Patrick
Early in 1963, Jackie discovered she was again pregnant. In March the White House announced that Jackie was expecting in September and would be reducing her travels and the performance of her duties as first lady. Until June she maintained her normal stateside schedule of short weeks at the White House and Thursday through Sunday at Glen Ora, coordinating everything from the details of state dinners to the final stages of her restoration project from wherever she was. Having lost two pregnancies, Jackie and Jack both wanted to err on the side of caution. That spring, Tish Baldridge, burnt out from the pace of life in the White House, and tired from trying to spur Jackie to more public involvement, amicably resigned, taking a job at the Kennedy-owned Chicago Merchandise Mart. She was replaced by one of Jackie’s oldest friends, Nancy Tuckerman. “Tucky” and Jackie had known each other since Miss Chapin’s, and their working relationship would prove so harmonious that Tuckerman would remain her personal assistant for the next thirty-one years, until Jackie’s death.
Throughout that year, Jack kept his frenetic pace, traveling to Germany, Ireland, England, and Italy and throughout the United States. In June, Jackie stationed herself for the remainder of her pregnancy at a house they rented on Squaw Island, not far from Hyannis Port, and thereafter Jack only saw his family on weekends. Jackie continued to make plans and write memos from her Cape Cod hideaway, instructing Nancy Tuckerman on every detail of the planned state visit of the king and queen of Afghanistan on September 5. She painted and read and luxuriated in the ocean air. She prepared scrapbooks containing photos and memories of her life with Jack, to present to him in recognition of their upcoming tenth wedding anniversary. Before they could celebrate, however, Jackie’s pregnancy would end suddenly and tragically.
On August 7, just as Jackie was returning from Caroline’s riding lesson, she began to experience intense labor pains. Five weeks premature, she was immediately taken by helicopter to nearby Otis Air Force base, where a ten-room hospital wing had been on standby for just such an emergency. The president left Washington immediately but arrived after his second son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, had already been delivered. The four-pound, one-ounce boy, delivered by Caesarean section, was baptized right away and placed in an incubator. Jackie never held Patrick, as he was considered too fragile to remove from the apparatus. He was diagnosed with hyaline membrane disease, a malformation of the lungs, and it was decided that he should be moved to Children’s Medical Center in Boston. Jack flew to Boston and kept vigil at the hospital. But the child was simply too small, too premature, the state of his lungs too grave. Despite the medical team’s best efforts, Patrick died early on the morning of August 9.
Jackie was awoken at six-thirty that morning and told the news by her doctor. “She was devastated,” remembered Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who stood watch at her door that morning. “It was heartbreaking to see her in such emotional pain.” Jack made it back to Otis and cried at her bedside. The next day, Jackie was too ill to attend Patrick’s small funeral in Boston, officiated by Cardinal Cushing and attended by Jack, Lee Radziwill, and Jackie’s half-brother and half-sister, Jamie and Janet Auchincloss. Jack placed a St. Christopher medal in the child’s tiny coffin. On Sunday, August 11, he brought Caroline and John to see their mother, still hospitalized at Otis, “which seemed to boost Mrs. Kennedy’s spirits more than anything.” On Tuesday he returned to Washington to resume his presidential duties.
A week after the birth, Jack was with Jackie as she was released from the hospital. It was here that people close to the couple really started to notice a difference in their relationship. “With press photographers snapping away, President and Mrs. Kennedy emerged from the hospital hand in hand,” Hill remembered. “It was a small gesture, but quite significant to those of us who were around them all the time.” The couple normally avoided physical affection in public; the death of their son had cracked something open in them.
Jackie and the children remained at the Cape for the rest of the summer, and Jack came up when he could. A devastated Jackie spent much of her time at the Squaw Island house secluded in her room. She ventured out occasionally to play with the children, but it was clear to those around her that she was suffering. Jack spent more time with the children when he was up from Washington; whether he was spurred to greater closeness by his loss or covering for a less-present Jackie is hard to tell. The two put on brave faces for the low-key celebration of their tenth anniversary at Hammersmith Farm. Jackie presented Jack with the scrapbooks she’d spent the summer making, as well as a gold St. Christopher’s medal to replace the one he’d buried with Patrick. JFK simply gave her a catalogue from a New York antiques dealer and told her to pick whatever she wanted. Those in attendance again remarked how close they seemed, how warm their relationship had become.
It was around this time that Jack decided that Jackie might benefit from some travel abroad. Lee spoke to her friend and sometimes lover, a Greek shipping magnate, about Jackie’s situation. He immediately invited both Jackie and Lee to visit him on his yacht in the Greek Isles. And so, with Kennedy’s blessing, Jackie and Lee spent two weeks relaxing aboard the Christina, the yacht owned by Aristotle Onassis.