Jackie O's Role in Saving Grand Central Terminal

My latest post, on the Atlantic Cities blog, about what celebrities today could learn from Jackie O's fight to save Grand Central Terminal (which turns 100 this month).

Inaugural gowns

Besides the choices of Jacqueline Kennedy and Michelle Obama, there's been a whole lot of frump that has happened on Inauguration night. This is a great gallery of the gowns worn over the last 50 years. What's your favorite?

Letitia Baldrige, A Central Figure in Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' Life, Has Died

I was very sorry to hear that Letitia Baldrige has died. As Jacqueline Kennedy's White House social secretary, she helped the First Lady elevate the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to a magical stage filled with arts and culture -- and hard liquor.

But I will always think of her as more than that. I spoke with Tish for many hours as I was working on my book about Jackie's Third Act. In the same way that Jackie's little-girl voice belied her fierce intellect, Tish had a high-pitched Julia Child-like voice, but was tough as nails. She enjoyed eating in what she described as the "mess hall" in the White House so she could argue with the boys. And she delayed having a family (when doing such was not common) so she could work around the clock during the Kennedy Administration. She later became an expert on juggling work and family and even wrote a book by that title which she was working on in 1975 when Jackie, who had just become a widow for a second time, had lunch with her.

Jackie was depressed. Tish told me that when her old friend entered the Sulgrave Club in Washington to dine with her, she was impeccably dressed, but "drooping." Tish gave her sage advice, telling Jackie to stop hiding her intelligence "under a bushel" and to go get job.

"Me, work?"Jackie asked.

Tish suggested publishing, a job that would offer flexibility as well stimulation. Jackie loved to read -- and write. Tish offered to introduce her toTom Guinzburg, her own publisher at Viking, where Jackie several months later would land her first job as an editor -- a career that she embraced for the rest of her life.

Jackie O cake pop

My mom had these made for a book talk I did yesterday. Not only adorable (love the pearls and the sunglasses), but delicious. Made by Sweet Temptations in Rhode Island, where Jackie spent her summers growing up.

Happy birthday, Jackie

Today, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis would have turned 83. If she were still here, I imagine she'd be kicking around the Vineyard, reading a book. Or perhaps that's just how I'd like to spend my birthday.

My Cape Cod vacation coincided with the JFK Hyannis Museum’s exhibit on Jacqueline Kennedy’s summers in Hyannis Port. (Kennedy Secret Service Agent Clint Hill will be giving a talk there later this month.) Although I’d been to the nearby Kennedy compound years ago for a political clam bake, I’d never been to this museum, a fitting tribute to a local son. So it was not surprising that pictures of Jack, mostly in color – all wind-swept hair, kids swarming, Secret Service lurking, khakis and blue blazers -- that first greet you inside, along with his quote on the wall: “I always come back to the Cape and walk on the beach when I have a tough decision to make. The Cape is one place I can think alone.”

Seems like he was rarely alone, though, or idle enough to think. There he is being interviewed by Walter Cronkite on the expansive lawn; deposited on the ground by Marine One with Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson; golfing at the Hyannis Port Golf Club; leaving Saint Francis Xavier Church in Hyannis; conferring with Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Undersecretary Averell Harriman in the living room of the family home; and piloting the Honey Fitz.

Jackie is rarely seen here, but makes an appearance in one crammed extended family photo – part of a series taken between Sept. 7 and 8 of 1962 -- where she is kneeling next to her seated father-in-law, with whom she was close.

The photo is a subtle segue to the Jackie exhibit, where there are some letters from her in later years – one to a person who helped “rescue” her at sea and another to one of JFK Jr.’s teachers who was living nearby on the Cape. There is also an unrelated video about her trip to India with her sister Lee.

The payoff, if you will, is brief but glorious, with two fairly rare photos of her on the Cape. One (taken by Jacques Lowe in August of 1960) is of her in a swimsuit, holding a pair of flippers and wearing a bathing cap adorned with what appear to be scales. She’s looking directly at the camera, smiling broadly. The other (also by Lowe) is of her in a blue cotton dress where she and JFK hold hands with Caroline, happily in the middle, their faces tilted toward the sky. You can almost feel the ocean breeze in the picture.

While the sun seems to shine in every picture, there is a melancholy about it all, because we cannot help but anticipate the ferocious storm to come. Add to that sadness the fact that Lowe – the Kennedys’s personal photographer who also took many of the famous 1960 campaign photos – had stored his negatives in a vault in the World Trade Center, and lost them in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, and the whole thing is wrenching. I watched those towers burn and then collapse around me. The shock of it was made more horrible by the fact that it was a day, only just begun, with the most spectacular blue skies. 

5 PR Lessons from Jacqueline Kennedy Onasssis

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was a master at PR. That was clear before JFK was elected president and she wrote campaign dispatches that were sent out over the wire.  And it was clear after she became First Lady, when she turned the spotlight on culture and the arts in America.

But Jackie’s public relations genius also extended to six major historic preservation projects – including saving Grand Central Terminal, a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court -- in which she was pivotal. Here are five things anyone in PR (that includes me) can learn from Jackie’s masterstrokes:

1.      Be likeable. It may seem obvious that whether it’s you or your client, the golden rule applies. But being likeable is more than just about being nice to others. It means you need to understand other perspectives, and take your messages to where they are. Speak their language, literally. Jackie spoke French to the French. She spoke Spanish in Miami to the in the Latino community. In both cases, her audience was enthralled by the respect she showed for their culture. And they could not help but like her, which translated into votes, bankable good will, a bigger stage, and influence over more people.

2.      Identify the Influencers. In her effort to stop the Eisenhower-inspired demolition of the Federalist-era townhomes lining Lafayette Square in front of the White House to make room for modernist government buildings, Jackie quickly found the one person who could at least slow the project “down to a walk.” That person was the man who wrote the checks at the General Services Administration. She pled her case to him, which bought enough time for her to find a new architect who could solve the problem. In the end, architect John C. Warnecke found a way to build the new space behind the old, keeping the historic façades.

Jackie at a Grand Central press conference in 1975.

3.      Be selective involving the media. She gave a dramatic televised tour of the White House in in 1963 (for which she won an honorary Emmy and 50 million people tuned in). Later, in 1975, Jackie was horrified to learn that Grand Central faced a destructive office tower redevelopment plan. While she rarely gave interviews, especially in her post-White House years, she knew there was only one way to force the beleaguered city to take notice – call a press conference. She was the star of the event, held in the train station’s famous Oyster Bar. When she spoke, the press went absolutely silent, until the camera flashes popped. Again, in 1982, when Lever House on Park Avenue was threatened to be torn down, Jackie identified the influencer (New York Comptroller Jay Goldin), met him at City Hall, and made sure the paparazzi were there when she kissed him on the cheek out front. Jackie got her way. She employed the same tactic in 1984, when, in an effort to stop St. Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan from being torn down, she had her picture taken with legislators in Albany. They, too, voted her way.

4.      Give good quotes – and write moving letters. In the Grand Central case, Jackie hand-wrote an appeal to then-mayor Abraham Beame in which she said: “Is it not cruel to let our city die by degrees…?” He had to agree. In 1987, in her campaign to block developer Mort Zuckerman from building an enormous tower at Columbus Circle in New York, she eloquently complained: “They’re stealing our sky!” Nothing new was built there in her lifetime.

 5.      Be political, when applicable. Jackie learned from the best of them – the Kennedy family. Before she undertook any campaign – whether it was restoring the White House (and getting the public to donate rare antiques rather than asking taxpayers to foot the bill) or saving Lafayette Square, she made sure she understood the legalities involved and how public perception would affect the decisions elected officials made; who needed political cover and how she could provide it; and how a story would play on Main Street. In a way, being political means being masterful at all four of the above tenets, which Jackie was in spades.

I first published this post on my company's blog, Inklings. Check it out here.