Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    John and Caroline: Their Lives in Pictures
    John and Caroline: Their Lives in Pictures
    John and Caroline: Their Lives in Pictures
    Ebook288 pages1 hour

    John and Caroline: Their Lives in Pictures

    By James Spada

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    They were America's children, symbolic of hope and youth, then of tragedy, and finally of the enduring power of the Kennedy legacy. In the 255 vibrant photographs in this book - mostly never before published - we watch John and Caroline grow up in the adoring, and sometimes harsh, glare of public attention.

    They were the youngest children to live in the White House in over a century - Caroline just three and John Jr. a newborn when their father took the oath of office. Symbolizing the youthful vigor of the new administration, they won the hearts of the American people as they romped around - and under - their father's desk in the Oval Office. And when, three years later, Caroline kissed JKF's coffin and John Jr. saluted the passing bier, they were forever etched into the nations' collective heart.

    We see their awkward adolescence, their sorrows at senseless losses in the family, their first forays into romance, their efforts to establish themselves as responsible adults, their happy marriages and Caroline's motherhood. And we watch in admiration as Caroline recovers from the untimely death of her beloved brother to assume the mantle of the Camelot legend.

    This is a book that will tug at the heart-strings of all who remember fondly these two remarkable American offspring.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateSep 27, 2016
    ISBN9781250138835
    John and Caroline: Their Lives in Pictures
    Author

    James Spada

    James Spada is a writer and photographer whose many books have included bestselling biographies of Grace Kelly, Peter Lawford, Bette Davis and Barbra Streisand. Spada has also created pictorial biographies of John and Caroline Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Jackie Onassis, among others. He lives in Natick, Massachusetts.

    Read more from James Spada

    Related to John and Caroline

    Related ebooks

    Photography For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      DYNASTY Of GRIEF And GREATNESS

      Sep 11, 2019

      On the evening of Friday, August 2, some 30 members of the Kennedy family gathered around a firepit in the grounds of their famous compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. On the Saturday and Sunday they sailed and swam in the blue waters off Cape Co

      7 min read

    • Article

      Dynasty Of Grief And Greatness

      Sep 11, 2019

      Dynasty Of Grief And Greatness
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Last Kennedy

      Apr 21, 2019

      The Last Kennedy
      16 min read

    • Article

      Carolyn BESSETTE-KENNEDY

      Jul 3, 2019

      Carolyn BESSETTE-KENNEDY
      6 min read

    • Article

      Dazzling Duchess

      May 5, 2020

      Dazzling Duchess
      3 min read

    • Article

      Royals Rocked By Tell-all Book

      Apr 17, 2022

      There’s been a deluge of royal tomes in recent years, but none so far has been as widely anticipated – or feared, if you’re a royal – than Tina Brown’s impending The Palace Papers: Inside The House Of Windsor – The Truth And The Turmoil. A close frie

      2 min read

    • Article

      Meghan’s Palace Games Exposed

      Jul 24, 2022

      Meghan’s Palace Games Exposed
      2 min read

    • Article

      Nancy Sinatra Sr., First Wife And Early Muse Of Frank Sinatra, Dies At 101

      Jul 14, 2018

      Nancy Sinatra Sr., the first of Frank Sinatra's four wives and the mother of the legendary singer's three children, died Friday. She was 101. Sinatra's daughter, pop singer Nancy Sinatra, who had a 1966 hit with "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," co

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Summer Of Jaws

      Aug 7, 2018

      The summer after my sophomore year of college, I got braces—and my jaw broken. On purpose. My doctor called it preventive surgery, which made it sound prudent. My jaw had been growing out of alignment for years, and his description of a pain- and hea

      2 min read

    • Article

      Meghan’s Bitter Showdown With Royal Family 4 Days After Her Wedding

      Jun 22, 2020

      Four days after Meghan and Harry’s wedding in May 2018, royal insider Lady Colin Campbell heard a shocking claim about the new duchess, which immediately set off alarm bells. While attending lunch at an aristocratic friend’s home with “impeccable pa

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Truth About The Kennedy Curse

      Jun 17, 2020

      The Truth About The Kennedy Curse
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Truth About The Kennedy Curse

      Jun 17, 2020

      The Truth About The Kennedy Curse
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Tragic Symmetry

      Mar 25, 2022

      A Tragic Symmetry
      21 min read

    • Article

      The Reverend Senator

      Jun 25, 2022

      The Reverend Senator
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Reverend Senator

      Jun 24, 2022

      The Reverend Senator
      11 min read

    • Article

      From stilettos to shackles THE FALL OF GHISLAINE MAXWELL

      Nov 28, 2021

      As she prepares for the fight of her life, Ghislaine Maxwell is a shadow of her former self. The glamorous socialite – who rubbed shoulders with the world’s rich and powerful before her association with billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein attracte

      5 min read

    • Article

      Separation And Sacrifice: 'Pedro Pans' Who Fled Cuba See Echoes Today

      May 2, 2019

      Operation Peter Pan brought 14,000 children to the U.S. after the Cuban Revolution. Families hoped to be reunited quickly, but geopolitics intervened.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Back From The Dead

      Mar 25, 2022

      Back From The Dead
      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for John and Caroline

    4/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      John and Caroline - James Spada

      PART ONE

      1957–1963

      She’s as robust as a sumo wrestler.

      —JOHN F. KENNEDY on his infant daughter, Caroline, 1957

      John is a bad squeaky boy who tries to spit in his mother’s Coca-Cola and has a very bad temper.

      —Three-year-old CAROLINE describing her infant brother, 1961

      Isn’t he a charge?

      —JFK on his toddler son, 1963

      They were born into singularly charmed lives. Caroline, the first young child of a President in nearly a century; John, the Chief Executive’s infant namesake, born just weeks after his father’s election.

      Charmed, too, were most of the people of America and the world, who watched these children develop adorable personalities and use the White House as a playhouse. They hid underneath the President’s desk, danced as their father gleefully clapped his hands. Caroline rode her ponies into the mansion; John sat behind the controls of the President’s helicopters and gave orders as Flight Captain John.

      Their mother tried to protect them from the intrusions of paparazzi and curiosity seekers, with spotty success. Once, besieged by photographers with flashbulbs popping, Caroline slumped down in her car seat, out of view, and pleaded, Please tell me when no one’s watching.

      The idyll came to an abrupt, shocking end when an assassin’s bullet shattered the vital young President’s skull. Six-year-old Caroline kissed her father’s flag-draped coffin, aware of how much she had lost. John, three, saluted his passing caisson but was too young to comprehend just how much his life had been altered.

      Now the children, and their mother, had become not just celebrities but icons, symbols as much as people. The President’s widow wondered whether, under such circumstances, she could bring them up to be the good, responsible, and emotionally stable people she wanted them to be.

      Her aunt Caroline Lee Canfield holds sixteen-day-old Caroline Bouvier Kennedy during her christening at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, December 13, 1957. Boston’s Archbishop Richard Cushing officiates as the child’s father, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, and her godfather, Robert F. Kennedy, look on. The baby wears the same christening gown her mother, Jacqueline, wore twenty-eight years earlier.

      Caroline poses for a christening-day portrait. The baby’s birth on November 27, the day before Thanksgiving, was a truly blessed event for the Kennedys after a miscarriage and a stillbirth. The child weighed seven pounds, two ounces, and was, according to her father, as robust as a sumo wrestler. Her mother said the day of Caroline’s birth was the very happiest of my life. Jackie’s mother recalled being impressed by the sheer, unadulterated delight Jack Kennedy took in his newborn daughter. The look on his face, which I had never seen before … was radiant.

      Caroline Kennedy’s first magazine cover, April 21, 1958. Jackie had initially refused Life’s request to do a photo feature on her baby, telling Jack that I’m not going to let our child be used like some campaign mascot for his Senate reelection bid that November. But she relented when he promised to take a break from campaigning to spend time with his family that summer. The accompanying article ran a photo of Caroline, eyes as big as saucers, peering over her bassinet at her father. I’m not home much, the caption quoted Kennedy, but when I am she seems to like me.

      During the same vacation, her father prepares to read to twenty-one-month-old Caroline. The child showed above-average intelligence, and an interest in reading, at an early age.

      The Senator had made a stab at bottle-feeding the baby when she was an infant, but her nurse, Maud Shaw, recalled, I fear the whole process was too slow for him, and after about ten minutes he handed her back to me with a smile. ‘I guess this is your department after all,’ he said. ‘I had better leave it to you.’

      During a vacation at the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in August 1959, Jackie carries Caroline to shore after a sailing excursion on Nantucket Sound. The Kennedys loved these carefree days with their daughter, but knew that they would soon be rare, since Jack, reelected to the Senate in a landslide, planned to announce his candidacy for President in January. Jackie fretted about the campaign’s possible effect on Caroline. I get this terrible feeling, she said, that when we leave, she might think that it’s because we don’t want to be with her.

      Holding Caroline’s oversize Raggedy Ann doll, Mother Annie, Jackie kisses her husband farewell as he leaves Hyannis Airport for a campaign trip in October 1960. Caroline waits her turn to say good-bye to Daddy. Kennedy had won the Democratic nomination for President in July after a bruising series of primaries. Jackie reported that Caroline’s first words were good-bye, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.

      I am sorry so few states have primaries, Jackie quipped, or we would have a daughter with the greatest vocabulary of any two-year-old in the country.

      The Kennedys beam at a press conference in Hyannis Port the day after Jack won election as the thirty-fifth President of the United States. Mrs. Rose Kennedy, the President-elect’s mother, sits at left. According to Maud Shaw, it was Caroline who had informed her father that he had won the election—which was still undecided when Kennedy went to bed at four in the morning—by entering his bedroom and declaring, as Miss Shaw had instructed her to, "Good morning, Mr.

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1