Life with Father

The dignified red-brick home at 3307 N Street in Washington's historic Georgetown section last week became a sort of center of Government--making more news than the White House. In and out all during the week hurried top-ranking Democrats. From time to time, John Fitzgerald Kennedy emerged to hold front-step press conferences, most often having to do with appointees to his new Administration team. But for all the affairs of state that weighed upon him. Jack Kennedy quite often seemed like any other bedraggled, bewildered father. whose wife was away having another baby.

Only occasionally did he manage to get away to the relative quiet of his five-room suite in the old Senate Office Building. Late one afternoon, he padded through the mild Georgetown air to visit with Neighbor Dean Acheson--thus sparking rumors that Acheson would surely have a job in the new Administration. Kennedy breakfasted at home one morning with Foreign Policy Adviser Chester Bowles, who looked a little dour upon leaving--thus sparking rumors that he had not been offered the kind of job he had hoped for. Kennedy got a visit, too, from New Mexico's Democratic Senator Dennis Chavez, who offered Kennedy a cigar. Asked the President-elect, smilingly: "Did you just have a son?" Startled, Chavez, 72, said no--and hastily put the cigar back in his pocket.

Twice almost every day, Kennedy slipped over to the Georgetown University Hospital to see his wife and newborn son. John Jr., he told the press, would be baptized soon. Inevitably, a reporter asked Kennedy if he wanted his boy to grow up to be President. Replied the new papa, commonsensibly: "I haven't thought about it. I just want for him to be all right." After visiting the baby with his father, Millionaire Joe Kennedy, the Pres ident-elect revealed that "we finally decided who the baby looks like. He looks like Dad." Who decided that? Replied Jack: "Dad."

For the most part, it was Daughter Caroline, just turned three, who got Jack Kennedy's nonpresidential attention and a lot of the photographers' as well. One unforgettable shot: the President-elect, emerging from church, unconcernedly hanging on to a rag doll. Brimming with Kennedy energy, Caroline scooted around everywhere, once squeezed through her father's legs to steal the scene from a Lyndon Johnson-Kennedy photo session. "Daddy," said she, "tie my shoes, please." Asked if she would call her baby brother "Jack," she replied: "No. His name is John." But soon Kennedy called a halt to most of the press courting of Caroline: "I think she's been photographed enough--it's time we retired her."

That was easier said than done. And still eager and zippy at week's end, Caroline, with her father in tow, boarded a plane for a trip to Palm Beach. There one, and maybe both, were scheduled to get a little rest.

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