Historical Notes: Sex & the Single Senator

In 1953, John F. Kennedy was a handsome, wealthy freshman Senator—and at 36, Washington's most eligible, elusive bachelor. In midsummer, after a six-month campaign for Jacqueline Bouvier's vote, Kennedy wrote to a wartime buddy: "I gave everything a good deal of thought, so am getting married this fall. This means the end of a promising political career, as it has been based up to now almost completely on the old sex appeal."

Hyperbole, of course, but it reflected the wry eye that J.F.K. characteristically turned on himself and his clan. The Kennedy candor comes through with engaging clarity in the reminiscences of Paul ("Red") Fay, a fellow PT boat commander, close friend and campaign aide, whom Kennedy appointed Under Secretary of the Navy. In his forthcoming book, The Pleasure of His Company (Harper & Row), now being serialized by McCall's, Fay recalls some other revealing Kennedyisms. "When the war is over and you are out there in sunny California," Kennedy told San Franciscan Fay in 1945, "I'll be back here with Dad trying to parlay a lost PT boat and a bad back into a political advantage." The next year, "Big Joe," as J.F.K. sometimes called his father, had his way, and Jack was running for Congress in Boston.

Despite his attraction for women and young people, Fay recalls, Kennedy before his marriage had no great affection for very young children. He never became a political baby-kisser. During the 1960 campaign, after a mutually cool encounter with Sally Fay, 4, his goddaughter, Kennedy deadpanned: "I don't think the kid quite caught that strong quality of love of children that is so much a part of the candidate's makeup and has made him so dear to the hearts of mothers." Caroline and John Jr. introduced him to paternal affection, of course; and Fay, like other Kennedy chroniclers, reports that the President enjoyed himself most when in the company of the First Lady and their children.