Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [33]
Yeah. It was a very difficult local situation on it. What about the Nixons? Did you ever see the Nixons in the senatorial days?
No. Oh, well, I used to see her at bandage rolling. You know, the Senate wives have to go roll bandages every Tuesday and the vice president's wife is always the chairman of it. She's dressed in a white nurse's uniform. That's the only time I ever saw her.
I think she'd be perfect at bandage—bandage rolling. Well, it's about 1960, the primaries, and you remember the Wisconsin primaries being the hardest. Did the President ever, at any point, seem worried about the outcome or was he too absorbed from day to day to have feelings? Was he up and down or was it a fairly—
Well, you just had to work so hard. You know, when you're really in a campaign, you don't almost have time to think of the outcome, though he'd be going over polls and the this and the that district. But I remember election—primary night in the Hotel Pfister in Milwaukee. You know, that was awful. It was so funny. We were all on—just like on nails. And then it came out sort of a draw. Well, it was just so awful because there everybody had put all they had into a fight and you were just left exhausted. And you saw it had proved nothing. And you'd have to start again. Oh, and I remember that awful man, Miles McMillin, who wrote for the paper in Madison, who is married to—the girl he's married to, Rockefeller, was married to Proxmire.6 Well, he used to write all these anonymous letters to the paper, saying scurrilous things about Jack. He was a terrible man. Again, a wild-eyed liberal creature.7 He came cruising through the apartment that night when we were all in there counting the returns and—oh, it was awful of me—I walked by him twice without saying hello—cutting him dead. [laughs] And Jack— I mean, I was so mad at him. Jack was polite.
West Virginia, like you said, was more agreeable.
Well, the people were just nicer there. And you know, you went slugging along again, but—oh, and then there, for the first time, we separated, and I'd go off with someone on my own little tour—you know, in and out of little shops or a little bar or all those little mining towns. And the people were all so nice to me. You know, just tiny, little—never more than ten or twenty people.
SENATOR KENNEDY TALKS TO COAL MINERS DURING THE WEST VIRGINIA PRIMARY
Hank Walker, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
Would you speak, or just—
I'd just say hello to them all, and talk to them. You know, and tell them who I was, and I'd have someone with me. Who was it? Did I go with Franklin?8 Because he was usually with Jack. Then every night, we'd be at some big rally, where Franklin would talk. But then, you see, in the middle of that campaign, I started to have John. So then I was sort of—rather sent home a bit. I just was there about the first half.
Had Franklin been an old friend, or did he become a particular friend in West Virginia?
No, he'd been a friend of Jack in Congress. You know, they—they were always running around and busy and everything, but they'd always liked each other. And then—I guess we saw them a few times when we were married. Yeah, we used to see Franklin. So he always was a friend. Not constant. But you could always laugh with him and he—you know, he amused me and he and Jack amused each other. So that's—and I went off with Franklin in Wisconsin, I remember. We went all through one colored district together and all through supermarkets where no one looked up at us. That's when he became—in Wisconsin, he helped there too. But West Virginia is where we saw the most of him and from then on, he was a very good friend.
West Virginia began to get a little bitter. I guess it was pretty bitter in Wisconsin with Hubert.
Yeah. I guess it did because what were they saying? Oh, just as Jack said, a fight always gets bitter. The Humphrey people were saying the Kennedys were buying the election and the Kennedy people—Humphrey had not