November 4, 1963: The Kennedy Kids In the Oval Office

November 4, 1963: With First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy away, President John F. Kennedy did something she would not have allowed: He let Cecil Stoughton, the official White House photographer, into the Oval Office. He took pictures of JFK playing with his children Caroline and John Jr.

Always protective of her privacy, and her family's, Jackie didn't like it when pictures were taken of the kids, but Jack knew it helped the family's image. Both the photo of Caroline and John dancing, and John under the Resolute Desk, became icons of the "Camelot" era.

The desk was a gift from Britain's Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, and was built from the oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute, which the U.S. Navy had rescued from its own failed mission to rescue a lost ship. (The ship they were looking for was later found by another ship, but all hands they were looking for had long been lost.)

The 1,300-pound desk was created by William Evenden, a skilled joiner at Chatham Dockyard in Kent, probably from a design by Morant, Boyd, & Blanford. The kneehole panel that John Kennedy Jr. played in was added in 1945.

President Kennedy was assassinated 18 days later. The desk was put in storage, and later became part of a traveling exhibit of items that would later be put into his Presidential Library in Boston. But it never made it there: President Jimmy Carter asked for it to be returned to the White House, which it was, and every President since has used it. Every Presidential Library, including JFK's, has a replica of the Oval Office as it looked during his Presidency, including a replica of the desk then in use.

Interviewed by Oprah Winfrey in 1997, John F. Kennedy Jr., then 36 years old, said that he didn't remember playing under the desk. He also said he didn't remember giving the salute to the coffin at the funeral, which took place on his 3rd birthday. He did say he remembered his father calling him "Sam," which he didn't like.

Apparently, it was the President yelling, "John! John!" after his son that led to John Jr. being nicknamed "John-John," which followed him for the rest of his life.

Cecil Stoughton, the photographer, was an Iowa native, and 43 years old at the time of the photos. He had also taken several photos of JFK on his yacht off the coast of Hyannis Port, Massachusetts; the photo of John and Robert Kennedy with Marilyn Monroe at the old Madison Square Garden in 1962; and the photo Lyndon Johnson's swearing-in aboard Air Force One after the assassination.

From 1967 to 1973, he was the official photographer for the National Park Service. He died in 2008, and, like President Kennedy and his brothers, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

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November 4, 1963 was a Monday. This was also the day The Beatles played the Royal Variety Show in London, in front of Elizabeth the Queen Mother. I have a separate entry for that date.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek: There would be no Monday Night Football for another 7 years. The NBA and NHL seasons were underway, but no games were scheduled for either league on this day. 

October 20, 1968: Jacqueline Kennedy Marries Aristotle Onassis

October 20, 1968: A year of shocking events hasn't run out of them yet. This one disturbed people on a level they didn't know they had.

Jacqueline Kennedy, former First Lady of the United States, widow of the martyred President John F. Kennedy, the most popular person in America, married Aristotle Onassis, Greek shipping tycoon, on Skorpios, a private island that Onassis owned in the Ionian Sea.

In his 1988 book 1968 in America, journalist Charles Kaiser called it "the final shock." Kennedy fans couldn't believe that she was remarrying, especially to someone seen to be, in spite of his great wealth, a low-class person. Catholics couldn't believe she was marrying a man who was not only was divorced, but from a woman who was still alive. And people who may not have liked the Kennedys, but considered themselves to be American patriots, were infuriated that she would be living abroad with Onassis.

No one was willing to see it from her perspective. She had lost her husband, and had just lost his brother, who was both Jack's and Jackie's best friend, both to senseless acts of violence, on American soil. The great America could not protect its President or one of its Senators. Jackie had 2 small children. What was she supposed to think? That her children were safe?

This was not about love. Living abroad with "Ari," she, Caroline and John Jr. would have both financial security, about which she had always worried, personal security.

Her saintly image shattered, the woman now known as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, or Jackie Onassis, or "Jackie O," was now fair game for comedians. The NBC variety show Laugh-In had sketches showing Jackie as a flighty, free-spending fool, while Ari was oblivious to everything.

But, for the first time, the real Jackie was living on her own terms. She even took her kids and her new husband to Shea Stadium for the 1969 World Series between the New York Mets and the Baltimore Orioles.

While they were married, they lived on Skorpios, Onassis' house in the Greek capital of Athens, Onassis' apartment in central Paris, Jackie's 5th Avenue apartment in Manhattan, Jackie's horse farm in Peapack, New Jersey, and on Onassis' yacht, named Christina O for his daughter, who was 17 at the time of the marriage. By maintaining her friendships with Bobby's widow Ethel, and the last surviving brother, Ted, Jackie remained part of the Kennedy orbit.

Aristotle Onassis died in 1975. His financial legacy was severely limited under Greek law, which dictated how much a non-Greek surviving spouse could inherit. After 2 years of legal wrangling, Jackie accepted a settlement of $26 million from Christina, his sole heir, and waived all other claims to the Onassis estate. (Christina died in 1988, from a heart attack, only 37 years old.)

A two-time widow at 46, Jacqueline did not marry a third time, although, in 1980, she was often seen in the company of Maurice Tempelsman, a Belgian-born diamond merchant. They were together for the rest of her life. She lived mostly in New York, became a book editor, and led the effort to save Grand Central Terminal from replacement and destruction. She died in 1994, 64 years old, from non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She was buried next to President Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery.

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October 20, 1968 was a Sunday. This was also the day that Dick Fosbury won the Gold Medal in the high jump at the Olympic Games in Mexico City. In so doing, he changed the event forever, using the technique that became known as the Fosbury Flop. I have a separate entry for that event.

In the NFL:

* The New York Giants lost to the San Francisco 49ers, 26-10 at Yankee Stadium.

* The Chicago Bears beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 29-16 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

* The Cleveland Browns beat the Baltimore Colts, 30-20 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.

* The New Orleans Saints beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, 16-12 at Pitt Stadium in Pittsburgh.

* The Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions played to a tie, 14-14 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit.

* The Dallas Cowboys beat the Minnesota Vikings, 20-7 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The football version of the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Washington Redskins, 41-14 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis.

* And the Los Angeles Rams beat the Atlanta Falcons, 27-14 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

And in the American Football League:

* The New York Jets beat the Houston Oilers, 20-14 at the Astrodome in Houston.

* The Boston Patriots beat the Buffalo Bills, 230-6 at Fenway Park in Boston.

* The Miami Dolphins beat the Cincinnati Bengals, 24-22 at Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati.

* The Kansas City Chiefs beat their arch-rivals, the Oakland Raiders, 24-10 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* And the San Diego Chargers beat the Denver Broncos, 55-24 at San Diego Stadium (later Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium).

The baseball season ended 10 days earlier, with the Detroit Tigers beating the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 7 of the World Series. There were no games in the NHL. There were 4 games played in the NBA:

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 114-96 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. The Lakers got 36 points from Elgin Baylor, 20 from Jerry West, but only 15 from Wilt Chamberlain. The Sixers got 35 points from Hal Greer.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Detroit Pistons, 106-88 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit.

* The Phoenix Suns beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 116-107 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.

* And the San Diego Rockets beat the San Francisco Warriors, 123-108 at the Cow Palace outside San Francisco in Daly City, California. Elvin Hayes had 32 points and 24 rebounds for the Rockets, who moved to Houston in 1971.

And there was 1 game played in the American Basketball Association: The Oakland Oaks beat the Indiana Pacers, 144-133 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum (now the Corteva Coliseum) in Indianapolis.