That was the reaction yesterday from the shocked friends of Marion (Mimi) Fahnestock after she admitted to the Daily News that she was "the Mimi" who had a 17-month affair with former President John F. Kennedy. Their image of the poised and demure administrator who took the pictures at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan was jolted by the revelations. "She is the least likely person I would ever have suspected to have had a romance" with Kennedy, said Joan (Bitsy) Tatnall, one of Fahnestock's oldest friends. Virtually everybody interviewed said the 60-year-old grandmother is a sweetheart whose admitted romp with JFK should be forgiven - and put into context. "Nobody at 19 can resist the President," congregant Patricia Hickey said. "I don't see it as her fault." As Fahnestock was thrust into a spotlight she'd shunned for 40 years, her family and friends closed ranks around her. "She issued a statement, that's all we wish to say," said Fahnestock's sister-in-law, Anne Beardsley of Arlington, Mass. Her daughters, Lisa Alpaugh, 34, of Arlington, Va., and Jenny Axelman, 31, of Redwood, Calif., also declined to discuss their mom. At the church, cook Gary Engelhart said no one thinks any worse of Fahnestock for carrying on with Kennedy. "Nobody is holding it against her," he said. "You have to remember, this is a church. Forgiveness is very common here." Congregants know Fahnestock for her good works. Helps the homeless Long divorced from her late husband, investment banker Anthony Fahnestock, and a grandmother of four, Fahnestock is a devoted church member who helped it develop its outreach programs to the destitute and homeless. She organized church functions. She managed the Web site and helped market Pastor Thomas Tewell's taped sermons. Fahnestock, an avid jogger, ran track in high school and stayed fit by walking 35 blocks every day from her upper East Side home to her job. Among merchants in her neighborhood, she is a well-known and friendly face. "She's like the lady next door," said Michael Bergenfeld, owner of the Service Hardware store at 89th St. and Lexington Ave. "She buys a light bulb or little doodads, whatever she needs." Tatnall, who grew up with Fahnestock in ritzy Rumson, N.J., and is now her neighbor, said she has always admired her friend and called her the "smartest girl in our class." "I think probably Jack Kennedy would have gone to bed with anybody," Tatnall added. "That's not to say she's anybody." Born into the blue-blood Beardsley family, Fahnestock grew up riding horses and attending private schools with the children of other Jersey horse country aristocrats. She was later enrolled in the exclusive Miss Porter's boarding school in Farmington, Conn., where she was the editor of the high school newspaper. In 1961, Kennedy was elected President, and Fahnestock was offered the chance to interview Miss Porter's most famous alumna - First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. The interview fell through. But the waif caught Kennedy's eye, and a year later she was awarded a prestigious White House internship, even though she couldn't type. The next 17 months would become part of JFK's - and Mimi's - history. |
