Joseph P. Kennedy's longtime mistress Janet Fontaine says Joe's wife, Rose, was accepting of her relationship with her husband and seemed happy for her to be around,
People reports.
"Rose accepted me with open arms, was very fond of me and treated me beautifully. I have no hard feelings toward her," Fontaine, now 91, told People. Her nine-year affair with the Kennedy patriarch began in 1948, when she was 24 and he was 60.
"Joe and Rose were not close but they respected one another," she said. "There was a loneliness in his life. Joe had just lost his son, Joe Jr., in the war and then four months after I went to work for him, he lost Kathleen, his favorite daughter [in a plane crash]. He used to cry and say 'I can't talk about them.' I think he needed someone to cling to and bring a little segment of happiness to his life."
Rose often traveled to buy clothes and seemed happy Fontaine was there to comfort her husband, she said. "I don't mean just sexually, but as a companion," she explained.
Their trysts typically happened at night at Joe's room at Hyannis Port, she said. "Rose was never there. And I conducted myself with dignity and I was discreet."
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