The Presidency: Dad’s Gotten Sick

Life at 73 was pleasant indeed for Joseph P. Kennedy, multimillionaire, former U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s—and father of the President of the U.S. His son Jack, returning to Washington from a highly successful trip to South America, had stopped off to visit him in Palm Beach. In the days to come there would be the annual Christmas gathering of the Kennedy clan, with grandchildren galore, heaps of presents, and the palmiest weather that Florida could offer.

But instead of enjoying such blessings, Joe Kennedy at week’s end was in a hospital after suffering a stroke.

It came on a beautifully sunny day. Accompanied by Jack. Old Joe strolled out of his Palm Beach mansion and got into a waiting limousine. Just then, four-year-old Caroline Kennedy appeared at the doorway of the house. “I’m going to the airport with your father.” Joseph Kennedy called. “Would you like to come along?” Of course she would. She climbed onto her grandfather’s lap and went off to wave the President away for Washington.

After the President’s leavetaking, Joe Kennedy returned to his home with Caroline, romped for half an hour with all his visiting grandchildren, then set off to the Palm Beach Golf Club with Ann Gargan, his favorite niece. But on the fairway to the sixth hole, he sat down on the grass, and said that he did not feel well. Ann Gargan took him to the clubhouse in a golf cart, then drove him home. In the front hall, Kennedy spoke briefly to Jackie Kennedy and to Caroline before retiring to his bedroom. He left behind him a stern injunction: “Don’t call any doctors.” But the family, worried by his ashen appearance, ignored the order. After the doctor arrived, Joe Kennedy, still wearing a sports shirt and golf shorts, was taken from bed and driven in a private ambulance with motorcycle escort to St. Mary’s Hospital, where the chaplain gave him the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church.

“Get Things Ready.” President Kennedy learned of his father’s illness shortly after his return to the White House. He had just entered Press Secretary Pierre Salinger’s office when the “hot line” (a telephone connected only to Cabinet officers and other high officials) flashed an amber light. It was Bobby Kennedy on the wire. After a tense conversation, Jack Kennedy replaced the phone on its cradle. He looked stunned. “Dad’s gotten sick,” he told Salinger.

Later that afternoon, President Kennedy got further word of his father’s illness. His Bermuda conference with Brit ain’s Harold Macmillan was less than 48 hours away. But there could be no doubt that Jack Kennedy would fly first to his father’s bedside. “I’m going,” Kennedy told Salinger. “Get things ready.”

While preparations were being made, the President presided over a 45-minute National Security Council meeting. Then he left the White House, walked through the cold rain and fog to a limousine where Bobby Kennedy and Sister Jean Kennedy Smith were waiting. Three minutes after they boarded the big presidential jet, Air Force One, the plane took off for Florida.

The Gathering. In Palm Beach the President conferred with his wife, his mother, Rose Kennedy, and other members of the family. From his father’s three doctors he learned more details about the fact that Joseph Kennedy had suffered an intracranial thrombosis, a blood clot in an artery in the brain. A quickly performed arteriogram—dye injected into the main artery of the neck and photographed by X ray as it flows through the vessels of the brain—had revealed the thrombosis to be in the left cerebral hemisphere, and inoperable. There was some paralysis in Kennedy’s right side, and he was unable to speak.

From all parts of the nation, members of the Kennedy clan gathered. Pat Kennedy Lawford flew in from California; Ted Kennedy came by military jet from Boston, bringing with him Dr. William T. Foley, a Manhattan vascular specialist. From Washington came Eunice Kennedy Shriver, on the same plane that brought Secretary of State Dean Rusk to Palm Beach en route to the Bermuda conference. Ted Kennedy. Jean Smith and Ann Gargan spelled one another in a round-the-clock vigil near Room 355. where Joe Kennedy lay. Across the hall, doctors kept their own vigil. On the door to the doctors’ room was a bronze plaque: “In Memory of Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.* Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy. Sr.”

Between visits to the hospital. President Kennedy conferred with his aides, tried to keep abreast of his official duties. From Bermuda. Harold Macmillan offered to fly to Palm Beach for his talks with the President, or to call off the conference altogether. But when the doctors reported that Joseph Kennedy might continue in his semicomatose condition for weeks. the President decided to go ahead with his Bermuda plans.

On the day after his stroke, Joe Kennedy showed “improvement.” according to his doctors. He was still unable to use his vocal cords, still being fed intravenously and sleeping under sedation most of the time. That afternoon, the military jet carrying Rusk. Ambassador to Britain David Bruce, AECommissioner Glenn Seaborg and other members of the Bermuda conference team arrived in Palm Beach. They left from the airport for the Capton Paul residence (TIME, Dec. 15). where the President was staying. Waiting for them, Jack Kennedy received a telephone call from the hospital. It was his brother Ted. Their father, Ted reported, had awakened and was alert. Abruptly, the President left for the hospital. There, with his brothers and sisters, he spent 20 minutes at Joe Kennedy’s bedside. The old man recognized his children but was unable to speak to them.

At week’s end the power of speech returned to Joe Kennedy. When Richard Cardinal Gushing visited him and assured him he was going to recover, Joe laboriously replied, “I know I will.” But his doctors continued to call the ex-ambassador’s case “serious.”

For Joe Kennedy it had been a long and colorful journey from the Boston of the Mauve Decade to the Palm Beach hospital room. On Wall Street, he had amassed one of the great fortunes of the U.S. He had served his country ably as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, chief of the Maritime Commission and U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. And he had seen his second son become the first Irish Catholic President of the U.S. in history. As a father, he was justifiably proud. “The real measure of success,” he had said, “is to get a family that does as well as mine. I don’t know what you can throw on the table that is better than that.”

* Joseph Jr., a naval lieutenant, died a hero’s death over the English Channel as pilot of a secret “drone” plane, heavy with explosives, which was aimed at a Nazi V-2 site.