They were never what is called a well-matched marriage. The serious guy with eloquent speeches in Washington or Berlin had too many skirts, a factor that, added to his determination not to show affection in public, distanced him from one of the most admired women of the moment, first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.
That distance, and the fact of being on the verge of breaking, is something that has been reflected in a new book that will go on sale from July 16, a work — 'JFK Last Hundred Days' — about the last 100 days of John Fitzgerald Kennedy by historian Thurston Clarke.
However, Clarke says that when everything seemed lost, a tragedy managed to put them back together, the death of his son Patrick Kennedy in 1963. Ironically, that was the most powerful icebreaker to bring them closer again.
Before, Kennedy hadn't even managed to be there for her, absent during the delivery of a premature baby. Kennedy regretted not being able to arrive in time with one of those phrases for history that have been with him perpetually since his tragic death in 1963. "I'm never there when you need me."
Issues
And it wasn't the first time in a long history of medical problems. What would later be the wife of the Greek magnate Aristotle Onassis always had problems during her multiple pregnancies. After suffering a miscarriage in 1955, she became pregnant again a year later, during the Democratic convention in which her husband was nominated for vice president along with Adlai Stevenson, one of the young Kennedy's first steps towards the White House.
That girl was going to be called Arabella Kennedy, but various complications prevented her from surviving childbirth. She was stillborn, a tragedy the Democratic politician learned nothing of until three days later, while aboard a cruise ship with several young women, according to a European newspaper account.
But the birth of little Caroline Kennedy would save the furniture a few months later, with the politician present at the hospital during the delivery and with a good bouquet of flowers to correct the course. Three years later there would be no problem with the legendary John John either, called upon to preserve the political dynasty before his plane crashed in the summer of 1999 with his wife aboard.
The president did not experience those years, but he did experience a similar tragedy with his third child, born on August 7, 1963, months before his own assassination in Dallas at the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald. "Nothing should happen to Patrick, because I can't even think about the effect it could have on Jackie," the president told his mother-in-law, Janet Auchincloss, before traveling to Boston to accompany her baby to the city's children's hospital. But there was no cure for what the little boy had at the time, the so-called respiratory distress syndrome, a disease that ended his ephemeral existence 48 hours after his birth.
Clarke recounts in his account of the last hundred days of the president that the president was woken up that tragic day at two in the morning and that on his way to see Patrick his attention was caught by the burns of another baby, with enough time to stopping to write a note to his mother. "Keep his nerve. John F. Kennedy," the letter read.
Suffering
His kind gesture did not bring her the luck necessary to save his son. At 4:13 that morning he was pronounced dead before his father's eyes, broken inside but keeping his composure for a few minutes. "He put up a great fight. He was a beautiful child," he stated.
He then withdrew to an adjoining room to cry inconsolably for 10 minutes, an image captured by one of the White House photographers whom he asked not to publish the photo of his suffering.
He did not know then that this anguish would become a balm for his marriage, taking refuge in the arms of his wife to appease the blow. She even confessed to him a few hours after little Patrick's death that the only thing she couldn't bear was losing him. "I know... I know," Kennedy replied, kneeling and sobbing.
Close up
From that moment something changed between them, holding hands when they had never made an effort to show affection in public. Quite the opposite, always modest and distant.
This is demonstrated by the photos and the documented gestures of the former president in his last days of existence, always together "like two little children", a detail, that of holding hands, perhaps insignificant for many but very significant for those who did not separate from the couple, as one of the members of the secret service, Clint Hill, recalls.
In addition to the gestures of affection, Kennedy chose to vary his routine to spend more time with his wife. Between August 14 and September 24, he spent 23 nights between Cape Cod and Newport with her, even flying in the middle of the week. They became, in the words of historian Arthur Schlesinger, "extremely close and very affectionate".
