In the early-morning hours of November 9, 1960, Richard Nixon all but conceded the election to John Kennedy from Republican Party headquarters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Pat campaigned tirelessly for her husband. “Now I’ll never get to be first lady,” she moaned.
First Lady Mamie Eisenhower, sixty-four, sneeringly referred to her successor, Jackie Kennedy, thirty-one, as “the college girl.” After JFK won the 1960 election, Mamie reluctantly invited Jackie, still recovering from a C-section for the birth of John F. Kennedy Jr., for the traditional private tour of the White House. Jackie was promised a wheelchair, but Mamie never offered her one, and by the end of the visit Jackie was pale and exhausted.
From left to right: Pat Nixon, Mamie Eisenhower, Lady Bird Johnson, and Jackie Kennedy watch as President Kennedy delivers his inaugural address on January 20, 1961. Pat was vengeful after her husband’s brutal defeat and even suggested a recount.
Jackie Kennedy loved being a mother and had a sense of fun rarely seen by the public. “Let’s go kiss the wind,” she would whisper to her daughter, Caroline, before they ran outside to play on the White House lawn. Here she and President Kennedy play with their children, Caroline and John F. Kennedy Jr., in the White House nursery after a joint birthday party.
Caroline, seated at the center of the table wearing a red headband, and her classmates celebrate Halloween in the White House kindergarten that Jackie created.
Vice President Lyndon Johnson takes the oath of office aboard Air Force One on a tarmac in Dallas on November 22, 1963, after President Kennedy’s assassination. Lady Bird (left) could never convince Jackie (right), her husband’s blood still staining her dress, to return to the White House, and was hurt that Jackie came back only at Pat Nixon’s request. But the two women were united by history and forged a deep, lifelong bond.
Chief Usher J. B. West, Lady Bird Johnson (carrying a portrait of President Johnson’s mentor, House Speaker Sam Rayburn) and the Johnsons’ youngest daughter, Luci (with beagles Him and Her), move into the White House after President Kennedy’s assassination. Lady Bird lamented, “People see the living and wish for the dead.”
Lady Bird Johnson, who was so shy that she took public speaking classes when her husband was in Congress, became the first first lady to make a solo campaign trip when she toured eight southern states on her whistle-stop train tour in 1964.
Pat Nixon (middle) learned how to be first lady by watching Mamie Eisenhower (left) when her husband served as vice president in the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s. But by the time Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, Mamie’s old-fashioned approach seemed out of place. “Life and history have not been fair to Pat Nixon. Period,” says Connie Stuart, Pat’s former chief of staff and press secretary. Pat’s daughter Julie is on the right.
Pat—derided in the press as “Plastic Pat”—stirs the crowd at the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. (Ronald Reagan stands behind her in a white jacket).
The Nixons have a quiet family dinner in the second-floor Family Dining Room on election night in 1972.
Pat Nixon takes her East Wing staff on a trip to Mount Vernon aboard the presidential yacht, the Sequoia.
Pat Nixon’s 1973 surprise birthday party in the White House movie theater. Pat sits casually on the floor with her social secretary, Lucy Winchester, on the right and her director of correspondence, Gwen King, seated, wearing green.
Pat kisses Betty Ford, who would suddenly succeed her as first lady after President Nixon resigned. “My heavens, they’ve even rolled out the red carpet for us, isn’t that something,” a bitter Pat told Betty. “You’ll see so many of those. . . . You’ll get so you hate them.”
First Lady Betty Ford gives a tour of the Fords’ bedroom to Lady Bird Johnson and her family the day before she had a mastectomy. Not wanting to ruin their visit, she never told Lady Bird about the surgery. The only clue is the black suitcase at the foot of the bed that Betty had packed for the hospital.
The day before she left the White House, Betty Ford used her training as a Martha Graham dancer to jump up on the Cabinet Room table, where seats were often reserved for men only. A Ford family friend says President Ford “about fell off his chair” when he saw the photo for the first time.
Rosalynn Carter hugs her husband, Jimmy, on election night, November 2, 1976.
The Carters have their weekly lunch in the Oval Office. “Whatever secrets there were,” Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, said, “she knew about all of them.”
Lady Bird Johnson, who outlived her husband by thirty-four years, was the grande dame of the first ladies. She forged deep and lasting friendships with other first ladies, including Barbara Bush, with whom she is laughing at the 1981 dedication of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, and with Hillary Clinton, whose husband she would later call upon for a political favor.
Rosalynn Carter, Lady Bird Johnson, and Betty Ford sat on rocking chairs at Lady Bird’s Texas ranch in 1987. The unexpected sight of three former first ladies thrilled tourists driving by. “I have never seen so many camera lenses; it was just like a sea of windows filled with black circles,” said an aide to Lady Bird. Lady Bird and Betty were so close that Lady Bird kept a small framed photo of Betty in her bedroom until her death.