The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Jackie had just joined Doubleday as an editor that same year when Wenner took her to lunch at a New York restaurant to talk to her about a book relating to Saturday Night Live. Right in the middle of his pitch, he had a nosebleed that wouldn’t stop—apparently the result of a previous night’s cocaine binge. As Jackie looked on, horrified, concerned waiters descended upon them from all fronts with towels and ice packs; it was a bloody mess. Later, Wenner was quoted as saying, “My God. I bled all over Jackie, just like Jack.”

  Despite the unfortunate misadventure in the restaurant, Jackie did arrange for Doubleday to buy Wenner’s book idea: Rolling Stone Visits Saturday Night Live. However, dating Caroline, even briefly, put him on Jackie’s bad side; she wanted nothing to do with him for about two years. Then, after the romance was over and she had cooled off a little, they resumed their friendship.

  In 1980, Caroline began working as a research assistant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lisa McClintock, who also worked there, remembers her as being “personable and smart.” She also recalls a day she was lunching with Caroline when Jackie walked into the restaurant. Though Caroline looked uncomfortable, Jackie sat down and joined them. At one point, when Caroline went to the ladies’ room, Jackie began to pepper Lisa with questions. Was Caroline having fun working there? Did she know a lot of people? Jackie said that she was worried about a daughter who, as she put it, “isn’t at all like her brother, who you can’t shut up.” She said that Caroline was “more reserved, like me” and asked Lisa to keep an eye on her and maybe encourage her to be more outgoing. “I would love for her to be more social,” Jackie said. Jackie said she also felt that some of the young men Caroline had dated when she was a teenager “only wanted her because of who her parents are, and that can’t feel good to a young girl.”

  “I gathered that John got away with more,” Lisa McClintock continued, “whereas Caroline had it tougher. Boys, dating … teenage rebellion … all of that was harder with Caroline than it was with John. Caroline told me that when she would go to Europe for the summers and end up on the front cover of those fan magazines with different young men in nightclubs, her mother would become unglued.”

  “My God, how do I navigate this treacherous mother-daughter business?” Jackie once asked Olga Price, who was one of her housekeepers in the 1970s. “I want this to be such a lovely time in Caroline’s life, but she is so difficult.”

  Olga recalled, “I asked Mrs. Onassis, ‘Weren’t you difficult?’ She laughed and said, ‘Oh, I was much worse. Mummy used to say I went from adorable to intolerable overnight.’” She added that Janet Auchincloss told her the only way teenage girls ever break away from their moms is to first resent them. “‘Otherwise, they’d probably never leave home,’ Janet said, ‘but then when they come back, they do so with all their hearts, that is if you give them enough time.’”

  Adora Rule, who was Janet Auchincloss’s longtime assistant, recalled that when Jackie brought her children to Hammersmith Farm—the family estate in Newport—there were sometimes disciplinary problems. “They came several times a year,” Adora recalled, “and I often noted that, as a mother, Jackie could be much harder on Caroline than she was on John. For instance, when Caroline was about fourteen she made a smart remark about something to Jackie. ‘How dare you?’ Jackie told her angrily. ‘Why, so help me, God, Caroline, I will slap the taste right out of your mouth.’ Instead of being quiet, the teenager said something else, and sure enough Jackie hauled off and slapped her hard right across the face in front of a room full of people. ‘Mummy used to do that to me when I was your age,’ she said, ‘and now you are forcing me to do it to you, too.’ Caroline screamed bloody murder and ran off, sobbing and humiliated. Maria [Shriver], who was sixteen, looked at me with wide eyes as if she was horrified and had never seen anything like it. ‘My mummy would never do that to me,’ she said. But Jackie had her ways, just like her own mother had her ways and, yes, both could be stern.”

  Maybe Caroline said it best when she was about eighteen. After apparently having an argument with Jackie, she stomped into her grandmother’s drawing room and came across Adora, who was typing correspondence in the corner. “You know, not a single day goes by that I don’t measure myself by the Jacqueline Kennedy yardstick,” Caroline said, flustered. Adora threw her a curious glance and said, “But I think your mother expects much less of you than you do of yourself.”

  “Well, I think you don’t know me or my mother very well at all, now, do you?” Caroline shot back.

  “Oh my. I didn’t mean—” Adora said, beginning to apologize.

  “Indeed,” Caroline said, cutting her off. “That will be all, Adora,” she added with petulance. She then spun around and took off. Many years later, Adora Rule would recall with a chuckle, “I thought to myself, My, my, my, now, that one certainly knows how to leave a room, doesn’t she? I wonder who she learned that from?”

  Renaissance Man

  The early 1980s, which was when Caroline first began to date Ed, was a period in her life during which most people felt she was at her happiest. “I think falling for Ed was a magical time for her,” said Gustavo Paredes. “They went to Aspen together quite a bit, they went to museums, concerts. They spent a little time with the Kennedys at Hyannis, and, of course, lots of quality time with her mother at Red Gate Farm. They never crossed swords, at least not that any of us knew. He was reserved, though, not easy to know. I remember him as this tall man, prematurely gray, sturdy-looking. He didn’t waste time on unnecessary friendliness.”

  “Ed had a house in Chester, Massachusetts, which I believe his parents had given to him, in the Berkshires,” added Adora Rule. “I remember it had a wraparound porch and a vegetable garden, which Ed was obsessed with tending. It was rustic and lovely, perfect for weekend getaways. They spent a lot of time there in their own little world. Caroline told me that the attraction where Ed was concerned was simple: she’d just never met anyone quite like him before. He was so smart and so unique as a person; she said she couldn’t help but fall for him.”

  Eleanor Doyle, Chester’s postmaster, recalled Ed and Caroline as being “like everyone else. They walked around in blue jeans and blended in,” she said. “They were just normal people. They took part in local activities, frequented the village’s eateries, and contributed financially to the Chester Historical Society, now located in what was formerly our minuscule town jail. You’d never have known they were rich and famous city people, or ‘flatlanders,’ as we call them today.”

  Edwin Arthur Schlossberg, born on July 19, 1945, was twelve years Caroline’s senior—the same age difference that had existed between her parents (JFK was thirty-six and Jackie twenty-four when they married). He was definitely a jack-of-all-trades, which may be why some in Caroline’s life were never able to get a handle on exactly what it was Ed did for a living: he was an author, a poet, a painter, a designer … and an architect. He’d also been a city planner and, at one point, even a screenplay writer, or as John once said, joking, “Pick a job, Ed. Any job.”

  Schlossberg hailed from an Orthodox Jewish family, his great-grandparents all Ellis Island immigrants who’d been born near Poltava, Russia. He was raised by his parents, Alfred and Celia Mae Schlossberg—known as “Mae”—on New York’s Upper East Side. Because Schlossberg’s father was the founder of Alfred Schlossberg, Inc., a successful textile-manufacturing firm in New York, Ed enjoyed a comfortable youth, with summers spent in the family’s vacation home in Palm Beach (not far from the Kennedys’ residence there). He attended Manhattan’s Birch Wathen Lenox School, following his older sister (by seven years), Maryann, who’d also been enrolled. He received his doctorate in science and literature from Columbia University in 1971. “I combined physics and literature. I was using two different ways of talking about the world,” he recalled of his doctoral thesis. “It was an imaginary conversation I was having in my head between Einstein and Beckett, two of the most brilliant thinkers I had encountered.”

&nbs
p; As an artist, Ed had many showings in New York, during which he demonstrated an avant-garde style, painting in watercolors and oil and also employing abstract construction elements such as aluminum and Plexiglas. Eventually, he started his own firm, Edwin A. Schlossberg, Inc., which, according to an early business brochure, specialized “in the multimedia designing of museums and educational environments.”

  Ed would always be regarded for his taste in art and furnishings—even later giving speeches at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago (which was owned by the Kennedys) about design trends. However, he viewed himself as an academic and knew he had a way of looking at the world some found peculiar. Therefore, he was uncomfortable in the public eye. He especially shied away from giving press interviews. The Chicago Tribune managed to get one with him after a Merchandise Mart speech, as long as the reporter agreed to ask no questions about the Kennedys. “Publicity doesn’t interest me,” Ed said. “The thing that interests me is work. We’re living in a culture that if you spend a lot of time thinking about what other people think about you, it distracts you from what you care about. I like what I do, and that’s what interests me.”

  Chris Kennedy, Ethel’s son who was executive vice president of Merchandise Mart properties, said of Ed, “To a lot of people, Ed comes across as quiet and shy, but he’s actually much the opposite when you know him. With Ed, it’s impossible to plumb the depths of his intellect. He is one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. But he never chats up, runs off at the mouth. People who know Ed talk about him as a true Renaissance man. His big theme is engaging his audience in his designs. I compare him to Ben Franklin. He’s playful with inventions. He loves to see people’s reactions.”

  Looking back today, many in Caroline’s life feel that the death of her cousin David was the impetus for the growth of her romance with Ed. Caroline had been in Florida with David when he died of an overdose in April 1984. Distraught, it was Ed to whom she turned. He was a soothing and stable presence in her life during this terrible time. He also did something for Caroline for which he would become known in years to come: He kept her isolated from anyone, including family members, he felt might interfere with her grieving or would have questions she didn’t wish to answer. It was then that the template for her relationship with Ed was designed; he was her protector. Because of this purpose in her life, Ed would sometimes be thought of as the enemy by many of Caroline’s relatives, especially her cousins. It didn’t help that he was rarely diplomatic. Instead, he was often assertive and not always kind. “Who the hell does he think he is?” became a constant refrain when it came to Ed, and it would remain so for decades to come.

  A Mother’s Work

  Ed Schlossberg was pretty much swept away by the Kennedys from the beginning. “Honor. Family. Loyalty,” he ticked off when explaining his fascination about them. “These are values they preserve which I think are important.” Also, he would say that he’d read up on the history of the patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, and that he appreciated the fact that he “had the guts to go after what he wanted for his family, and get it all. That’s worth respecting.”

  One woman more concerned about Ed’s decision to marry Caroline was his mother, Mae. She and Alfred had been married for many years, but it hadn’t always been easy. Whereas Mae was an expressive woman, Alfred could often be distant and emotionally detached. Mae believed in communication, almost to the point where her need to discuss every little thing drove her husband mad. During a disagreement, he would seethe silently while she fought for an airing of their differences. “When you’re married to the same man for decades,” she once told Sarah Abelman, a close friend of hers—the two attended Park East Synagogue together—“you learn to adapt. But it takes work.” Sarah’s daughter, Rebecca, who as a young girl was a good friend of Maryann Schlossberg’s (Mae’s daughter), recalled, “Mae told my mom, ‘I never know what Al’s thinking. Most of the arguments we have had in our marriage, I’ve basically had with myself.’”

  Sarah Abelman continued, “Mae was an open book. If she thought it, she said it. She tried to teach Ed and [his sister] Maryann to be the same way, to not bottle things up. In the end, Maryann turned out just like Mae, candid and in touch with her feelings, whereas Ed became exactly like Al—not forthcoming, withholding.”

  Mae was a petite woman—not even five feet tall—with penetrating dark eyes, a bright welcoming smile, and a shock of black hair that came to a sharp widow’s peak. Though small of stature, she was a forceful personality, definitely nobody’s pushover. She commanded respect and she got it, especially from her children. Though they often felt she was a meddling mother, in her mind intrusion was a mother’s responsibility. As they were growing up, she wanted to be involved in every aspect of their lives and have a say in all of it, from their choice of studies to their choice of romantic partners, or, as she liked to put it, “being a Jewish mother requires commitment.”

  Early in her son’s relationship with Caroline, Mae wanted to reach out to Caroline and Jackie to get to know them better. Ed was reluctant. He didn’t want to expose his outspoken mother to Caroline and Jackie, at least not yet. Rather than wait for Ed to arrange things, after a few months Mae took matters into her own hands and simply called Jackie herself. “Our children are dating and I thought it would be fun for us girls to get together,” she said, according to one account. Jackie obliged.

  A few weeks later, Mae, Jackie, and Caroline went to lunch at Fraunces Tavern, one of the oldest restaurants in Manhattan. It had been Mae’s suggestion. The women dined in the Bissell Room, elegantly furnished with eighteenth-century decor. However, because it’s known for its whiskeys, beers, and cocktails, Mae—who enjoyed the occasional cocktail—wanted them to relax and get to know one another.

  According to family history, as soon as they settled themselves in their chairs opposite each other, Mae reached over to Jackie, took both her hands into her own, and, looking deeply into her eyes, observed that what had happened to JFK in Dallas must have been horrible for her. Remarking that she still hadn’t gotten over it herself, she then wondered how Jackie had ever been able to get through it. As the story goes, Jackie smiled enigmatically and slipped her hands out from under Mae’s. Then she lifted her head slowly, gazed about the room with interest, and said in that breathy voice of hers, “My, my, such an interesting place. Don’t you agree?”

  Mae quickly came to understood that Jackie was guarded; of course, this couldn’t have been much of a surprise to her since the former First Lady’s public persona had certainly preceded her. What she didn’t know was that Caroline was even more reserved. “Mae worked for more than an hour trying to engage Caroline,” recalled one relative of hers. “Much to her dismay, neither she nor her mother would have even one cocktail. It wasn’t the open airing of feelings Mae had hoped for, put it that way.”

  Though Mae would be gracious and tell family members she found Jackie and Caroline “perfectly lovely,” in truth, she was concerned. She knew her son well and couldn’t imagine him being married to a mirror image of himself, someone who was also closed off and reluctant to reveal anything. She had hoped Caroline might be the kind of woman who would draw Ed out, but she quickly came to the conclusion that someone needed to draw Caroline out.

  Not surprisingly, Jackie and Caroline found Mae too familiar, bordering on intrusive. In the end, Jackie and Mae would never really be close. In fairness to both, however, Jackie was about twenty years younger than Mae, so that age disparity likely had as much to do with their lack of camaraderie as any difference in their personalities. Mae would have a difficult time getting to know Caroline as well. It would not be for lack of trying, though. Because Mae was so persistent, there would be many more such get-togethers with Jackie and Caroline. She would not stop trying to get to know them.

  Mummy’s Wharf

  There was an old beaten-down wharf on Martha’s Vineyard in front of Red Gate Farm that was really not much more than a shoddy and wobbly assembly of wood planks, w
ith no guard railing or sides, just a flat surface that was in such close proximity to the ice-cold water below it that high tide inevitably just completely engulfed it. Certainly no boat had pulled up to this wharf in years. It was a barely standing relic of another time, maybe once used by fishing boats. John and Carolyn liked to call this little, somewhat precarious spot “Mummy’s Wharf.”

  Jacqueline Kennedy had bought Red Gate Farm back in 1978 as a summer retreat; she and her children, relatives, and friends spent many happy times there. Early in the morning, Jackie could usually be found standing on Mummy’s Wharf, gazing out at the sea, meditating, praying, or just thinking about her life and times—who could know what went through her head in such private moments? “What’s she doing out there?” John would ask Caroline as, from a distance, the two watched their mother in her solitude, draped in the morning mist. He found the place cold and unwelcoming. Even as the sun would begin to filter through the gray sky, John would worry. “It’s still freezing out there, and that thing looks dangerous,” he’d say of the wharf. “Let’s go get her.” No, Caroline would always say—“let’s just let her be.” It was as if Caroline knew, or in some way could relate to, her mother’s need to process things, to not just live her life but to take ample time to analyze it, maybe understand it a little better.

  Though many of her family members thought of her as a deep thinker, Caroline wasn’t as religious as many of her cousins, most of whom were steeped in Catholicism. Sister Pauline Joseph recalled, “In my company, Mrs. Kennedy [Ethel] quoted a Bible passage to Caroline after John’s death: ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight.’ Caroline smiled and nodded, but I could tell that it didn’t resonate with her.” Many of her cousins committed themselves to going to church weekly and, in some cases, even daily. They were tethered to prayer, to fellowship, to their faith, but not Caroline. She went to church on occasion, but she was spiritual, not religious. Ethel wished she had her faith on which to lean, or at least a complete trust in God when things happened that made no sense, such as John’s death. “With her heart breaking, many of us wished Caroline would turn to the Lord,” said Sister Pauline Joseph, “but she had her own way of handling things.”