Former president John F Kennedy once got a flight attendant pregnant during an affair, then paid for an abortion without the knowledge of his wife Jackie, just months after she gave birth to their daughter Caroline, a new book has claimed.
Kennedy first met Joan Lundberg in 1956 in California, when she worked for Frontier Airlines and as a cocktail waitress, according to a new tell-all biography by J. Randy Taraborrelli.
At the time the former president was a 39-year-old married U.S senator and Lundberg was 23, Taraborrelli writes. In August that year, Kennedy’s wife Jackie experienced a stillbirth of their daughter Arabella.
Two years later – and shortly after the birth of the Kennedys’ daughter Caroline – Lundberg called JFK to share her own pregnancy news, according to an exclusive excerpt of the upcoming book JFK: Public, Private, Secret, shared with People.
“Joan would recall that her news about the baby was ‘like a knife to Jack’s heart,” reads the excerpt. “While it was a shock, Joan wrote that they shouldn’t have been so surprised: ‘I didn’t like wearing a diaphragm, and Jack wouldn’t wear a rubber,’” she wrote.
“Jack couldn’t help but wonder if Joan had purposely planned the pregnancy given that she’d seen his devotion to Jackie after Caroline’s birth. He also wondered if he was really the father, and Joan assured him he was.”
Taraborrelli’s book also uses excerpts from Lundberg’s own, unpublished memoir, which she had shared with her family.
After their phone call revelation, Kennedy then told Lundberg he would mail her $400, telling her “you’ll know what to do” – in apparent reference to getting an abortion.
“‘Being a politician is who I am,’ he told her. ‘Politics is all I know. If you take that away . . .’ His voice trailed off. Before she could respond, he disconnected the line,” the excerpt states.
When the envelope arrived one week later, it reportedly contained no money. According to the biography, when JFK learned this he became “positively unhinged.” He wired more money and Lundberg “took care of things” a day later.
“Jack was very clear; he didn’t want Joan to have the baby… She was angry and disappointed, but also realistic,” Taraborrelli writes.
Speaking to People, Tarraborrelli said he wanted “not to defend JFK” but to “explain him.”
He added that Lundberg was “a big revelation” to him, describing her as having acted as the former president’s “therapist in many ways.”
JFK: Public, Private, Secret, by J. Randy Taraborrelli, is due to be published on July 17 by St. Martin’s Press.
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