Intern #1

chuckster

IMFUBARED
I Was JFK's Intern and Lover, Woman Admits

She's now a 60-year-old church worker, but in 1962 she was a 19-year-old White House intern and President John F. Kennedy's secret lover.

"I am the Mimi," Marion Fahnestock told the New York Daily News, unraveling a mystery sparked by a new JFK biography that revealed the story of her affair with JFK decades ago, identifying her only as "Mimi."

Coming forward after all those years, during which she kept secret her dalliance with a president of the United States, Mrs. Fahnestock says, is a great relief.

"The gift for me is that this allowed me to tell my two married daughters a secret that I've been holding for 41 years," she told the News. "It's a huge relief."

The story of the long-ago affair surfaced with the unsealing of a portion of a 1964 interview with Barbara Gamarekian, a former White House press aide, who confided an account of the liaison to historian Robert Dallek while he was researching his new biography of JFK, "An Unfinished Life."

But Dallek was unable to identify the woman other than to report she was known to White House insiders solely as "Mimi." He described the lengths White House aides went to conceal JFK's sex sessions with the intern, just one of many sexcapades of the president, whose insatiable sexual appetite was a closely kept secret even among those in the media who were aware of his frequent dalliances.


JFK once confided that if he didn't have sex every day he got a headache, leading one wag to comment that sex was JFK's "aspirin."

Although happy to get what she described to the News as a load off her shoulders, Mrs. Fahnestock, now an administrator at Manhattan's Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, refused to provide any of the seamy details of her affair with JFK or even any details about her impression of her presidential lover.

"I think the world knows what he was like," she told the News. "I was 19 years old, a very young, very naive, very innocent young girl."

Gamarekian told the News that Mimi was among a handful of other young women invited to White House pool parties and flown on Air Force jets to secret liaisons with Kennedy at resorts and even summit meetings.


She was once caught by presidential aides hiding on the floor of a limousine in JFK's entourage in the Bahamas moments after the president left.

"All of these things are true," she told the News. "Remember, I was 19 years old. It was my first job."

Mrs. Fahnestock told the News she worked two summers at the White House and remained there until just a few weeks before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

She said she married in 1964, had two daughters and later divorced. Until this week she kept her secret and won't say if she ever told her former husband, the late Anthony Fahnestock, about the affair.

"I kept it a secret," she told the News. "I didn't have a story to tell." She added that she decided to reveal the affair when the story of JFK's secret girlfriend hit the headlines in recent days.

"It's a gift that my daughters know this is a piece of my history," she said. "They are totally supportive of me."

Having revealed her past, Mrs. Fahnestock said she wants to fade back into the anonymity of her private life.

"I have a wonderful job ... a close family, a lot of friends," she said. "I have a life to live."
 

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
I don't understand why the media keeps dredging up Kennedy mistresses. It's common knowledge that he and Jackie had a sham marriage for political purposes only. If you want to dog JFK, there are so many other topics you could choose that are politically legitimate. But why go after him anyway? To me, it's like anyone caring that Thomas Jefferson slept with his slaves.
 
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