Posted on 06/30/2026 2:19:19 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
She called me just prior to the inauguration," remembers Leroy Davis, a New York art dealer who served on Mrs. Kennedy's Fine Arts Committee for the White House. "She had heard about a Maurice Prendergast show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and though she didn't know much about him, she was intrigued. So I talked to her for quite a while and encouraged her to see the work. And when the show went to the Whitney in New York, I took her to see it."
Several months later, in 1961, during the Kennedys' triumphant state visit to Paris, their gift to President Charles de Gaulle was a Prendergast watercolor of a Paris scene, Boulevard des Capucins. It seemed to be a subtle way of saying that the art of America was equal to that of France.
Of course, Jacqueline Kennedy's greatest artistic contribution was her restoration of the White House. She took the Executive Mansion from a drab, hotel-like institution ("Early Statler," as she mordantly put it), virtually devoid of historical furnishings and paintings other than presidential portraits, and transformed it into one of the foremost collections of American decorative and fine arts. Although she made the White House into a museum, it was also very much a home—welcoming, unpretentious, and livable.
(Excerpt) Read more at housebeautiful.com ...
Makes sense why Bill Clinton idolized President Kennedy.
She staged the John-John salute. That is undisputed.
But I think the Camelot nonsense had started earlier as part of The Party’s 1960 snowjob on the American public.
Good grief - he was three years old!
Of course he was taught, just as he was probably taught to put his hand over his heart when the Anthem played, or to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.
I remember being drilled from the earliest age on how to act in public. Most kids of that era were.
You misunderstand. She told him to. It was not in any way spontaneous.
Yes, and through contacts, I learned that he proffered his own security up for the taking.
I will say no more.
He is truly villainous.
Your posts are too cryptic, why not just say what you mean?
Something about Obama, but what?
Who in God’s green earth ever thought John-john’s salute was spontaneous?
I was 9 and I knew he was taught.
We were well trained in the etiquette and protocols of our time.
My parents taught me how to behave at weddings funerals and other public events.
If my grandfather had died when my brother was three he certa would have been taught and expected to salute at grandpa’s funeral after the 21 gun volley.
Of course it wasn’t ‘spontaneous’. He was three years old!
She told him that it would be a respectful thing to do for his father, and coached him on it. (It may well have been his father who first taught him to salute.)
I was almost 10 when my grandfather died. I had never known anyone to die, never been to a funeral home or seen a coffin and corpse. My father carefully explained it all, coached me and my brother on what to do, how to kneel at the coffin and say a prayer, etc. It was a lesson in propriety that transferred to many other situations.
It’s right for kids to be coached in respectful behavior from the earliest age. I don’t see any sense in making something suspicious out of it, unless Conservatives are losing their sense of humanity to political resentment just as the Democrats are.
Let’s just say he allowed his contacts to put pressure on those responsible for his safekeeping, for his own amusement.
Could be. I have never tried to figure out who the woman might have been. I suspect that these two dads would have been surprised that I was paying attention.
It was an interesting place to grow up. We were on the Virginia side of the Potomac but only 5 miles from the White House. One day while walking to school Lyndon Johnson’s daughter drove past me, like 10 feet away. Secret Service cars in front and back. That couldn’t have been fun. She should have given me a lift to school.
” it was like a slow Southern city back then, without much traffic.”
I know what you mean. There were still streetcars running on DC streets when I moved there, and I had the chance to ride one before they tore the tracks up. I think we must have arrived in Arlington the summer of 1956. It was still Southern enough that I have a Tidewater accent that some educated ears manage to hear.
My grandmother had that accent.
After she retired from the VA, she had a few of those DC Transit streetcar tokens left; I used to have one on my charm bracelet; but I think I lost it...
(I think some of the tracks are still left in Georgetown.)
Whatever.
“(I think some of the tracks are still left in Georgetown.)”
The “Exorcist Stairs” in Georgetown end down at a car barn for one of the old DC streetcar lines. You could clearly see those stairs from the Virginia side so I wonder how many of us yelled “I know where that is!” when we saw the movie.
“My grandmother had that accent.
She was obviously a person of impeccable style. I wasn’t all that aware that I had an accent until I moved to California and I’d get asked if I was from Canada. Canadians, like Tidewaters, pronounce “out” correctly. The rest of you don’t know what you’re doing.
My grandmother was born and grew up in Gloucester County, VA.
What I recall most about her accent is the complete absence of the rhotic ‘r’.
I grew up with the accent (she raised me) and I largely lost it; but I still have it after some words that end in ‘r’, and I still have issues with words beginning ‘OR’ and pronounce them ‘aw’...
I still have the Tidewater accent. I got it from my mother and grandmother who come from a long line of Virginians.
“I still have the Tidewater accent.”
We are rare birds. I have an “r” so I’m not the pure non-rhotic version. I think that the non-rhotic is more pronounced (or non-pronounced, actually) in southern Virginia. Mine’s not a hard “r” but it’s still there. The “out” is what people hear. And if they mention it then I get self conscious of every “out” word I say.
My parents grew up in Mississippi and Texas by way of Louisiana so I was exposed to a whole litany of Southern accents.
Jackie’s views remind me how a majority of women opposed suffrage
Once upon a time
A ship long since sailed
Women’s suffrage changed little till feminism
They mostly voted like the men in their family
Now 52% are unmarried
There you go
They vote up to 71% democrats per AI
Being married to jfk
The stuff he did right in front of the media and crickets
The pool gang bangs with him as ring master
And with Jackie home even
And so on
Man those Kennedys a randy bunch
Not desiring political power doesn’t at all mean that one doesn’t want a voice in how one is governed.
When she made that statement, Mrs. Kennedy was referring to women who wanted to hold office. I don’t believe that she meant that women shouldn’t have the vote.
Some women don’t have men to vote for them; and some women who do don’t trust the wisdom of their men. They want and need to speak for themselves.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.