“Yay! Ice cream!” the kids would yell, as they piled onto the golf cart around him. There might be ten or twelve piled onto that cart, sitting, standing, hanging off the sides. The president would take off down the driveway, a huge grin on his face, and cut across the lawn behind Bobby’s house, toward his house, in an effort to lose the Secret Service follow-up car. He’d end up in the driveway of his own house, which fed onto Irving Avenue, hang a right, and then a left onto Longwood.
You could hear the kids screaming, “Go faster! Go faster!” from two blocks away.
At the corner of Longwood and Wachusett Avenue, next door to the post office, there was a tiny news store that had ice cream and candy. Everybody would pile out and order their ice-cream cones.
President and Mrs. Kennedy on the Marlin, Hyannis Port
Saturday meant going aboard the Marlin, Ambassador Kennedy’s personal yacht, for lunchtime cruises. The fifty-two-foot motor yacht was just large enough to accommodate the president, Mrs. Kennedy, a few guests, a small crew, and a couple of Secret Service agents. Lunch meant clam chowder or fish chowder, from a favorite family recipe made by the Kennedys’ cook. The aroma drove me crazy, and the whole time I was out on the boat, I’d be hoping one of the agents had gone to Mildred’s that day and there’d be some leftover chowder in the fridge at the cottage for my dinner.
We would put a security perimeter around the yacht, consisting of one or two Coast Guard boats and two Navy jetboats, all operated by military personnel under the direction of Secret Service agents on board. I always worked one of the speedy jetboats with Jim Bartlett at the helm ready to intercept someone when necessary or to take Mrs. Kennedy water-skiing if she so desired. The press would usually have a charter boat of their own, to follow and observe the presidential party. We kept them outside the security perimeter, much to their dismay.
JUST PRIOR TO that first trip to Hyannis Port, shortly after Mrs. Kennedy and I returned from Greece, Mrs. Kennedy was taking her usual morning walk on the oval driveway on the White House south grounds. As always, I was in close enough proximity in case anything were to happen, yet trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. She had been walking in silence, as she often did, her pace brisk, her head held high and her posture erect. When she was silent like this, I knew she had something on her mind that she was trying to sort out. Suddenly she stopped and turned to me with a look of excitement in her eyes, like she’d just come up with a brilliant idea.
“Mr. Hill?” she asked. “Do you know if there has ever been a state dinner held away from the White House?”
The question took me by surprise. I could practically see the wheels spinning inside her head.
“I don’t know for sure, Mrs. Kennedy. Why do you ask?”
“Say we were to have a state dinner somewhere like Mount Vernon—would that be an issue for the Secret Service?”
“I don’t see that it would be a problem from our perspective. It would require some advance planning, but we would do everything we could to secure the area and make the location as safe as having a function on the White House grounds.”
“Oh good,” she said, with excitement in her voice. “The dinner that President de Gaulle held for us at Versailles was so magical, I have been trying to think where we could do something just as special. I think George Washington’s home would be perfect.”
With that, she resumed her exercise pace, and spoke not another word about it.
I had no idea as to exactly what she had in mind, or when or for whom she had this dinner planned. However, just like when she had told me about Middleburg, I alerted Jerry Behn’s office about the conversation, and added, “Knowing Mrs. Kennedy as I do, unless the president vetoes the idea, there is going to be a state dinner at Mount Vernon sometime in the not too distant future.”
Thus it was not a surprise to the Secret Service when the announcement was made that an official state dinner was going to be held on July 11, 1961, for the visiting president Mohammad Ayub Khan of Pakistan—not at the White House, but at Mount Vernon, the historic home of President George Washington. Situated on the banks of the Potomac a few miles south of the nation’s capital, the setting was stunning. It was also a logistical nightmare.
Mrs. Kennedy’s interest in history and keen sense of pageantry was never so evident as it was, fresh on the heels of her visit to Paris and the spectacular dinner at Versailles, when she proposed and planned this elaborate state dinner—the first one ever held off White House grounds. Mrs. Kennedy saw the dinner as an opportunity to remind people of the revolutionary beginnings of the United States and how we as a people had fought to acquire freedom and independence. She wanted this occasion to be so different, so special, that it would be long remembered, and set a standard for future state dinners. From the moment she got the idea into her head, it was like she was directing a Broadway play, preparing for opening night.
The eighteenth-century estate of Mount Vernon was not equipped to accommodate such a large, elaborate event, as there was no electricity or indoor plumbing. But Mrs. Kennedy had a vision, and once she put her mind to something, there was no
