Private Lives

Clanging snowplows and a small army of shovelers shattered Georgetown's calm one morning last week as they attacked the big drifts in front of the home of New York Herald Tribune Reporter Rowland Evans. Inquisitive neighbors turned out to wonder how Evans rated such meticulous attention from District of Columbia street cleaners. Neighbor George Herman, a CBS correspondent, tried to urge the men to go on and shovel his driveway. The street cleaners demurred, confided that they had orders to clear just enough parking space for President Kennedy, and for the Secret Service men who would stand guard while the President and First Lady had dinner that night with the Evanses. That evening, with the secret out, the Kennedys made their way with aplomb through a gathering of newsmen waiting outside.*

The incident cruelly reminded White House correspondents that, unlike Ike, Jack Kennedy intends to leave them on the outside looking in--as far as his relationships with old and personal friends are concerned. The irony is that many of the close friends on the inside are journalists.

Last fortnight the Kennedys made the same sort of social foray to have dinner with Newsweek's Washington deputy bureau chief, Ben Bradlee, whose wife is a close friend of Jackie's. In the early hours of the morning after Inauguration Day, the President dropped by at a private party given by Columnist Joe Alsop, who lives in bachelor splendor in Georgetown among his parakeets and treasured antiques. Fortnight ago, the President went hiking with the Chattanooga Times's Pulitzer Prizewinner Charles Bartlett, whose wife is John Jr.'s godmother. Last week he took off on a spur-of-the-moment trip to the movies (Spartacus) with old Navy Buddy Paul B. Fay Jr. (now Under Secretary of the Navy). Kennedy's Choate roommate, K. Le Moyne Billings, now a Manhattan adman, comes and goes like a member of the family. So does husky Georgetown Artist Bill Walton, who befriended Jackie during her days as an inquiring photographer on the Washington Times-Herald. These people are all old friends, and Jack Kennedy sees no reason for sharing them with a curious public simply because he has been elected President. When White House regulars muttered about such a state of affairs to Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, he could only reply sadly that he is not being invited either.

* Among the other guests: Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, New York Herald Tribune Publisher John Hay Whitney, Assistant Labor Secretary George Lodge (son of G.O.P. Vice-Presidential Candidate Henry Cabot Lodge), and their wives.

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