The Well-kept Secret of the Whole Kennedy Administration

Mary Barelli Gallagher was Jacqueline Kennedy’s personal secretary from shortly before her marriage to Senator John F. Kennedy through the White House years and afterward for a total of eight years. She watched Mrs. Kennedy as she restored the White House, worked closely with her in the family quarters and was with her on the day in Dallas when President Kennedy was assassinated. Mrs. Gallagher knew the real woman beneath the goddess-figure the world made of Jacqueline Kennedy.

Jacqueline Kennedy’s personal secretary, Mary Barelli Gallagher, was born and grew up in Boston. She first worked for a local paper company. Through Kenny O’Donnell, a former salesman for the company, she was hired by the newly-elected Senator John Kennedy to be a secretary in his office. She then went to Washington in January 1953. After her first child was born, she became a part-time secretary to Mrs. Hugh Auchincloss. Finally, she became Jacqueline Kennedy’s personal secretary early in 1957 until the year of 1964, which seems to have been the highlight of her secretarial career. I can understand how this could be the case.

Mrs. Gallagher described Jacqueline Kennedy as being a woman born to be “QUEEN” or its equivalent, and born to cause excitement wherever she went, and not everything known or perceived about Jacqueline Kennedy was actually as it truly was.

The world seemed spellbound by Jacqueline Kennedy. First Families are a part of history, and Mrs. Gallagher was a part of history in her relationships with the Kennedy First Family.

I think personally I would have loved to been in her shoes! Not in Jacqueline Kennedy’s shoes, but in the shoes of her secretary. What an exciting secretarial job that must have been.

A chauffeur-driven limousine with White House license plates drove up to the house of Mary Barelli Gallagher every morning. Someone held the door open while Mrs. Gallagher got into this limousine. Since Jacqueline Kennedy did not want it known she had a “personal” secretary, Mrs. Gallagher had to just merely tell the driver she was Mrs. Kennedy’s secretary. Mrs. Gallagher thought the reaso
Mrs. Kennedy did not want the public to know she had a “personal” secretary was so everyone would think they were having direct contact with her – the wife of the President. Mrs. Gallagher had to stay well out of the public eye. I don’t think I would have minded that part of things either. If there was one job in this entire world I would have absolutely almost “died” to have, it would have been the “personal” secretary to Jacqueline Kennedy. However, at the time all this occurred, I was still a toddler. It would have been quite impossible for me to try for this job…….

Mary Barelli Gallagher was known as a very well-kept secret of the whole Administration. All the while, Mrs. Gallagher was the only member of her professional staff to be with Mrs. Kennedy in her living quarters.

Mrs. Gallagher recalls the days in the Treaty Room, when the table was piled very high with Mrs. Kennedy’s mail and folders of things to do that Mrs. Kennedy would come in and hold her head at the sight of it. Mrs. Gallagher describes herself in those days as never being safe from the dictation. Jacqueline Kennedy would call her at home, saying, “Oh, Mary, I just have a few things I wanted to get off my mind,” and her “personal” secretary, Mary Barelli Gallagher, would grab her writing tools and begin writing in shorthand. In a book written by Pierre Salinger (the President’s Press Secretary), he said Mrs. Kennedy was “an inveterate memoranda writer” and wrote them “all in longhand.” Her “personal” secretary, Mrs. Gallagher knew the truth of this and that in fact, she wrote them all in shorthand. Regardless of what she was doing, when Mrs. Kennedy called her for dictation, she dutifully grabbed a pencil and notebook. She never broke Jackie’s train of thought as it was her pride to never ask anything over a second time. She wrote it down and checked later.

Mrs. Gallagher truly thought Jacqueline Kennedy would always be this way and that her life and activities would always revolve around her role as a Kennedy and the First Lady. Consequently, it was very difficult for Mrs. Gallagher to believe the news of her marriage to Onassis.

Mrs. Gallagher does recall seeing Aristotle Onassis at the White House one time, but did not attach any significance to his appearance there. She thought Jackie Kennedy would never remarry and fully believed like most of the rest of our world that Jacqueline Kennedy would remain tied to the Kennedy name for the rest of her life and devote herself completely to this role and the Kennedy Library in memory of John F. Kennedy.

Source: “My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy” by Mary Barelli Gallagher, Personal Secretary to the Former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy

Continued in Part 2n