Nation: Family Thanksgiving

The march of foreign dignitaries continued. After Adenauer came Belgium’s Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak to discuss the Congo, and India’s U.N. Delegate V. K. Krishna Menon, on orders of Jawaharlal Nehru to try to persuade President Kennedy that his cold war views are not really anti-American (he failed). But despite such affairs of state, John Kennedy’s Thanksgiving week was celebrated by family festivities much like those in millions of other American homes—well, almost.

Some Jelly Sandwiches. For one thing, there was a joint birthday party for Caroline Kennedy, just turning four, and John Jr., 1. On hand were 15 friends and cousins—along with a woolly black monkey named Susie. Hostess Jacqueline Kennedy had hoped to borrow a Baltimore Zoo chimpanzee with a knack for drawing pictures, but she learned that the artist-animal was undependable around children. So Susie was invited instead. She shook hands with the children and mimicked them. After the monkey came other party treats, such as tricycling in the marbled White House corridors and watching animated cartoons in the presidential projection room. Menu for the day: milk, jelly sandwiches, ice cream and birthday cake with candles.

Next day the Kennedys took off for Hyannisport. Boarding a helicopter on the White House lawn, Jack had to wait 20 minutes for Jackie. As he sat reading a newspaper in the chopper, Caroline joined him. Then she spied her Russian dog, Pushinka, a gift last summer from Nikita Khrushchev, and bounded across the lawn in pursuit. President Kennedy got out of the helicopter, retrieved his daughter, sent an aide into the White House to see what was delaying his wife, and finally the family departed. At Andrews Air Force Base, the Kennedys transferred to an Air Force jet, shared it during the 50-minute ride to Hyannisport with 17 relatives and guests, including Robert Kennedy, Brother-in-Law Sargent Shriver and Under Secretary of the Navy Paul Fay Jr. and their families.

A Groaning Board. At the Cape, the Kennedys disappeared into the family compound, observed Thanksgiving in grey and clammy New England weather. Jacqueline Kennedy gathered Caroline into her lap, described how the Pilgrims had landed 28 miles away at Plymouth Rock.* The Kennedy men watched the Green Bay Packers-Detroit Lions professional football game on television; then, led by Bobby and Ted Kennedy while the President remained idle, they went outside for a brisk period of touch football. The President, his sisters, and brother Ted also drove into Hyannis to the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. memorial skating rink; all but Jack put on rented skates and spent an hour playing tag on the ice and practicing figure eights. That evening, after the children had eaten, the Kennedy adults sat down in Father Joe’s dining room to a groaning board: Vermont turkey, candied sweet potatoes, cranberries from nearby bogs and assorted pies.

*Her husband’s Thanksgiving proclamation had suggested that “the head of each family” should “recount to his children the story of the first New England Thanksgiving.”