On November 27, 1957, the day before Thanksgiving, Jackie gave birth by cesarean section to a healthy seven-pound, two-ounce baby girl. They named her Caroline after Jackie’s sister, Caroline Lee, with the middle name Bouvier. Even Janet was a little taken by her son-in-law’s reaction to his new daughter. She’d been angry with him for so long, but once she saw him with her little grandchild, she had to admit it—her heart melted a little.
“I’ll always remember Jack’s face,” Janet recalled, “when the doctor came into the waiting room and told him the baby had arrived, that it was a girl and Jackie was fine and the baby was fine. I always remember the sweet expression on his face, the way he smiled. The sheer, unadulterated delight he took in Caroline from that first day on. He seemed perfectly at home with babies. I don’t ever remember his having that stiffness or that being afraid to touch them that Hugh seems to have always had.” Janet recalled Jack having to leave the next day to speak in Dallas, Texas, “and he didn’t want to go. He just wanted to be with his daughter.”
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