Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [56]
PRESIDENT KENNEDY PLAYING WITH CAROLINE AND JOHN ON HIS WAY TO THE OVAL OFFICE
Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
That would be about 9:30.
Yeah. Quarter of eight—yeah, maybe a little earlier, I suppose. He'd be, I guess, over an hour having breakfast, reading the papers and taking a bath. And later on, it used to be John's treat to walk to the office with him every day.
Had George always been in the White House or did you—had he always been with the President or what?
George had been with Jack when he first came to Congress.
Oh, he came in—
He found him. He was with Arthur Krock61 before and Arthur told Jack about him. Then he left for a couple of years and worked for Ethel's mother. Then he came back to us—he wasn't with us at Hickory Hill—he came back '57 and he was with us ever since.
Where is he now?
He's somewhere. I mean, he lives where he—in Washington. He comes to see us a lot. I mean, we'll always take care of him. But poor George, he really got the shakes—I mean, he couldn't—I asked him if he wanted to work here, but he's just too old, he dropped—and in the White House, all he'd do that used to amuse Jack so. He'd open the door so that some other slave could carry in Jack's breakfast tray. The only thing he did was pull open the curtains and then turn on the bath, and then he'd go up and all the little White House Mess boys were shining his shoes and everything.
Then the President would always come back for lunch.
Yeah.
I don't think he ever had lunch in his office, did he?
Never, unless he had a business lunch, you know, in the family dining room downstairs. He always kept our floor—we put in the dining room—he'd keep all his business lunches downstairs. And he knew that that was our private place. It's so different from now, where everyone gets the tour of the bathrooms and things.62 Maybe because Jack had young children.
And he very rarely liked to have—he didn't like business lunches, did he? It seemed to me that he was very—he much preferred to see people in his office rather than have luncheons.
Yeah, they were really heavy. Then he'd come up, you know, they were hard for him. And you're always awfully tired at the end of one of those White House mornings in your office and your nerves are on edge. So to have to go through a long lunch and wine and everything. And then he'd come up afterwards and still try to take whatever little nap he could. He never took a nap before, but in the White House, I think he made up his mind he would because it was so good for his health. Something was always cracking up before. And he'd always said that Winston Churchill used to do it and he'd often say how much more, you know, staying power it gave him. But his naps, my Lord, did I tell you about them?
No.
Well, it'd be forty-five minutes and he'd get completely undressed and into his pajamas and into bed and go to sleep and then wake up again. And I often used to—
And he could go to sleep—put himself to sleep, could he?
Yeah. I used to think, for a forty-five-minute nap, would you bother to take off all your clothes? It would take me forty-five minutes to just snuggle down and start to doze off. Sometimes when he had lunch in his room, in bed he'd have it. I'd have lunch in there with him and then I'd close the curtains and open the window for his nap and then I'd wake him up from it. And then I'd sit around while he got dressed. That was my hour instead of the children's. It would just be like clockwork—forty-five minutes and he'd be back in his office. And then he'd always work until, well, after eight at night.
Would he swim every day or was that only the later part after—
He came to the White House in the best physical condition that he was ever in