True stories about Jack and Jackie Kennedy

1. One afternoon Lowe snapped away while Jackie, clad in a one-piece bathing suit and flowered bathing cap, cavorted in the surf with Jack. In one playful moment, she tried to steady him in a bathtub-sized boat before tipping it over, sending the Democratic presidential nominee into the drink.

2. After two cokes the President and Mrs Kennedy retired to their bedroom. Their life together now had nearly a full day to run. Yet this was to be their last hour of serenity. They hadn’t even an hour. In this plane the hop took only forty-five minutes. Privacy was that limited, confined to a tiny blue cabin racing thirty thousand feet above the tessellated green and brown plains of central Texas. Their time was up. The President emerged in a fresh shirt.

3. Jack did a poor job trying to conceal his pride in Jacqueline’s accomplishments as First Lady. Jack and Jacqueline had received several Grecian and Roman busts and small statuettes, and were to decide which ones to keep and which to return. Jack liked a small piece. The price seemed high to me. “How do you know you’re not being taken, maybe this little statue was , made at a hobby shop a couple of weeks ago?” Red asked. “Ask Jackie.” Jack replied. Red looked sceptical. “Ask Jackie any question you can think off dealing with Roman or Greek history and she will give you the answers.” Jack said. Jack started quizzing his wife with obvious pride.

4. His back had been giving him real trouble, he admitted, but was almost “Miraculously better” last night and today. Jackie told us that she had asked Dr. Janet Travell, the back wizard, for some shot that would take Kennedy’s back pain away, if only just for the birthday party. She had said there was such a shot, but it would remove all feeling below the waist. “We can’t have that, can we Jacqueline?” The President had ruled.

5. There was no question that the new baby was continuing to pull Jack and Jackie closer together. Squaw Island house guest Red Fay went looking for his friend and found him – lying on the bed in the master bedroom with Jackie in his arms. After a red-faced Red sputtered his apologies, Jack just laughed. “Don’t worry about it.” He told his mortified buddy. “We’re just lying here chatting.”

6. Spalding like the others, witnessed a heightened intimacy between his hosts. “They folded into each other on the couch” he said. “You couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.” Once Spalding saw Jackie beginning to get emotional. Before Spalding could do or say anything Jack was “at her side with a tissue, wiping her tears and holding her. They didn’t seem interested in hiding their feelings anymore.” At private moments like this “You almost felt like you were intruding. There were times when I had to look away.”

7. It was a dark, unlit road with towering ficus hedges on one side. They sneaked up the hill, practically on all fours, staying as low as they could so Jack wouldn’t see them in his rear-view mirror. “When  I say one, two, three we’ll jump up and scare them.” Morton whispered. “One, two, three. Surprise!” Morton jumped up and stuck his head in the open window. Jackie was lying on her back. Her head was next to the driver’s door. Her dress was bunched up above her thighs. Her right leg was slung across the seat. When she saw Morton she let out a piercing scream. Jack was down on the floor. He smacked the back of his head on the steering wheel as he came up. “We-uh-lost the cigarette lighter.” Jack told Morton.

8. Jack was soaking in a bathtub at Glen Ora, talking to Dave Powers about his appointments. Dave was sitting taking notes, when suddenly Jackie burst into the room. She had been out riding, and she had a whip in her hand. She was wearing a long white riding shirt and nothing else. “Your next appointment –“ Dave said, stopping midsentence. “His last appointment has passed.” Jackie said. “Just cancel the rest of his appointments.”

“I felt so much sexual energy.” Dave said later. “Like nothing was going to stop her from having Jack.”

9. He was far too cool even in such times of crisis, Jackie explained, “to say, ‘Sit down, I have something to tell you.’” But when she heard of the contingency plans to evacuate her and the children to the presidential retreat high atop Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, Jackie protested. “Please don’t send me away to Camp David,” she pleaded with Jack, who presumably would have stayed behind with his top advisers in the crowded White House bomb shelter in the event of the nuclear attack. “Please don’t send me anywhere if anything happens, we’re all going to stay right here with you.”

“But Jackie . . .”

 “Even if there's no room in the bomb shelter in the White House ...,” she went on. “Please, then I just want to be on the lawn when it happens. I want to be with you, I want to die with you, and the children do too — rather than live without you.” Jack looked deep into her eyes. “All right,” he said, “then I promise I won’t send you and the children away.” Jackie detected a sense of relief in her husband’s voice. “He didn’t really want to send me away, either,” she said of that moment

10. The next morning, after returning to the hospital to thank the doctors and staff, Kennedy went back to his wife. Jacqueline Kennedy -- who later regretted that she revealed the fact -- admitted that he wept when telling her the news. “There’s one thing I couldn’t stand Jack and that’s if I ever lost you.” Jackie told him. He nodded. “I know, I know.”

11. .One afternoon while waiting to be photographed at a champagne reception, Jackie got bored. She loved to play tricks and tease Jack, so she grabs a nearby floral wreath and put it around Jack’s neck like a racehorse. She absolutely doubled over in laugher at Jack, while he was a little embarrassed, but he enjoyed her teasing regardless if he would admit. He exclaimed, “dammit, Jackie, take this thing off me, and don’t act so stupid. I can’t be photographed this way, for Christ’s sake.” giggling, Jackie proceeded to make funny faces at Jack.

12. It was the President’s turn to gaze adoringly when Jackie appeared wearing a white silk crepe gown with a bodice embroidered in silver thread, all beneath a floor length cape with a high mandarin collar. Diamond pendant earrings on loan from Tiffany and white opera gloves completed the look. Jack escorted her down to the red room, where a small group of friends were waiting. “Darling.” Jack said as he lifted his Champaign glass, “You’ve never looked lovelier.”