The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded by Ronald Kessler

Author:Ronald Kessler [KESSLER, RONALD]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography / Business
ISBN: 9781455521876
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2012-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

17

BINGO

Arthur Krock had an eye for pretty women, and when he saw Inga Arvad at Columbia University’s School of Journalism he was dazzled. Blonde and blue-eyed, the five-foot, four-inch twenty-eight-year-old student was stunningly beautiful. At the age of seventeen, at a contest in southern France, she had been crowned Beauty Queen of Denmark. She could speak and write in four languages.

After a meeting of the Pulitzer Prize Board at the school, Krock made a point of asking her who she was. She asked if he could help her find a newspaper job. “I was so stupefied by the beauty of this creature that I said I would,” Krock said.

“That procurer,” as Frank Waldrop called Krock, recommended Arvad to him. Waldrop hired her to write the Washington Times-Herald’s “Did You Happen to See…” column. The column presented superficial interviews with Washington personalities.

Again at Krock’s suggestion, Arvad moved in temporarily with Huidekoper. “Inga was extremely attractive, with a lovely sort of soft purring laugh,” Huidekoper recalled. “She was part child, part seductress. She was lovely fun.”

Kick introduced Inga to her brother Jack, and Inga did a column on him. On June 24, 1941, Jack had joined the United States Naval Reserve as a seaman second class. Jack told his friend Red Fay that Joe’s influence was “instrumental” in getting him into the navy despite his poor health. Joe got his friend Captain Alan Goodrich Kirk to arrange to have a medical friend give Jack a second physical, which he passed. Kirk also got Jack assigned to a cushy job. On October 6, he was appointed an ensign and assigned to work on the Daily Digest in the office of the chief of naval operations in Washington. The publication summarized local and world events.

In a memoir, Arvad recalled how she first learned about Jack. Kathleen was at Huidekoper’s Georgetown house and was “curled up like a kitten, her long tawny hair fell over her face as she read a letter; then she jumped up….” Her “Irish-blue eyes flashed with excitement as she leaped onto the floor and began a whirling dance like some delightful dervish.” She said, “He’s coming to Washington. I’m going to give a party at the F Street Club, you will just love him!”

“Who?” Arvad asked.

“Jack,” Kick said. “He’s in the Navy and is going to be stationed in Washington. Super, super.”

Arvad decided Kick had not exaggerated. “He had the charm that makes birds come out of their trees,” she wrote. “He looked like her twin, the same thick mop of hair, the same blue eyes, natural, engaging, ambitious, warm, and when he walked into a room, you knew he was there, not pushing, not domineering, but exuding animal magnetism….”

Jack’s book Why England Slept had just been published, and Cissy Patterson, publisher of the paper, suggested she do a column on Jack.

“An old Scandinavian proverb says the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Arvad wrote in the November 27, 1941, issue. “No better American proof can be found than in John F.

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