Was cannabis grown on the famous Hyannis Port Kennedy compound in Massachusetts? A new book, published last week, spills the beans on the secret marijuana garden.
In a new memoir titled “Jackie’s Girl: My Life with the Kennedy Family” by Kathy McKeon, who was the former first lady’s assistant from 1964 to 1977, Jacqueline Kennedy discovered the illegal weed was being grown secretly among the flowers in her garden.
The book is far from a scandalous tell-all from a bitter former employee. Amazon describes the 320-page book as an “endearing coming-of-age memoir by a young woman who spent thirteen years as Jackie Kennedy’s personal assistant and occasional nanny—and the lessons about life and love she learned from the glamorous first lady.”
So how did the marijuana-patch-hidden-inside-the-flower-patch story get told?
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McKeon wrote that she was curious as to why a bunch of Kennedy cousins routinely visited the flower patch. To McKeon, there was something suspicious about the teen-agers infatuation with flowers.
“I went to investigate after the kids wandered off one afternoon but didn’t see any evidence that they’d been back there sneaking beers or cigarettes or anything like that. The flowers hadn’t been trampled.”
After eliminating booze and tobacco, McKeon’s curiosity persisted. And then …
“That’s when it hit me. I went to find Jack Dempsey, the retired Cape [Cod] police chief who often hung out at the Secret Service trailer.”
McKeon goes to tell Dempsey what he suspected. The two of them trekked back to the secret garden and that is when the former police chief confirmed the hunch: It was the evil weed.
McKeon details how Dempsey left to immediately inform the former first lady. But McKeon got their first and it was she who informed Jackie. Her response, according to McKeon was surprise. And then fear of the family’s reputation.
“Are you kidding me?” Oh my God, this can’t get out. What should we do?”
After consulting with Dempsey, the former first lady agreed to let the Secret Service agents pull out the plants from the secret garden that same day.
Who planted the illegal plants? Now, THAT remains a mystery.
“John and Caroline were much too young to have had any role in it,” McKeon wrote of the two children of John and Jackie Kennedy. “And while we all had a pretty good idea which cousins did, there was no confrontation, and no one got in any trouble.”
