, had gone into spasm, and that was what was giving him pain—the muscles. And so, then he'd go— I think if he went on crutches for four days, you know, he'd get everything better, but again that was only weakening it. And it wasn't until after his back operation that the poor doctor who'd been his medical man, Ephraim Shorr, said to him, "Now I think I am at liberty to tell you something which I wanted to tell you before, but I didn't think it was correct to do that to Dr. Wilson," who was the back surgeon.
²⁰
This made me so mad how doctors just let people suffer, and don't say anything to hurt the other eminent physicians' feelings. But then Dr. Shorr told him about Dr. Travell, who was a woman in New York, and lived down on
16
th Street, and had been doing terrific things with muscles. And Jack went to see her. She put in this Novocain for spasms. Well, she could fix him. I mean, life just changed then.
²¹
Because, obviously, after a year of surgery and a year out, his back was weaker than ever. If you don't think that wasn't discouraging for him—to have been through that year and find that his back was worse, not better—

SENATOR KENNEDY ON STRETCHER ACCOMPANIED BY ROBERT KENNEDY AND JACQUELINE KENNEDY, NEW YORK, DECEMBER 1954
Dan McElleney/BettmanCORBIS/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

In other words, the operation of 1955 was not necessary?
²²

It was no more necessary than it is for you to have one this minute. And it was just criminal. But, you know, all those bone surgeons look at X-rays—you see, Jack was being driven so crazy by this pain. They even said to him before it, "We can't tell if it will help or not." I remember his father and I and he talking, and he said, "I don't care. I can't go on like this." It was, you know, one chance in a million, but he was going to take it. And if it hadn't been for Dr. Travell—I mean, no one can underestimate her contribution then. Though later on, it was apparent that what he should be doing was build up his back with exercises. She was very reluctant to let him leave her Novocain treatments, which by then were not doing any good. This is once we're in the White House. But she changed his life then.

And she came on the scene when? 'Fifty-six?

No. When did he have his back?

'Fifty-five.

October—no, he had it October of '
54
.