Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot by J. Randy Taraborrelli

Author:J. Randy Taraborrelli [Taraborrelli, J. Randy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Large Type Books, Legislators' Spouses, Presidents' Spouses, Biography & Autobiography, Women
ISBN: 9780739407974
Google: HKURZMquo28C
Amazon: 044656463X
Publisher: Warner Books
Published: 2000-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

*In fact, it would be eight years before Jackie would return to her former home, in 1971 when President Nixon and his wife, Pat, invited her and her children for dinner to view her and Jack’s offi- cial portraits.

Joan’s Bottled-Up Anxiety

Ethel Kennedy had predicted that the home originally chosen by Joan when she and her family moved to Wash- ington would prove to be too small. Perhaps she felt vindi- cated when she learned that after less than a year, in January 1964, Joan and Ted decided they needed more space, and moved into another home in Georgetown. The red-brick, vine-covered home with white-trimmed win- dows, selected by Joan, was a real find, boasting a large drawing room, library, and dining room. This five-bedroom, five-bathroom home was truly a palace, possibly fit more for a queen than for a senator’s wife. The house was such a large, formidable structure that taxicab drivers often mis- took it for a hospital. Because it was a completely unchar- acteristic environment for the rather simple tastes of Joan, some in the Kennedys’ circle began to wonder about the reasons behind the purchase.

“We knew there was a problem afoot when she moved into that house,” said one of Joan’s friends, today the wife of a senator but at the time married to a newspaper reporter. “She was overcompensating for something that was missing in her life, or at least that’s how most people saw it. We knew that her drinking was getting worse. You couldn’t keep that kind of thing a secret in Washington. Whenever Joan would go to lunch and have one too many cocktails, people talked.”

Whether or not Joan was “compensating” for some lack in her life, she was now truly living the full Kennedy expe-

Joan’s Bottled-Up Anxiety 373

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