corny jokes in elevators

 

So - Jackie had been dating the stockbroker John Husted during 1951, the same year when she met John Kennedy for the first time.  In December of 1951, Jackie and Mr. Husted got engaged.

        They broke their engagement, however, four months later, in March of 1952.

        All the while, Jackie worked at her newspaper job, providing photographs and interviews for her own daily column.

--------------- [excerpts from Camera Girl] --------------------- In order to turn out a column that was provocative enough to satisfy a diverse readership, she drew her inspiration from a variety of sources, pulling from her personal interests or breaking wire-service news.  She'd take an argument debated in the office and see if it would similarly incite pedestrians.

       Frank Waldrop recalled that she had both an unpredictable way of thinking that led to provocative questions and an instinct for asking what would have been on the minds of most readers.  Sometimes he thought, "Where does she come up with this stuff?" concluding that her reading a random range of topics fed her imagination.  

When the newsroom encyclopedia "B" volume went missing he found she'd kept it at her desk, studying the entry for "Bolivia."  When he told her he would teach her how to play the so-named card game, she responded, "No, the country."...

        Jackie sought to do more than entertain.  She wanted to inspire and educate, consistently offering readers a chance to better understand exasperating behavior ("Why do you think people put off Christmas shopping until the last minutes?"  "Why do you think so many people crack corny jokes in elevators?"  "Do people welcome constructive criticism?") 

and develop greater empathy ("What is the greatest need of people in the world today?"  "What are people most living for?"  "What do you first notice about people when you meet them?  Do you find that you often have to change your first impressions?").  She even managed to pose a few existential questions ("What came first, the chicken or the egg?"  "What is the best age?")....

Chapter 20

A SECOND DINNER

May - June 1952

        By all accounts, it was during the May 8, 1952 gathering at the Bartletts', in the same house where Jackie and Jack had met almost exactly a year earlier, when their deeper connection took hold.

        Not long after the dinner, Jack Kennedy would tell people how he "leaned across the asparagus and asked her for a date."  Her retort:  "There was no asparagus that night."  It was a bit of stagy banter, like two actors playing against type, Jack the romantic and Jackie the realist. ...

        It was after this dinner that Jack began mentioning Jackie to his family.  All of them, except his mother, had casually met her in Palm Beach five months earlier.  Jack made no mention of her appearance or social status but rather "the column she wrote," as Teddy recalled.  

"He got a real kick out of it and he had a few he clipped and showed members of the family.  It demonstrated her utterly unique way of thinking about the world.  He told her that he read it all the time."

-30-