‘First Ladies For $600’: ‘Jeopardy’ Taps Southampton Hospital Trivia

Had Robert Ross watched “Jeopardy!” last Thursday night, June 30, he would have easily known the answer to “First Ladies Firsts” for $600.

The clue? “The 1st woman to be first lady who was born at a hospital, she made her debut at Southampton Hospital in New York in 1929.”

Contestant Hoa Quach may have been the one to buzz in with “Kennedy” — and win the cash — but it was Ross who unearthed Jacqueline Bouvier’s birth records at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital 13 years ago.

“That would have been the only one I would have gotten right,” Ross said of the “Jeopardy!” clue, with a laugh, “that’s for sure.”

In 2009, the hospital was on the cusp of celebrating its 100th anniversary and Ross, who works as the vice president of community and government relations there, was gathering historic documents and memorabilia to commemorate the occasion when he set his sights on an old safe tucked into one of the administrative offices.

After tracking down the combination, and wrestling with the lock for a half hour, he opened the door and noticed a file drawer built into it. “I’m, like, ‘What’s in there?’” he recalled, adding, “I’m looking and looking, and all of a sudden, I come across this old manila envelope.”

The first name he noticed was “Jacqueline Bouvier,” he said, though someone had later written, “Now Mrs. Jack Kennedy (Mrs. President Kennedy)” — and he realized what he had found.

But only when he opened the folder did he see the full birth records of “Baby Girl Bouvier,” typed across the top of the paper — born on July 28, 1929, at 5 p.m. She weighed 8 pounds and, during her two-week stay at the hospital, she slept and nursed well, according to the documents.

Ross closed the safe door and immediately went to see Robert Chaloner, chief administrative officer of what is now Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, with the birth records in hand.

“I said, ‘You’re never gonna to believe what I found,’ and he said, ‘What?’ And I showed it to him and the two of us are, like, looking at each other,” Ross said. “And I said, ‘So what do we do with it?’ He said, ‘Well, put it back in the safe and let’s not lose the combination for another 40 years.’”

Word got out and, not before long, the discovery made international headlines, Ross said. Within a few weeks, he started looking into donating the records to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, he said. After the next of kin, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, signed off on the release — a process that took years — Ross hand-delivered the documents in 2013 to the museum, where they will be displayed in perpetuity at the First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Exhibit.

“There is a sign in her section that says she was born in Southampton, New York. It was a once-in-a-lifetime situation, just by luck, I came across these documents,” Ross said, adding, “It was quite the story.”