From Jackie Kennedy’s Whispered, Fearful Question for Secret Service to JFK’s Weeping: The 39-Hour Fight to Save Their Son

From Jackie Kennedy’s Whispered, Fearful Question for Secret Service to JFK’s Weeping: The 39-Hour Fight to Save Their Son https://ift.tt/VvxYH0k

Steven Levingston’s new 'Twilight of Camelot' focuses on the birth and death of President John F. Kennedy's youngest child, Patrick Bouvier

The Kennedys (left) and Patrick Bouvier's isolette, where he was treated

Calvin Campbell

NEED TO KNOW

• Steven Levingston’s new Twilight of Camelot focuses on the birth and death of President John F. Kennedy's younger son, Patrick Bouvier
• The baby's premature delivery and the 39-hour push to save his life in 1963 were turning points for his family and for the course of medicine in America, Levingston says
• “It’s all wrapped around the story of Patrick,” Levingston says

First lady Jacqueline Kennedy was in the backseat of a Ford sedan on her way to the hospital, in the early stages of premature labor, when she let slip a sign of concern for the baby boy she was about to deliver.

“Mr. Landis, can we please hurry?” she asked one of her Secret Service agents, who was driving. 

Her voice was “hushed” and “whispery” despite an otherwise cool affect behind her trademark sunglasses.

“Can we go a little faster?” she continued.

That’s according to a scene from Steven Levingston’s Twilight of Camelot, a new Kennedy biography that spotlights a lesser-known but no less influential chapter in the family’s saga. The book, set to be released on Tuesday, Feb. 24, traces “the short life and long legacy” of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, Jackie’s fourth child with President John F. Kennedy.

Over less than two days, from Aug. 7 to Aug. 9, 1963, Patrick was born, fought for life and — in the spotlight of the public fixation that has long followed so many of his relatives — died. 

Though just 17 inches long and weighing 4 lbs. and 10.5 ozs., Patrick “was a well-formed child with light brown hair,” Levingston writes.

“He was beautiful,” Clint Hill, another of Jackie’s Secret Service agents, told Levingston of Patrick. “But he was clearly fighting for each breath, as his poor little chest struggled to get the oxygen he needed to survive.”

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Patrick Bouvier Kennedy's hearse

Calvin Campbell

Now, doctors would know that Patrick's lungs had not had time enough to develop sufficient surfactant, or surface active agent, to help him take in oxygen. But decades ago, it was more like a mad scramble in the dark.

The boy lived for 39 hours and 12 minutes; his father was with him at the end, watching through a porthole as Patrick’s body failed him from inside a hyperbaric oxygen chamber in the basement of Boston’s Children’s Hospital. That’s where Patrick had been taken for cutting-edge and even experimental treatment after he was delivered by cesarean section at Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts.

Pierre Salinger, the White House press secretary, later described how the president fled to the hospital’s boiler room upon Patrick’s death and “wept” for 10 minutes.

“He put up quite a fight,” said the president, who would die himself less than three months later.

The assassination largely overshadowed Patrick’s place in history. But, says Levingston, his life and death were turning points both for his parents’ marriage and for the course of neonatal care in America.

“It’s all wrapped around the story of Patrick,” Levingston, a political biographer and former Washington Post editor, tells PEOPLE.

Drawing on new interviews, including with some of the medical team who treated Jackie during her labor, as well as voluminous research, Levingston’s Twilight of Camelot reconstructs — often down to the minute — the race to save Patrick Bouvier Kennedy as well as how he changed his family.

Because of his death, Levingston says, John and Jackie had begun to grow closer again after being bonded by “shared sorrow.” 

The Kennedy family

Calvin Campbell

“So much of his life is a mystery, but there were signs that they definitely were wrapping themselves around each other,” Levingston says.

Theirs was no perfect union, of course: Indeed, along with the host of well-known issues, as Levingston notes in his book, Jackie’s history of premature births was blamed by one biographer on the suspicion she had contracted chlamydia from her husband.

But being a father changed the president, too — both the losses and the joys. Jackie had four children: a daughter, Arabella, who was stillborn; daughter Caroline, son John Jr. and then Patrick.

“He really doted on Caroline and John Jr. and he evolved through their tutelage. They taught him how to be an emotional man, a caring man,” Levingston says of John.

“Patrick brought that to the zenith of his evolution,” Levingston says.

With Jackie still recovering from her C-section in Massachusetts after Patrick was delivered, it was her husband who was often by Patrick’s side over the next two days. 

“He took charge with what was going on with Patrick in his health and grew very quickly,” Levingston says.

After Patrick’s death, the president pushed for “a revolution in premature care” through increased medical funding, Levingston writes.

Spectators outside the hospital in Boston where Patrick Bouvier Kennedy was treated in 1963

Calvin Campbell

Nearly a fifth of the 400 pages of Twilight of Camelot details Patrick’s delivery, life and death, as Levingston reconstructs scenes both surprising and specific: President Kennedy asking after the make of the ambulance ferrying his son to the hospital and how the first lady asked for a cigarette just before surgery — a Newport, to be exact. (She got it.)

Levingston says he was deeply pleased to be able to rely on the accounts of some of the doctors involved, like Charles Sanislow, the air force base’s chief of surgery, who had never spoken before. 

Levingston credits the dogged research of wife Suzanne, a fellow journalist and his “partner in crime,” who helped reach out to these doctors, including with snail mail inquiries.

“To our wonder and surprise and delight, we got stuff back and we were able to track them down and talk to them,” Levingston says.

Caring for Patrick loomed large in their minds, even as he later drifted to the margins of history: “This kind of stuff has lived with these folks, and they're wanting to discuss it again,” Levingston says.

White House press secretary Pierre Salinger briefs reporters

Calvin Campbell

Twilight of Camelot also describes, anew, how the nation celebrated Patrick’s imminent arrival and mourned his short life before his father’s assassination.

“The nation was totally involved in his life from the moment of pregnancy. There was all this adulation and celebration over another Kennedy baby. My god, everybody was so excited,” Levingston says.

“Nobody ever saw him, but they fell in love with him,” he says.

More broadly, Levingston says, he was interested in exploring the tangle of pain and perseverance that defined Patrick’s place among the Kennedys — just 2 days old and so much less simple than any of the headlines that came out when he died. 

“Their lives reflect a larger human story: that people suffer, people face tragedy,” Levingston says of the president and first lady. “But at the same time, there are pockets of hope that exist in those tragedies and you have to go and seek those out and find them. And I think that’s what Jack and Jackie were trying to do.”

Twilight of Camelot will be released on Tuesday, Feb. 24, wherever books are sold.