MIMI ALFORD : BEFORE MONICA LEWINSKY THERE WAS J.F.K. INTERN IN THE WHITE HOUSE

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MARION FAY "MIMI" BEARDSLEY - ALFORD

(1943 - living)

Continuing on from last month's work on President John F. Kennedy's Mistress, Judith Campbell Exner, remember that a person can have more than one Mistress at a time and only the Classic Mistress expects and gets full financial support from her man.  Sometimes what a man gives his Mistress is a job - a career boost.  In the case of Mimi Beardsley, first came an opportunity as a student at Miss Porter's School, who worked on her prep school newspaper, to interview the President.  She had wanted to interview First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy for the paper because Jackie was the most famous alumni of Miss Porter's Finishing School, a school for the well bred elite young women who were expected to partner with powerful and important men.  A year later, a call from the White House offering Mimi an Internship to work in the White House Press office came and of course she wanted that career opportunity.  She worked there for stretches during 1962 and 1963. 

Within days of arrival to Washington D.C., Mimi lost her virginity to the President, in his wife First Lady Jackie's White House bedroom yet, while  she was out of town. The relationship between J.F.K. and Mimi Beardsley lasted eighteen months, ending approximately two weeks before the President and Mrs. Kennedy went to Dallas, Texas, and he had his meeting with fate - his assassination.  

Fifty years of keeping a secret resulted in the book, Once Upon a Secret, by Mimi Alford, Alford being her married name, which I read cover to cover and found to be of interest to myself and my readers.  One of the best things about this book was that, though as an old woman Mimi realizes the situation could be construed negatively, she honestly remembers it as she experienced it as a young woman of 19-20 years old, without guilt then or regret now. She was having an adventure and felt desired by the most powerful man in the world.

I will say this.  So many young women wonder how and when they will loose their virginity and too many loose it while drunk or high or to someone forgettable and regret it later.  At the same time there were things that happened, things that I'll get to in another post, that I personally think indicate the President was not up to something good.

According to Mimi, who did extensive interviews at the publication of her book in February 2012, including a long one with journalist Meredith Veiera,  which I watched,  J.F.K was fun, a sensualist, boyish and silly, a man who had a collection of little rubber ducks in his bath tub that they played with together. I found that interesting because through the years I've read a lot of books that include J.F.K. and other women seemed to think he was too fast and selfish sexually.

Mimi sounds like other Other Women who had affairs with J.F.K.  She had no idea that he had other women and though she was the Only Other Woman in his life.  She was too young to wonder at some of the things that might make more experienced women - at least in Western culture - question such as the fact that they never kissed each other.  Dave Powers, J.F.K.'s right hand man, had been the one assigned to call her and invite her for an afternoon swim with the President.  She got there and relaxed when she saw she was in the pool with other employees.  Later Powers called to invite her to a cocktail party where again there were other employees.  But then the President offered her a tour of the White House and before it was over they had made love.  She gathered up her underwear and dress and put them on.  He offered her something to eat there in the kitchen.  He had a car take her home.  This affair beats what happened between President William Jefferson Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

Not only was she having sex with Kennedy in the White House, she was traveling with him.  She went on State Department trips such as to the Bahamas.  She went on personal trips with him, such as visiting Palm Springs and staying at singer Bing Crosby's estate there.  There was shopping in New York.  Perhaps the most unsettling thing is that she had planned to go to Dallas when he went, but the First Lady decided she would accompany her husband instead.

Those who think of the President as having been predatory, having selected her out and called upon her, perhaps with this ambition of a sexual relationship with a woman who at 19 years old was years younger, but still legal, perhaps as a rapist, will be disappointed because Mimi didn't think of it that way at the time, nor does she remember it that way.

She wrote that she had been swept away and could not change that fact. 
She also continued to date and soon married a man who she would stay married to for 26 years. This first husband, Tony, was with her when news of the assassination came and she cried.  Then she told him she had an affair with the President.  Apparently that did not stop him from marrying her, to his credit.

She never discussed her relationship with her parents back in the day, but why would she?  (I don't know anyone who wants to hear intimate details from their parents or to share theirs! And this was back in the early 1960's! )  And so, this month, through her book, we'll learn more than they knew!

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