<p>But now Mimi Beardsley Alford, a retired New York church administrator, who as a teenager had an 18-month sexual relationship with President John F Kennedy, has finally decided to tell the story of those White House days.<br /><br />The relationship was exposed in 2003 in a biography of Kennedy that included a reference to JFK’s involvement with a Mimi Beardsley. She had not even told her parents or children of the affair. A New York newspaper found that Beardsley Alford had married, changed her name, divorced and was working for a Presbyterian church.<br /><br />After the revelations, Beardsley Alford said no more than to confirm that she was “involved in a sexual relationship” with the president from June 1962. But her agent Mark Reiter said she is now writing her own account of the relationship, in a book called Once Upon a Secret. <br /><br />Reiter said Beardsley Alford would not be serving up salacious details of the affair.<br />The affair was revealed in An Unfinished Life: John F Kennedy 1917-1963, by Robert Dallek, based on an oral account of the period recorded in the 1960s with Barbara Gamarekian, who was deputy to Kennedy’s press secretary.<br /><br />Gamarekian describes a White House in which young women, working in the press office in particular, were considered fair game by the president and some of his top aides.<br /><br />She recalls an incident in which the president was attempting to smuggle Beardsley Alford out of his quarters during a visit to Nassau when she was spotted hiding in a car by some officials. “They walked over and looked in the car and here seated on the floor was Mimi! The whole thing doesn’t make sense. Here she was sitting on the floor of a car so she wouldn’t be seen by anyone,” she said.<br /><br />Gamarekian said there were other “cute, young, attractive” interns who also had a “special relationship” with the president. “The thing that amazed me so was that these two or three girls were great friends and bosom buddies and gathered in corners and whispered and giggled, and there seemed to be no jealousy between them.”</p>
<p>But now Mimi Beardsley Alford, a retired New York church administrator, who as a teenager had an 18-month sexual relationship with President John F Kennedy, has finally decided to tell the story of those White House days.<br /><br />The relationship was exposed in 2003 in a biography of Kennedy that included a reference to JFK’s involvement with a Mimi Beardsley. She had not even told her parents or children of the affair. A New York newspaper found that Beardsley Alford had married, changed her name, divorced and was working for a Presbyterian church.<br /><br />After the revelations, Beardsley Alford said no more than to confirm that she was “involved in a sexual relationship” with the president from June 1962. But her agent Mark Reiter said she is now writing her own account of the relationship, in a book called Once Upon a Secret. <br /><br />Reiter said Beardsley Alford would not be serving up salacious details of the affair.<br />The affair was revealed in An Unfinished Life: John F Kennedy 1917-1963, by Robert Dallek, based on an oral account of the period recorded in the 1960s with Barbara Gamarekian, who was deputy to Kennedy’s press secretary.<br /><br />Gamarekian describes a White House in which young women, working in the press office in particular, were considered fair game by the president and some of his top aides.<br /><br />She recalls an incident in which the president was attempting to smuggle Beardsley Alford out of his quarters during a visit to Nassau when she was spotted hiding in a car by some officials. “They walked over and looked in the car and here seated on the floor was Mimi! The whole thing doesn’t make sense. Here she was sitting on the floor of a car so she wouldn’t be seen by anyone,” she said.<br /><br />Gamarekian said there were other “cute, young, attractive” interns who also had a “special relationship” with the president. “The thing that amazed me so was that these two or three girls were great friends and bosom buddies and gathered in corners and whispered and giggled, and there seemed to be no jealousy between them.”</p>