Nation: Jackie in Greece

A crowd of 200 citizens lined up respectfully behind the rope barriers and watched as the 125-ft. yacht North Wind backed up to the quay at the thyme-scented village of Epidaurus. A tall, handsome young woman stepped from the yacht and walked the length of the pier alone, followed at a distance by her four yachting companions. She was tawny with the Aegean sun, barelegged, dressed casually in a sleeveless beige dress—and it was hard to realize that she was the same Jacqueline Kennedy who had swept like a queen through Paris, Vienna and London only a few days before.

Flags & Electra. Late that afternoon, in the splendid open-air theater of Epidaurus, Jackie sat in rapt attention on a stone bench while actors of the National Theater of Greece performed an emotion-packed scene from Sophocles’ Electra. “I don’t speak Greek,” she said after the performance, “but I know Electra and other Greek tragedies very well from studying them at school.” As the North Wind pulled out of Epidaurus harbor and headed for a long weekend among the Aegean isles, Jackie stood in the stern, waving farewell with a tiny blue and white Greek flag.

The First Lady’s week in Greece was a respite after the rigors of her grand tour of the week before. When her husband flew back to the U.S., she lingered on in London for two days of rest and antique hunting. Then she flew off for her Grecian odyssey. Her companions were her sister and brother-in-law, Prince and Princess Radziwill; John Mowinckel, deputy public affairs officer with the USIA in Paris, and his wife. In Greece, Jackie was the official guest of Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis, but being a poor man with only a small apartment in Athens. the Premier delegated his friend Marcos Nomikos, a wealthy shipping magnate and a member of the Greek parliament, as substitute host. Nomikos put the North Wind and his villa in a seaside suburb of Athens (with a splendid, theatrical view of the distant Acropolis) at Jackie’s disposal. While Jackie and her friends sunned and swam at the villa, units of the Greek navy patrolled the sea. a mile offshore, waving off intruders. When chartered yachts, full of newsmen, came too close, an excitable officer aboard a navy launch waved and shouted, “Not stop here! Not stop here! Mrs. Kennedy!” The helmsman left his wheel to join the shouting, and the launch crashed grandly into one of the press yachts for emphasis.

Apollo & Grope Leaves. After Epidaurus, the North Wind headed for the gemlike isle of Poros and a postcard panorama of lemon trees, whitewashed buildings, and brightly colored caïques in the harbor. The Greek government cut Delos, the island where Apollo was born, off from the outside world for a day, so that Jackie could enjoy its rubbled splendors alone. At Mykonos, an island with a population of 5,000 and 333 churches, every wall in the capital city, and even the cobblestoned streets, had been given a fresh coat of whitewash. In a tavern in Hydra, Jackie enthusiastically joined a group of natives dancing the Kalamatianos.

This week, the North Wind will touch the Greek mainland again, and after a round of formal entertainment, Jackie Kennedy will fly home again, ending a trip that wowed the Western world.