THE PRESIDENCY
With a Secret Service man at the wheel, the car carrying Jacqueline Kennedy and her two children turned into the driveway of a Cape Cod farm where the Kennedys keep their horses. Caroline, 5, and her brother, John Jr., 2, scrambled out of the car and raced toward the stables. It was just after 11 a.m.—time for the kids to go riding. They were raring to go, but Jackie did not leave the car to join them. She had just had the first twinge of labor pains, more than five weeks prematurely.
So, last week, for the President and his wife began an agonizing period that ended with the death of an infant son.
When Jackie told the Secret Service man of her pains, he sprinted for the farmhouse, phoned the Kennedy sum mer home on Squaw Island and asked that someone summon Dr. John Walsh, Jackie's obstetrician, who was "vacationing" on the Cape, while actually on stand-by in the event that Jackie's time might come ahead of schedule. Then the Secret Service man rounded up Caroline and John, took them to the car and sped off for Squaw Island, eight miles away.
Into Surgery. Dr. Walsh was waiting at the summer home. "I think I'm going to have the baby," said Jackie. Gently, she told Caroline and John that she had to leave, suggested they might have their lunch at "Grampy Joe" Kennedy's place down the beach. Then she packed a bag. By 11:20 a.m., Jackie, Dr. Walsh and a Secret Service man were in a helicopter bound for Otis Air Force Base hospital, 20 miles away.
The base was well prepared for the crisis. Mrs. Kennedy has a medical record of premature births, and both her children were delivered by caesarean section. If the baby had not been premature, it would have been born at Washington's Walter Reed Hospital. But, just in case, the Air Force had long since readied a ten-room suite (nursery, kitchen, two lounges and six bedrooms) at Otis. By the time Jackie arrived, 200 special guards had been posted around the 22,000-acre base. Three airmen with Jackie's blood type (A1 Rh positive) had been picked several weeks ago, and now stood by to give blood transfusions. At noon one gave two pints for Jackie. She had gone into surgery as soon as she arrived.
Not Even a Toothbrush. Meanwhile, Dr. Janet Travell, the White House physician, who was also on a Cape Cod vacation, phoned the President in Washington to tell him the news. Within 19 minutes of her call, John Kennedy, half a dozen hastily gathered newsmen and several White House staffers were aboard Air Force helicopters, bound from the White House lawn to Andrews Air Force Base. No one in the party, including the President, had so much as a toothbrush along.
Since neither of the two presidential Boeing 707 jets was available for the rush trip to Cape Cod, Kennedy took a twinjet, eight-passenger Lockheed Jet-star—an airplane never before used by a President because it lacks the intricate communications facilities that go with the Chief Executive whenever he is in the air. While President Kennedy was still on the way, a ten-member military medical team assisted Dr. Walsh with the caesarean delivery. And at 12:52 p.m., a baby boy (4 Ibs. 10 oz., and 17 in. long) was born to Jackie Kennedy.