Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [69]
In fact, with an eye to the likely fallout from the coming change in his marital status, he managed to keep secret his engagement until after the Saturday Evening Post had run a long-planned feature headlined “Jack Kennedy: The Senate’s Gay Young Bachelor.” Later, without telling his fiancée, he invited a Life photographer along on a sailing trip that she’d supposed would be time alone for them.
To reap the political benefit of their boss’s engagement, O’Donnell, together with O’Brien, began to plan a large event for all the “Kennedy Secretaries” from the previous year. To get the reluctant Jack to agree, they told him, “They haven’t seen you since the election and they all want to give you a gift and so forth,” O’Donnell recalled his pitch to the bridegroom. It was a classic, canny Kennedy event, a party to honor the engaged couple for which the guests paid admission and were more invested in their hero for having done so. “For the time and the place, it wasn’t cheap. But the faithful were willing to shell out ten dollars for a chance to see the senator they’d helped elect and to meet his beautiful fiancée. They felt included, even ‘related.’ “
O’Donnell described the celebration he staged: “They paid for their meal, paid for their drinks, and they gave the senator and Jackie a gift. One of the few organizations in the history of mankind that were paying him instead of him paying them, but we knew he wouldn’t pay for it, so we had to, or he wouldn’t come—since he didn’t want to, anyway. Though, once they were there, he had a great time.”
The wedding party convened the weekend of September 12, 1953, in Newport, Rhode Island, where Jackie’s remarried mother, now Mrs. Hugh Auchincloss, lived at Hammersmith Farm. The groomsmen included Lem from Choate, Torby from Harvard, and Red Fay from the navy, plus Chuck Spalding, Charlie Bartlett, and George Smathers. The ceremony was held at St. Mary’s, a nineteenth-century church in the Gothic style. Society pages around the country pronounced it the “wedding of the year.”
When Fay showed up, the ever-competitive Jack asked him as soon as the two men were alone what he thought of Jackie. “I said, ‘God, she’s a fantastic-looking woman.’ And then I added, ‘If you ever get a little hard of hearing, you’re going to have a little trouble picking up all the transmission.’ “ Jack laughed, loving his navy pal’s reaction to the classic Jackie whisper.
Jack was about to embark on a new life, yet there remained evidence that he himself, the onetime Mucker ringleader, had changed little over all those years. Fay noticed the way he enjoyed the bit of culture clash that occurred between a few of his cronies and the Newporters. “Almost across the street from Hammersmith Farm were the green fairways of the Newport Country Club,” he said, “where I’d often played during the war. The gentry of Newport had opened up their club for men in uniform, but with the end of the war the doors had shut tight again.”
Somehow, Fay and Kennedy’s aide John Galvin—“looking more Irish than Paddy’s Pig”—got themselves onto the course to play a round. At this point Fay hadn’t realized that the relaxed wartime regulations were no longer in force. The club had returned to its firm rule that all nonmembers must be accompanied by a club member. “I hope you two enjoyed your game of golf,” Jack teased them, “because as a result of it there was almost a total breakdown of relations between the mother of the bride and her dashing prospective son-in-law. I’m afraid that they feel that their worst fears are being realized. The invasion by the Irish Catholic hordes into one of the last strongholds of America’s socially elite is being led by two chunky red-haired friends of the groom.”
Still, the temporary vibe of spontaneous, unpredictable fun was welcomed by at least a few Newporters. Fay recalls a comment made by the lifeguard at a nearby beach where the Kennedy guests were swimming and playing touch football. “I want to tell you,” the young man said, “this is the first time this place has had any