Just as Ambassador Kennedy’s residence in Palm Beach became the Winter White House, the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, became the Summer White House. I had never been to Cape Cod before, but it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with this New England beach haven, about seventy miles from Boston, where the extended Kennedy family spent their summers. The centerpiece for the family’s gatherings was Ambassador Kennedy’s home—a large, rambling, white-shingled house with a huge front porch that overlooked an expansive lawn that became the playing field for football games as well as the landing pad for the presidential helicopter. Behind the main house were three smaller homes in the same Cape Cod style, which belonged to JFK, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and Robert Kennedy. There was always something going on—touch football, water-skiing, swimming, tennis, golf, sailing. I had never seen such a close family, or a family with so much energy and competitiveness. And there I was, right in the middle of it all.
We set up the Secret Service command post in a little guest cottage between Bobby’s and the president’s houses. From noon on Mondays to noon on Fridays, the president would be in Washington, while Mrs. Kennedy, John, and Caroline stayed in Hyannis Port.
At noon on Friday, the whole routine changed. For the next forty-eight hours, activity on the compound was at its maximum. Almost like clockwork, President Kennedy would arrive at Otis Air Force Base on Air Force One. From there he would transfer to an Army or Marine helicopter—military green with a white top, denoting it was a presidential chopper—and fly to Hyannis Port, landing in the front yard of Ambassador Kennedy’s residence.
The helicopter arrival was a huge event for the children. The kids would all come running when they heard the distinctive sound of the rotors getting louder and louder overhead. As soon as the chopper touched down, the door would open and the president would bound down the steps. Caroline would be first in line, followed by all her cousins, running to meet him. President Kennedy would be laughing, a look of sheer joy on his face, as if the sight of the children and his beloved Hyannis Port made all the worries of his office disappear for one brief moment. We would have a golf cart waiting in the driveway, and he’d go straight for it, hop behind the wheel, and yell, “Anyone for ice cream?”
Ten or twelve kids would pile onto the cart, and the president would take off down the driveway, a huge grin on his face as he cut across the lawn behind Bobby’s house in an effort to lose the Secret Service follow-up car. He’d end up at the tiny News Store, where he’d buy ice cream cones for all the children.
Lunchtime cruises were almost a daily event—either on the Marlin, Ambassador Kennedy’s fifty-two-foot motor yacht, or the presidential yacht (previously the Barbara Anne), which Kennedy had renamed the Honey Fitz after his maternal grandfather, who had been given the nickname “Honey Fitz” because of his personal charm and charisma. We would create a security perimeter around the yacht consisting of one or two Coast Guard boats and two Navy jet boats, all operated by military personnel under the direction of the Secret Service agents on board. I always worked one of the speedy jet boats, and I have to say that some of my best and happiest memories are of those weekends in Hyannis Port.
Frequently, the president would sail the Victura, the twenty-five-foot Wianno Senior sailboat his parents gave him for his fifteenth birthday. He loved that boat. He could maneuver it with such grace and ease that it was almost like it was an extension of himself. We would surveil him and prevent anyone from venturing too close, but basically he was on his own, with no telephones, no advisors, nothing to interrupt an hour or so of respite from the enormous responsibility that comes with being President of the United States.
One day, the president and his good friend Chuck Spalding were sailing the Victura close to shore, just off the dock from the ambassador’s residence. They were in the midst of a deep conversation and didn’t realize they were coming upon some rocks. Suddenly, the boat stopped dead in the water as it got wedged between the rocks.
I was in a jet boat nearby, watching the scene unfold, fully expecting the president to get the boat moving again with ease, but the boat wasn’t budging. President Kennedy dropped the mainsail to let the wind out of it, stood up, and turned toward me.
“Hey, Clint, can you give us a little help? We seem to be stuck.”
“I’ll be right there, Mr. President,” I said as I jumped into the water.
We were so close to shore that the water was only up to my thighs, so I waded over to the stuck sailboat. I couldn’t tell what the problem was, due to the glare on the water, so I took a deep breath and went under the boat. Sure enough, the hull was wedged in between two good-sized boulders.
“Looks like you’re wedged in between two big rocks, Mr. President,” I said. “Let me see if I can rock the boat to get it moving. You may want to sit down.”
The president laughed and said, “Good idea. But I’m more concerned about the boat than Chuck and myself.”
I placed my feet on top of one of the boulders and squatted with my back against the bottom of the hull. “Hang on, Mr. President,” I said. “Here we go.”
I began to rock up and down, and as the boat started to move I gave one big thrust upward with my body while simultaneously pushing down with my legs. As I did so, the Victura slid off the rocks, causing my feet to slip down each side of the rock on which I was standing. The rock was shaped somewhat like a cone, and that final thrust caused me to go straight down, with the cone-shaped rock crashing into my groin area.
I gritted my teeth to keep from yelling out in pain as the president immediately raised the sail and turned the tiller, allowing the boat to slowly glide away.
“Thanks, Clint!” the president called back to me, unaware of what had just occurred under the water.
“No problem, sir,” I replied. “Glad I was able to help.”
I walked gingerly through the water back to the jet boat, and as I climbed over the side I noticed blood running down my legs. I had almost crushed a very important part of my anatomy. Pained and bloody, I continued on for the rest of the day.
I didn’t realize that Cecil Stoughton, one of the White House photographers, happened to catch the ordeal on film, and apparently word got back to the president that I had been injured. A few days later I received an 8-by-10 photo of the president and Chuck Spalding standing on the Victura as I waded through the water toward the stuck boat. The president had signed the photo with the inscription:
For Clint Hill
“The Secret Service are prepared for all hazards”
John F. Kennedy
There was always some kind of activity going on, including those legendary football games on the lawn. Somebody would start rounding up players and picking teams, and I’d get a call at the command post from Bobby or Teddy.
“Clint, come on down here. We need another guy for our team.”
They treated me just like one of them—almost like part of the family. I thoroughly enjoyed it—not just for the sport, but also because it gave me the opportunity to occasionally throw a good hard block across certain family members. It was all in good fun.
The typical routine was that President and Mrs. Kennedy would go to Newport, Rhode Island, after Labor Day to spend time with Mrs. Kennedy’s mother, Janet, and stepfather, Hugh Auchincloss. The Auchinclosses had a large home with a dock overlooking Narragansett Bay, and the presidential yacht would be sailed from Hyannis for the family to use. The weather in the fall could be unpredictable, though, and fog was sometimes a problem.
So it was in late September 1961 when I was trying to fly from the Newport area to Washington to be at Gwen’s side as she went into labor with our second child. Fog had blanketed the entire area, and hard as I tried, I could not get there before our son Corey Jonathan was born.
It might have appeared that President Kennedy was on vacation whenever he was in Hyannis Port, Newport, or Palm Beach, but in reality the responsibility of the job never leaves the occupant of the Office of the President. That summer of 1961, there were myriad serious international and domestic issues. First, the Soviets, together with the East Germans, had begun to tie a noose around West Berlin—tightening the borders and building a wall that divided Berlin. In response, the United States promptly called up some 150,000 reservists to active duty and sent 40,000 regular Army troops to Europe. Cuba remained a major concern, and the situation in Southeast Asia, including Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, was heating up. Domestically, attempted hijackings of commercial airliners necessitated the placing of armed federal personnel on board some flights as air marshals, while segregation problems continued throughout the South. There is no such thing as a presidential vacation.