USA TODAY Review
USA TODAY Rating:
3.5/4 stars
‘Mrs. Kennedy’: A relationship of respect, protection, love
By Don
Oldenburg, USA TODAY
April 02,
2012
If you're a Kennedy vulture
looking for scandalous scraps of hushed-up affairs, look elsewhere. Retired
Secret Service Special Agent Clint Hill's charming insider's chronicle of the
Kennedy years is more of a Driving Miss Daisy tale
that contains lots of Secret Service logistical stories and daily-life anecdotes
but few startling revelations.
Not that Hill drove Mrs.
Kennedy much. His job was to protect her. But this account by the Secret Service
agent seen in the Zapruder film frantically climbing onto the back of the
presidential limo to shield JFK and the first lady on that fateful day in Dallas
is more about how a relationship between two strikingly different people in
close contact evolves into genuine intimacy.
When Hill, now 80, first
met Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy in November 1960, JFK had just been elected
president and "Jackie" was pregnant with their first child, Caroline. Jackie was
a rich girl, Mrs. Potter's School, Vassar, the Sorbonne, equestrian, married to
the junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts. Clint Hill was an adopted small-town
North Dakota boy, normal '50s childhood, Concordia College in
Minnesota.
Hill had served on
President Eisenhower's Secret Service detail and figured this reassignment to
protect the next first lady was a demotion — the "Kiddie Detail." Little did he
know he'd soon be accompanying Mrs. Kennedy on trips worldwide as she redefined
the role of the modern first lady.
While Mrs. Kennedy's
beauty, grace, intelligence and spirit quickly captivated Hill, her insistence
on privacy and trying to raise her children normally are what earned his
respect. He writes that he "wasn't there to be her friend," but he became one of
her most trusted friends. He never uses the word, but not only did he adore her,
it's clear from his book that Hill (who was married) loved
her.
Yet they never ventured
beyond formality. He was always "Mr. Hill," she was always "Mrs.
Kennedy."
What makes this memoir
memorable is that Hill was always there as the Kennedy legend evolved. He was
there for Caroline's first snowman, and John-John's birth, for Thanksgivings at
Hyannis Port and Christmases at Palm Beach. When Jackie's horse threw her
headfirst, he raced to her side. As more than a 100,000 people lined the streets
in New Delhi waving miniature American flags and cheering her, he was scanning
the crowd for potential dangers. When she needed a tennis opponent, he did the
best he could in his dark suit and Florsheim wingtips. While many of the book's
anecdotes have previously been reported, Hill owns the point-of-view
advantage.
At times, it's easy to tell
where Hill's voice ends and co-author Lisa McCubbin's voice begins, such as when
describing what Jackie was wearing: "an ice-blue long-sleeved silk coat with a
matching whimsical beret." But McCubbin, an award-winning journalist,
undoubtedly helped Hill sustain the storytelling quality of the
narrative.
Nowhere in the book does
that quality become more intense and dramatic than the 25 pages describing the
day of the assassination and the disturbing details of Hill's eyewitness account
as he climbed across the back of the limousine after hearing the first shot and
seeing the president reach for his throat. What Hill saw in those seconds would
haunt him forever.
As for JFK's infidelities,
Hill upholds the "secret" side of his service and never even mentions any
scandals. Still, the book conveys a sense of honesty and proves to be an
insightful and lovingly penetrating portrait of the Jacqueline Kennedy that Hill
came to know.
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