#nancy tuckerman

“She was the White House Social Secretary during the Kennedy administration. After the Kennedy assassination, she remained the personal secretary to Jackie Kennedy until the latter's death in 1994.”

KN-C29875. Fireworks Show at the White House

In her 1964 Oral History with colleague Pamela Turnure, the First Lady’s Social Secretary Nancy Tuckerman described how the fireworks show at a state dinner honoring the King and Queen of Afghanistan (pictured above) came to be, and what President Kennedy’s reaction to it was.

Nancy Tuckerman: When the King and Queen of Afghanistan came, Mrs. Kennedy decided it would be appropriate to have a military review on the South Lawn of the White House. And then she decided something even more spectacular had to be done—because there had already been a military performance before. So she thought of fireworks, which they had never had at the White House, and the President, I remember, was very dubious and a little bit nervous about this because he thought it might be too much of an extravaganza and too much of a display to suddenly have fireworks bursting forth.

Mrs. Wayne Fredericks: Well, was he overruled on this or did he think about it?

Nancy Tuckerman: He thought about it a great deal. In fact, he thought about it so much that he called me constantly to find out if the fireworks came from Japan; how long they would last; and many other things: whether by law in Washington you could set them off other than the 4th of July—but we found out it was legal. He had a hundred questions which I had never thought about—and had no answers for—but found out. 

...Also at the Afghanistan dinner, I remember, he suddenly got nervous again over the fireworks and about the day before the dinner he started into exactly the same routine that we had been through a few months ago. He said, “Well, I’ve decided now we must cut the fireworks in half.” So they went from ten minutes to five minutes, and the man who was setting off the fireworks didn’t quite understand or else he decided to make it more spectacular by putting the same amount of dynamite into five minutes because we’d paid for it… So suddenly when the fireworks went off it really was incredible. Do you remember? Oh, the noise! The switchboard in Washington, the police boards, everything was jammed up. People thought the end of the world had come.

Files from the Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis Personal Papers 

We are pleased to announce that the Nancy Tuckerman Series of the Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis Personal Papers is open and available for research at the JFK Presidential Library.

The papers contain personal and professional materials relating to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s public and private life and her role as First Lady of the United States. 

They document her interest in such topics as the redecoration of the White House, travel, State visits, arts and culture, press coverage, as well as her involvement in a variety of cultural projects, organizations, and associations. 

The collection spans the years 1926 to 2002, and the materials consist principally of staff files, correspondence, clippings, photographs, scrapbooks, and albums as well as other materials accumulated by Mrs. Kennedy during the course of her life.

The recently opened Nancy Tuckerman Files contain subject-based files and personal correspondence spanning Mrs. Kennedy’s last few months in the White House until her death in 1994. 

Nancy Tuckerman was the White House Social Secretary from June of 1963 until Mrs. Kennedy left Washington D.C. for New York in 1964, when Tuckerman then became Mrs. Kennedy’s personal secretary and chief of staff. Read More 

-Archivally Speaking from the JFK Library

Images:

Memo for Chief Usher J. B. West from Mrs. Kennedy outlining her specific instructions for how to photograph an official state dinner.

Memo from Chief Usher J.B. West to Mrs. Kennedy regarding her introduction of the first White House Guidebook.

Example of a White House menu from January 18, 1962. The Tuckerman Series contains menus from February 1961 to October 1963.

Pushinka was a dog that Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union (USSR), gave to President Kennedy. (Left) Pushinka’s original paperwork from Russia and the records for other family dogs can be found within Tuckerman’s subject files.

"The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette," Edited by Nancy Tuckerman &  Nancy Dunnan