Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir (29 page)

As our small motorcade entered the main piazza in Ravello, it was like we were driving into a festival—all in honor of Mrs. Kennedy and Caroline. Colorful hand-painted
Welcome Jacqueline
signs hung outside nearly every shop and restaurant, and the cobblestone streets were lined with townspeople and tourists, all waiting to catch a glimpse of Mrs. Kennedy and Caroline. We were greeted by the mayor, a group of dancing children, a live band, and, much to my dismay, an army of photographers. There must have been seventy-five or eighty photographers jostling and shoving each other to get in better position for their shots, and the police were having a difficult time keeping them behind the police lines that had been set up. While Mrs. Kennedy waved and smiled graciously, I could tell that she had the same immediate concerns that I did. Creating the privacy she desired on this trip was going to be an even bigger challenge than we had anticipated. We were going to have to do something about the press.

Finally we made our way through the chaos to the Villa Episcopio, where Mrs. Kennedy, Caroline, and the Radziwills would stay for the next two weeks. Perched high above the Mediterranean Sea, the nine-hundred-year-old stone villa was solidly built into the steep rocky hillside, like an eagle’s nest, overlooking the stunning beauty of the Amalfi Coast. Originally a bishop’s residence, and once occupied by King Vittorio Emanuele III, the villa with its stone archways and wrought-iron entry gates was like something out of a fairy tale.

As we walked through the cavernous living room, out to the veranda, it was like we were suspended one thousand feet above the crystal blue sea with a panoramic view of the entire area. Mrs. Kennedy turned to her sister and said, “Oh, Lee, it’s just magnificent.”

Lemon and orange trees grew all across the hillside, filling the air with their fragrant aroma, while red and fuchsia bougainvillea grew in long draping vines up and around the archways and gates. In all my travels, I had never seen a more beautiful setting.

While the villa had unmatched views, it was a long way from the water, so an additional house had been rented that had beach access. The Conca dei Marini beach was not an expansive strand like those in Cape Cod or Palm Beach, but a small spit of pebbly sand surrounded by high rocky cliffs. The beach house was actually more like a cliffside cottage, built into the rocks about one hundred and fifty feet above the beach, accessible by a narrow and very steep stone stairway. It was much smaller than the villa, but very comfortable, and its key purpose was to be used as a place to get out of the sun, for changing in and out of beach attire, bathroom facilities, and midday meals.

In order to get to and from the main villa and the beach house on the steep, windy roads, we had acquired the use of two open-air motorized beach buggies that held six or eight passengers. Made by Fiat, they were fun little vehicles—kind of like a cross between an oversized golf cart and a Volkswagen beetle. I’m not sure who enjoyed them more—the agents or the children.

All of the agents, meanwhile, had rooms at the Hotel Palumbo, which was conveniently located just a short walk down the street from the Villa Episcopio. Like most of the places in this elite area, the Hotel Palumbo was quite pricey, but the advance agents had arranged a deal with management that made it affordable for us. We were living with and among the rich and famous, but we had to do it on sixteen dollars a day.

Unlike the official state visits, there was no set schedule for this trip. Advances could only be conducted once Mrs. Kennedy told me what she wanted to do, and I knew often we would have no advance notice at all.

“Just come to the villa each morning, Mr. Hill,” Mrs. Kennedy told me, “and we’ll take each day as it comes.”

I was deeply concerned about the press—especially the overly aggressive Roman freelance photographers, the original
paparazzi.
Fortunately the Italian police were just as concerned, and they immediately laid down some ground rules for the overzealous photographers: no beach, water-skiing, or swimming
pictures; no photographs at the entrance to the villa; photographers will be allowed to stand in the public garden forty meters from Mrs. Kennedy; they may photograph her from a distance in Ravello or boarding a speedboat in nearby Amalfi.

Clint Hill in working attire, Ravello, Italy

I had seen how these paparazzi operated, however, and I was not convinced they would follow the “rules.”

The morning after our arrival, I got up, had a quick breakfast of a biscotti and espresso, and packed a bag to bring along with me. There would be no need for a suit and tie, but I had to be ready for waterskiing, a cruise on a yacht, or anything else Mrs. Kennedy might want to do. There was no agenda. Once we left the area of the villa there was no opportunity to go back for something you forgot or to change clothes, so I had to be prepared for just about anything. I dressed in a black golf shirt with black trousers, and filled an airline flight bag with everything I might need: bathing suit, my Secret Service Commission book, diplomatic passport, and extra ammunition. I slipped my handgun into
my holster and wore my shirt on the outside to cover it, but when I wore my swimsuit, the gun would have to go in the airline bag, too. The last thing to go in the bag was a bar of chocolate and a small package of nuts I’d stashed away from the flight. One of the first things you learn as an agent is to eat whenever you have the chance, and use the bathroom whenever the opportunity presents itself. There were plenty of days you’d go for ten or twelve hours without a chance to do either, and a bag of peanuts often became lunch or dinner.

When I arrived at the villa, Benno and Nicole Graziani were there, and everybody was sitting around drinking coffee, laughing, and telling stories. It was nice to see Mrs. Kennedy so relaxed, among friends and family with whom she didn’t have to put up any pretense. The group had decided to go to the beach that morning, so we called the police to let them know the plan. Police boats would patrol the coast, and both uniformed and plainclothes officers would be scattered around the area.

We piled everybody into the umbrella-topped beach cars and headed down the steep, curvy streets to the seaside town of Amalfi, where we would then take a boat to the Conca dei Marini. The children loved the miniature cars and everybody was laughing and kidding around.

We had arranged to have a boat available for waterskiing, sightseeing, and just getting from one point to another. This boat was not your average rental boat, however. It was a Riva—a sleek Italian-made Chris-Craft type boat about twenty-four feet in length that had a highly varnished mahogany hull and an extremely powerful engine. The boat was named
Pretexte
and came with its own operator, who was on standby for the duration of our stay. He spoke very little English, but we managed to communicate in a sort of charades-type system in which I tried to act out what it was we wanted to do, and he would respond by nodding his head and rattling off in Italian. Somehow it worked.

By the time we got the beach cars down to Amalfi, word had gotten out, and there was a line of photographers waiting on the pier. Their cameras were snapping away as they called out, “Jackie! Jackie! Look here! Over here! Smile Jackie!”

It felt like we were being surrounded by a swarm of locusts.

“Just ignore them,” Mrs. Kennedy whispered to Caroline. “They’ll tire of us soon enough.”

I knew better. Jacqueline Kennedy had become an international star—more popular than Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, and Grace Kelly all put together—and these photographers knew that a picture of the First Lady of the United States
of America in a bathing suit was worth big money. The question was, how to get them to stop? Obviously the “rules” set out by the police weren’t working.

When Mrs. Kennedy emerged from the beach house in a dark green one-piece bathing suit with a low-cut back, the photographers went crazy. Some were snapping pictures from balconies in villas perched above the bay, while others were hazardously zipping around in motorboats trying to get a different angle. Benno Graziani, Mrs. Kennedy, and Lee were wading in the water with the three young children trying their best to ignore the circus-like scene that was getting worse by the minute. Benno wasn’t taking any pictures, but his mere presence was creating a problem.

Agent Paul Rundle had been trying to resolve the situation with the police and the photographers, and he had learned that the other photographers felt that Graziani had exclusive access to Mrs. Kennedy, which was unfair to the rest of them. They refused to back off. So Rundle and I came up with an idea. What if we got Mrs. Kennedy to give them ten minutes of photos if they would agree to back off and leave her alone after that? The photographers thought that sounded reasonable. Now I had to get Mrs. Kennedy to go for the idea.

I waded into the water to Mrs. Kennedy, who was pushing Caroline and Tony around on a raft. Her hair was pinned up in the back, with her long bangs hanging wispily in front of her eyes.

As soon as she saw me, she said, “Oh Mr. Hill, these photographers are horrible. Can’t you do something about them?”

“That’s what I came to talk to you about. Apparently they are upset that Benno has almost unlimited access to you, while they are restricted to distant shots. They’ve agreed to stop this aggressive behavior, and promise to give you some privacy if you will just pose for one good photo in your bathing suit.”

“Do you really think they’ll do as they say with just one photo session?”

“I honestly don’t know, but I will tell them that one session is what they get and then they must withdraw and quit harassing you. If they don’t comply, we will make their lives miserable.”

“Oh Mr. Hill, can’t you make their lives miserable without me having to pose?” she asked.

I knew this was asking a lot of her, and was so outside of her comfort zone, but there didn’t seem to be an alternative, other than have her spend the entire holiday inside the villa.

“I think in all fairness, Mrs. Kennedy, you have to give them something or the harassment will only continue to get worse and worse.”

This still didn’t satisfy her. She looked at me pleadingly.

“Can’t you just round them all up and have them sent away somewhere?”

I wanted to laugh, but she was dead serious.

“Unfortunately, Mrs. Kennedy, they have a right to be here, too, because it’s public property.”

Remembering President Kennedy’s instructions to me, I knew he wouldn’t be thrilled about seeing his wife posing for the cameras in her bathing suit, but the alternative was that someone was going to get a shot of Mrs. Kennedy in an awkward position, and that would be even more embarrassing and potentially humiliating.

“All right, if you think it will work, I’ll allow a brief photo session.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Kennedy,” I said. “I’ll arrange it and we’ll try to just get it over with.”

A short while later, Mrs. Kennedy posed on the landing area just below the beach house, in front of a big
Welcome Jacqueline!
sign the locals had hung from the rocks. The photographers had a field day. She was very cooperative and when they asked for photos of her with the children and Lee, she even agreed to that.

Agent Rundle even got into the action and posed in his bathing suit next to Mrs. Kennedy, the children, Benno Graziani, and the caretaker of the beach cottage.

The next day, hoping the photographers were going to be less intrusive, Mrs. Kennedy decided to go water-skiing.