Book Review Once Upon a Secret Mimi Alford Random House, 2012 While the American media will

perhaps always continue promoting the vision of the Kennedy years in the White House as a modern-day Camelot, the evidence keeps mounting about the seamier side of John F. Kennedys life both before and during his presidency. Mimi Alford, one of his mistresses for eighteen months while he was president, looks back on him with affection, but in this finally-getting-it-off-my-chest memoir reveals that he had a dark side. Indeed, even if we consider only her own account, we see that this dark side was substantially greater than she (in light of her disinclination to be judgmental) thinks it was. Well have more to say about Kennedys dark side later. It will be relevant to the sociological aspects of our subject that her book tells a story about life (or at least the life of some) within the upper social strata in the northeastern United States. Mimi grew up living what she describes as a life of preppie privilege in a New Jersey farmhouse with 14 rooms and 7 fireplaces; her mother and mothers siblings had attended prestigious boarding schools; the New York Social Register counted for a lot in her mothers life; and Mimis social coming out was at a debutante ball in the Grand Ballroom of New York Citys famous Plaza Hotel. Her two brothers graduated from Princeton. She herself went to Miss Porters, a boarding school for girls in Farmington, Connecticut, a school that Jacquelyn Kennedy had attended, and then to Wheaton College, an all-girls liberal arts school in Massachusetts. Her sister, too, was a Miss Porters student. Mimis first husband graduated from Williams College (generally rated the number one liberal arts college in the United States) and went on to Harvard Business School and a job at Goldman Sachs. Her second husband followed the same route through Williams and the Harvard Business School. Although cumulatively the people weve mentioned amount to only a small sample of what Mimi calls their so-called class, her book can perhaps give sociologists some window into the mores and values of that rarefied strata. While editor of her school paper at Miss Porters, Mimi was able to obtain an interview with President Kennedy. This led to her receiving a call inviting her to become a White House intern, working in the press office, during the summer following her freshman year at Wheaton College. She was then nineteen years old (and its relevant that she says she was a virgin). On the afternoon of her fourth day on the job, she received a call from Dave Powers, one of the presidents closest aides, inviting her to a swim in the White House pool. Two other White House employees, women nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle, were also there for the swim, and the group was soon joined by the president. After the swim, Mimi returned to the press room, but received another call from Powers inviting her to a meet-the-staff gathering in the upstairs residence at the end of the work day. Mimi drank more than one daiquiri while socializing, and was then invited by the president to go on a tour with him of the living quarters. When he led her into Mrs. Kennedys bedroom, he casually and matter-of-factly bedded her there. To make a long story short, this led to a variedly intimate relationship once or twice a week that lasted for eighteen months until Lee Harvey Oswald put an end to it in November 1963. (Jacquelyn Kennedy, whom Mimi never met, spent a lot of time away from the White House on trips and at a residence she and the president owned in Virginia.)

When Mimi returned to Wheaton College for her sophomore year, Kennedy phoned her repeatedly, using the pseudonym Michael Carter. The relationship was one of close friendship even though he kept her emotionally at arms-length. We see this from such small facts as that she gave him his hair treatments (we recall that his hair was integral to his persona, and she says he was quite vain about it) and that he taught her how he preferred to scramble eggs using a double-boiler. Mimis attitude toward all of this, then and today, was that I had nothing to be ashamed of, so that I do not regret what I did [in] this tender episode in my life. Accordingly, she doesnt count her relationship with him as being part of what she calls his dark side. Others, of course, may disagree, invoking a whole array of values: these could range from repugnance toward adultery, for those who approach it from a religious point of view or from that of a secular morality that values monogamous marriage; and to a sense of violated sanctity of the presidency and of the White House, for those who revere those institutions. This can extend on, for those who expect their leaders to live in consonance with the image they project, to a feeling that the behavior was a breach of faith (amounting to incredible hypocrisy and hubris) toward the American electorate. And, further, there is a possible cultural objection to an upper class when its members see themselves as something apart from and above the great bulk of the population in a country that so much prides itself on being a democracy. We know from Once Upon a Secret that John F. Kennedy (and Jacquelyn, too, according to other sources) looked down upon traditional sexual morality as bourgeois. (This seems to have been a hallmark of their social exclusiveness; the sexual liberation ideology of the 1960s and 70s arose later and wouldnt appear to have played any part in it.) While none of this seems to Mimi to be within his dark side, what she describes in those words did reveal itself in several other ways. (Even these things dont dim her affection for him.) The president had no compunction against having his main aide, Dave Powers, serve as his procurer-in-chief; and he was unembarrassed by using a good many other people as facilitators. JFK even served as a procurer (and voyeur) himself when he got Mimi to service Powers at the edge of the pool and at a later time even asked her to service his brother, Senator Edward Kennedy. She refused this latter request. It appears to have been the only time she didnt give the president everything he wanted, unless we count the time she had to be forced by him to inhale a sex-enhancing powder at a party at Bing Crosbys house in Palm Springs. One time when Mimi thought that she was pregnant, Kennedy had Powers arrange an appointment with an abortion doctor (despite abortions being illegal at the time). She didnt keep the appointment when she found out the pregnancy was a false alarm. The two bedmates seem to have counted on abortion as their means of birth control throughout the relationship, since Mimi says Kennedy never used protection. Those interested in the sociology of religion will find it meaningful that Kennedy was the first Catholic president and was acting directly contrary not only to the law but to the teachings of his church. Mimi relates all this while disclaiming any sense of shame over it, and certainly without reflecting about what it all signified about JFK. Since an inbred feeling of deep impropriety (or shame) has in the past been a primary driver of traditional morality, it is noteworthy that she felt none of it. It is meaningful, too, to notice the same moral (or it might be more accurate to say amoral) orientation among her friends and relatives to whom she eventually revealed her secret. Anyone interested in the effect of such a course of sexual conduct on marriage will find an object lesson in the impact on Mimis own first marriage.

She became engaged to a young man of about her own age in September 1963. After JFKs assassination, she told her fianc about her intimacy with Kennedy, and that it had continued a lot even after their engagement, ending only with Kennedys death. This infuriated her fianc, who had her vow never to tell anyone. The two of them got married anyway, two months after the shooting in Dallas. Mimi doesnt say why they went ahead with the wedding, but we can surmise that she and her fianc (also of socialite background) were mindful of the humiliation to themselves and others if they were to cancel. The resulting marriage suffered from an ever-present sense of emotional separation, she says; but the first thirteen years turned out to be happy ones nevertheless. The next thirteen, of the twenty-six years the marriage lasted, were miserable, since her husband turned cold on her. She finally obtained a divorce, had a one-night stand with a fellow who shared her passion for running, and went on to a happy marriage with Dick Alford, her present husband. (She says hes fully supportive, but we may well wonder what he really thinks of her coming out with book-length self-revelations.) A facet that stands out strongly to this reader, although it isnt something that appears on the surface of her narrative, is that Mimis prestigious education and social standing did not lead her to think with any depth. All of her thinking, such as it is, is about herself, with introspection about how her life and subsequent marriages have been affected. There is no intellectual content to the book. Nothing broader than her own self-concern ever enters in. This mental vacuity is both remarkable and sad. No doubt she and those like her were self-determining individuals, so that not all of her intellectual emptiness can be laid to the doorstep of her schooling and upbringing; but we cant help but notice that somehow they didnt channel her mind toward broader reflections. The book is a part of the historical record. Its hardly worth reading out of prurient interest, since she omits the obvious details that would make it graphic. For all the reasons weve stated, however, Mimis story is something worth pondering. Dwight D. Murphey