Jackie Kennedy Rode Around Naked, Grave Designer’s Memoir Claims
John Carl Warnecke, who designed John F. Kennedy's grave, describes a 1966 Hawaii trip with Jackie Kennedy in his posthumous memoir, out November 10. He recounts a nude beach scene and a convertible ride, and says their friendship lasted decades.
John Carl Warnecke, the architect who designed John F. Kennedy's grave, writes in a posthumous memoir that Jackie Kennedy rode around naked in his convertible during a 1966 trip to Hawaii. The book, Camelot's Architect: The Untold Story of Jackie Kennedy, Lafayette Square, and a Secret Romance, comes out November 10.
Warnecke died in 2010 at 91. His account is his own recollection, and no one else has confirmed it.
How they met
Warnecke says he met Jackie in 1962 at a dinner at the British embassy. They grew close while he worked with her and JFK on the preservation of Washington's historic Lafayette Square.
He worked closely with the Kennedys during their White House years. His friendship with Jackie lasted decades, he writes.
The Hawaii summer
In the summer of 1966, Warnecke was in Honolulu to design the State Capitol. He invited Jackie to rent a house nearby. She was visiting Hawaii to see a mutual friend, or so they said if anyone asked.
She rented a house on the beach for a month. "As soon as Jackie set foot in her Hawaiian house, which she had rented for a month, she phoned me," Warnecke writes. The house was about a mile south of his.
He describes walking up the beach and finding her face down on a large towel, an enormous straw hat over her head. "She was completely nude," he writes.
The convertible ride
One evening, before they went to dinner, Warnecke went inside his house to grab a jacket. When he came out, his convertible was pulled out of the garage and Jackie was sitting in the back.
"What amazed me most was that she did not have a stitch of clothing on," he writes. He says he turned around a couple of times and "didn't quite know what to make of it." He quotes her as saying, "I'm all yours. All of me. I'm letting you know how much I love you."
Stuck in traffic on the way to dinner, they pulled off at a scenic spot by the water "that was ours alone." "My goal of bringing Jackie back to a normal life had been realized," he concludes about the Hawaii trip.
Later years
After Jackie married Aristotle Onassis and Warnecke also married, the two kept in touch. They "renewed" their friendship after Onassis died and Warnecke was divorced.
The book is available for preorder wherever books are sold. Of those later years, Warnecke writes: "There was nothing physical going on between us, yet it felt as if we were in some ways still carrying on an exciting secret affair."
