Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot by J. Randy Taraborrelli Read Free Book Online Page B

thing he could do at this time. The less said by him during his son’s campaign, the better.
    Jack was an urbane, Harvard-educated, good-looking, Northeastern Irish Catholic—the first President of that faith in a country that was, at the time, only 26 percent Catholic. Brimming with ideals and youthful vigor—or vig-ah , as the Kennedys pronounced it in their Boston accents—he would usher in a new era in history, not just for this country but for the world at large. At forty-three years of age, he was the youngest President ever elected.
    During his short Presidency—the New Frontier, as it was called—JFK would be best remembered for the deep sense of idealism he would rekindle in millions at the dawn of the sixties. He was a President who made Americans feel that
    anything was possible. His optimism and eloquence, his ability to communicate to all Americans the possibility of a better life, made him unique in every way as he challenged Americans to look beyond the selfishness of their daily lives and focus attention on their communities, their nation, their world. Many young people would enter politics because of Kennedy’s influence. On a larger scale, Kennedy’s attempt to communicate a giving, open spirit caused many to join the Peace Corps or begin careers as teachers, nurses, and other public servants. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address that wintry day in 1961 would be widely acclaimed as the most memorable and unifying symbol of the modern political age: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
    Perhaps the late Laura Bergquist Knebel, who covered the Kennedys for Look magazine and wrote many insightful pieces about the family, said it best when, at the age of forty- five in 1963, she observed, “For the first time in my life, the President of the United States was not an Olympian-remote, grandfatherly figure, but a contemporary—brighter, wittier, more sure of his destiny and more disciplined than any of us, but still a superior equal who talked your language, read the books you read, knew the inside jokes. In a world run by old men, he was a leader born in the twentieth century, and when they said a new generation had taken over, you real- ized it was your own.”

    The Five Inaugural Balls

    F ive official Inaugural Balls were held to celebrate the in- coming administration. For the first one, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., Jackie was spectacularly gowned in a white chiffon sheath with a bodice embroidered in silver thread, over which she wore a billowing, floor-length, white silk cape. She accessorized with long white opera gloves and dazzling diamonds borrowed from Tiffany’s. With an after- noon’s rest, her troop of beauty experts, and the aid of the Dexedrine flowing in her veins administered by her husband’s doctor, Janet Travell, an exhausted Jackie managed once again to rise from the ashes like a glittering white phoenix.
    Joan and Ethel were, of course, also dressed in elegant evening gowns. Ethel’s was white with straps and matching gloves; Joan’s was white too, but with a black-sequined strapless bodice. Ethel had been concerned earlier because her gowns for the day’s and evening’s events had been stuck in the trunk of her dressmaker’s car, which was buried under heaps of snow. She was relieved to find that, once the snow was shoveled off the automobile, her expensive gowns were unharmed.
    But the crowds really weren’t that interested in Joan or Ethel anyway, nor in Rose, the Kennedy sisters, or any other woman at the ball. At least in terms of exquisite glamour, this evening was all about Jackie, for she was the greatest symbol of the new Kennedy era. Or as Ethel put it to Bobby, “Jeez. They just want to touch her, don’t they? It’s like being at a wedding with the most popular bride in the world.”
    Even Ethel, who was rarely impressed by Jackie, ap- peared awestruck by her sister-in-law’s charisma and beauty. In