My Life in the Kennedy White House, Part 2

A Lady, First: My Life in the Kennedy White House and the American Embassies of Paris and Rome
by Letitia Baldridge

(Page 2 of 3)

When my father ran for Congress, I was the only one in the family who wanted to accompany him on his campaign swings to western Nebraska in the old maroon Pontiac, hoping to pick up some votes. The candidate made a policy of giving a political speech only if there were more than four people sitting outside the grocery store on a town's main street. They were mostly men, smoking, leaning back on their wooden chairs, passing the time of day together. But they were voters, and my father was determined to reach them-ten-minute speeches, many handshakes. I did not understand the message my father was relaying over and over, but it was fun to see this part of the state that was so different from our big, sophisticated city of Omaha.

We would often be invited to lunch in a farmer's kitchen, served at a big round table that was usually covered with a printed oilcloth with a special scent. The women always looked tired, but also proud of their food, which took them all morning to prepare. There would be fried chicken, steaming mashed potatoes dotted with blobs of melting butter, platters of wholesome breads, and separate serving bowls of whatever vegetables happened to be available. Pies, too, hot delicious fruit pies. My father explained to me afterward that our host family would do without to serve us such a special meal. Many of them lived a humble life, some without indoor plumbing. I was amazed to see they used outhouses instead of bathrooms. Eventually other farmers would join the table to ask my father questions about what those overbred, elitist, patent-leather-pumped politicians in Washington were going to do about the drought-stricken bread basket of America. Because of the presence of the congressman's little daughter, they edited out the cuss words. I didn't understand what they were saying, but I certainly understood the emotions involved.

By far the most important piece of furniture in the house in Omaha was the heavy oval mahogany dinner table. It must have weighed a ton. The ersatz Queen Anne chairs were constantly occupied at mealtime with family, adult friends, and child friends. Millie never knew how many would be coming for dinner. If Mac, Bob, or I were late for meals, woe be unto us, because certain small punishments would head in our direction. We had to come to the table with hands washed, hair combed, and clean clothes. The boys had to wear sweaters or jackets, with their shirttails tucked in. If there was no guest for dinner, I could get away with not having to change from my drab brown convent uniform. Millie, the cook-housekeeper who was with us for many years, cooked mountains of food and washed vast piles of laundry without a word of complaint, and kept us from stealing our favorite food from her kitchen. She worked six days a week, twelve hours a day, for a salary of about $15 weekly. She loved her job, was cheerful, and lorded it over her friends because she worked for the well-known Baldrige family. It was the Great Depression; she and her daughter Clarice were part of our family, and we were part of hers.

The dinner table was the training lab where our manners were observed and corrected. ("Malcolm, put down your knife! You do not use it to clean the corn out of your teeth!" "Tish, stop slurping your soup. I don't want to hear one sound out of you from now until the last spoonful of soup is gone!") Each meal was an active class in grammar and civility. "Thank you, Millie, for the fried chicken," "Please pass the peas, darling little sister Tish" (always said with a sneer). If the behavior instructions were not followed, there would be no more dinner for that recalcitrant child. From the child's point of view, it was much easier and more pleasant all around to obey. We had to eat everything served to us on our plates, which was common in those days. I hated beets, but a violent dislike of something was no reason for not eating it. I ate my beets.

When the Baldrige kids lapsed into heated arguments at the table, raucous teasing, and occasional biffing of one another, a deep voice would suddenly ring out with the solemnity of a Moses presenting the Commandments. My father would command, "Table silence!" All noise would immediately stop. The head of the house would lay his wristwatch down on the table for exactly ten minutes, during which time only he and Mother could speak. We were not allowed to say one word. It was torture. We suddenly had so many things we wanted to say.

The dinner table was where each child reported on what he or she had done that day. If we stumbled over our words, our parents immediately picked up on it and asked how things were going in that department. All our problems and hang-ups were vocalized in the middle of the meat loaf and peas and dealt with, right then and there. No sibling was allowed to make fun of anyone else. We were taught to give support when it was needed. When I reported, for example, that a girl at school that day had made fun of me for being so tall, a brother would suddenly rise to my defense and say, "She's not on the basketball team like you, is she? She's probably really jealous. Next time she pulls something like that, tell her to go stretch herself a foot or two, and then maybe she'll make an athletic team." We'd all laugh, and I would be over it. The dinner table was definitely the problem-solving area for the family. When Bob complained that his softball team didn't have enough money to get equipment needed for the opening spring game in Elmwood Park, Mother would ask just why the boys weren't out earning the money themselves on weekends-mowing lawns in summer, raking leaves in the fall, shoveling snow and bringing in wood in the winter for the neighbors. Maybe my brothers would not jump to embrace our parents' suggestions, but it got their own brains going as to how they were going to solve the problem. Crafty parents.

Sunday lunch, although it meant an agonizingly long time spent at table, also meant great food, particularly in summer, when the fresh peach ice cream always resulted in fistfights over "who gets to lick the ice cream paddle" in the hand-turned freezer. The most regular guest at our Sunday lunch table was my father's Baptist minister. We would go to Mass Sunday morning, while my father would go later to the service at his church, returning in time for lunch with the minister, who was handsomely dressed in a dark gray formal suit, with striped trousers, like an usher in a wedding. Small and slight, he looked minute next to the big bear who was our father. He greatly enjoyed Millie's food, and even more his weekly treat from my father: a pint of bourbon with branch water, finished within a two-hour time frame. My father would then "escort" him home in his car and see him safely to his bedroom, where the pastor surely slipped away swiftly into the loveliest of Sabbath slumbers.

When I was less than four years old, my life was suddenly changed by the death of "Nana" Connell, my mother's mother, who was living with us at the time. It was my first contact with death, and I remember praying on my knees by the side of the bed, next to my mother, for an endlessly long time until "she breathed her last," as the nurse in attendance described it. Mother drew the picture in my mind of two angels bearing her aloft to heaven. It was clear, uncontested, very pleasant. Nana lay in an open casket for viewing for two days downstairs, as was customary in the Catholic Church at the time. (I have not gazed into a casket since.) The children in the neighborhood were fascinated, I remember. They came in and out giggling and being shushed by the grown-ups who arrived to offer condolences to my mother and her Connell relations. No light ever seemed to penetrate the room, with its dark blue velvet walls where Nana lay in state, except when someone sat reading in the Morris chair, with a nearby bronze lamp casting a small amount of light through a jewel-encrusted metal shade.

Copyright © 2001, Viking Press, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc, used by permission.

About the Author

Letitia Baldridge is perhaps best known for her role as Chief of Staff for Mrs. Kennedy and Social Secretary to the White House during the Kennedy Administration. She has also served as an advisor to four other First Ladies. The head of her own PR and marketing firm, Letitia Baldrige Enterprises, she is a prolific author whose etiquette books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide.