Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [59]
He was off on trips a couple of times.
Tampa, Dallas.68 You know, because it was a campaign year, you didn't expect to have many.
Had you always known Tish? Is she an old friend?
I'd known Tish when I was at school in Paris. She was with Mrs. Bruce at the embassy there and then when I was in Rome, she was with Mrs. Luce.69 And she was just such a mountain of energy. But I remember just thinking, "I can't go in there unless I have Tish," and calling her up right after Jack was nominated. Nominated or elected? I guess it was elected. And, well, Tish is great and I love her but, so much of her energy was rather extra that I—now that I think of it, she really made me tireder than I'd had to be. Because she'd send you so many extra things that you really didn't have to answer. And on weekends, she'd keep sending folders down until I stopped it. Or as I'd be sitting with Jack in the evening, some messenger would come flying in and throw a folder in my lap. You know, it began to drive me crazy, and then Jack told me that I must stop using my desk in the East Hall—the West Hall, where we sat. He said, "You can't have your desk in the room where we sit, where we live." So then he made me move it down to the Treaty Room. And it was so good because often, when we'd be alone in the evening, he'd be looking at a book or doing some of his papers, and I'd go grab a folder off my desk and try to check off all the little things I had to do. But it would just put you in not the right atmosphere that you should be in when your husband comes home. And, you know, so he arranged that part of my life. And once it was in the Treaty Room you could let Tish's things pile up for days, and then go do it all in one big session.70
JACQUELINE KENNEDY AND HER CHILDREN AT LETITIA BALDRIGE'S FAREWELL PARTY, 1963
Robert Knudsen, White House/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
Nancy was a much closer friend?71
Nancy was my roommate and ever since she came, the difference that life was. How much more time there was to be able to enjoy—to make yourself so that Jack would enjoy you more. I tried to get her sooner, but she wouldn't come.
Nancy is the nicest girl. She's also a very funny girl and a very sharp one.
Yeah.
Underneath the surface, shy—different than the exterior.
And she's feminine. I mean, Tish is sort of a feminist, really. She used to tell me she loved to have lunch in the White House Mess so she could argue with men. She's great, but she was so different from me and just exhausted me so.
How about Pam?72
Pam was fantastic because in the beginning I didn't think I'd need a press secretary and other people, the one person had done them both. But when I saw what Tish was like about the press, Jack got so mad. Tish had her own press conference before inauguration at the Sulgrave Club. She was coming there to speak. She got television and everything there. She was laughing and saying, "Yes, we're going to hang pictures on all the walls upside down"—modern, this, that. And, you know, it really caused trouble. It was the first set of bad, sensational headlines, and Jack said, "Not one of my cabinet officers has had an interview. Would you mind telling me what the hell Tish Baldrige is doing?" She just loved the press so that I saw that if I was to keep any privacy of our life—and she was always saying, "We got to have Betty Beale73 to the first state dinner"—I must get someone who had the same reactions I did. And little Pam had been a friend of my sister's. Jack had gotten three of them—Lizzie Condon,74 who's now in my office, Pam, and Nini75—jobs in the Senate one summer, and Pam had been in his office. Pam had stayed, the others had gone away and gotten married. And I just knew that she'd have all the same reactions I did. She was going over to work somewhere in the White House anyway, but I asked her if she'd be my press secretary and she was terrified and