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

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  By the beginning of 2004, Bobby Shriver, an attorney, was about to turn fifty. He’d had a colorful childhood, not missing out on much because he was determined to see it all, do it all; he lost his virginity at the age of fourteen while living in Paris with his family. He also attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, a difficult experience for him; he had such trouble with his studies he still experiences a surge of panic when recalling those days. In November, he would become a member of the Santa Monica City Council, a position he would hold for the next eight years. Later in 2004, Arnold reappointed him as chairman of the California State Park and Recreation Commission, a position he’d previously held under Governor Gray Davis. In a year’s time—in 2005—Bobby would marry Malissa Feruzzi and they would then raise two daughters, Natasha Hunt Lee and Rosemary Scarlett.

  At the beginning of 2004, Maria Shriver—who would turn forty-nine that year—continued her work as California’s First Lady while raising her four children with Arnold: Katherine, Christina, Patrick, and Christopher.

  Timothy Shriver, who would turn forty-five in 2004, was devoted to children’s issues, having been a former high school and college teacher. His interest was in developing programs for disadvantaged youth. Like his siblings, he was influenced as a kid by Camp Shriver, basically a daycare center for the intellectually disabled that his mother had established in the Shrivers’ Maryland home. Eventually it was expanded into the Special Olympics. By the beginning of 2004, he had been married for eighteen years to Linda Potter, and they had five children: Sophia Rose, Timothy Jr., Samuel, Kathleen and Caroline.

  Mark Shriver would turn forty in February 2004. He’d already enjoyed a full and productive life of service as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates for two consecutive terms, from 1995 to 2003. He didn’t seek reelection in 2002, instead running for a Congressional seat, which he lost at the primary stage. He was now senior vice president for U.S. Programs of the Save the Children charity. By 2004, he had two children of his own—Thomas and Mary Elizabeth—with his wife, Jeanne, whom he’d married in 1992.

  Anthony Shriver would turn thirty-nine in 2004. Continuing the tradition of advocacy for children with intellectual disabilities, he created Best Buddies International, an international charity devoted to people with learning disabilities. (It has more than 1,500 chapters today.) Anthony had married the Cuban-born Alina Mojica, a former ballerina, back in 1993 and, by 2004, had four children, Teddy, Eunice, Francesca, and Carolina. They would have one more child, John, in 2009. They lived in Miami, where Best Buddies was headquartered.

  “Faith. Not Hope. Faith.”

  In early 2004, much of the Shriver family was excited by an upcoming visit to the compound by Archbishop Sean Patrick O’Malley. A longtime friend of Eunice—and before her, Rose—O’Malley had earlier been stationed in Palm Beach, Florida, and was a regular guest of the family’s when they were in residence at their estate there. Many of the Kennedys, Shrivers, Lawfords, and Smiths gathered at the Cape for Father O’Malley’s visit in January 2004. According to the plan, he would celebrate Mass at ten sharp on his first Sunday there. After the service, another Mass would be said at Ted and Vicki’s. Then there’d be a brunch at Eunice and Sarge’s. Afterward, they would all converge on the Shrivers’ veranda with Bloody Marys.

  One plan for Father O’Malley’s visit was for Ted and his sons—Patrick and Teddy—as well as Sargent and his sons—Bobby, Timothy, Mark, and Anthony—to take O’Malley out on the Senator’s beloved schooner, Mya, to Nantucket. Maria and Arnold had already returned to Los Angeles after the holidays, and Kara—Ted’s daughter—was in Boston with her children. However, since it was freezing cold, Eunice didn’t want Sarge to go on the little jaunt. A small dispute regarding how many sweaters Sarge should wear ended up a loud, impassioned debate. O’Malley was so surprised by Sarge and Eunice’s outburst, he had to ask if they were all right. No, Ethel said, things were definitely not okay with the Shrivers. She said Sarge had been slipping for the last few years.

  At first it was difficult to be sure of what was happening to Sarge. He would forget people’s names, repeat himself in conversation, and seem disoriented. Eunice blamed it on “old age,” as did Ted and Ethel. Finally, in the middle of 2000, Sarge was diagnosed as being in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. “You hear it but you don’t really believe it,” said Timothy. “Then you hear it again, and it sinks in a little, but still you don’t get it. When you finally do accept it, it feels like the end of everything as you have known it.”

  Maria, in particular, wanted to know exactly what the diagnosis meant and how to handle it. Like her mother, she was ready to make lists, to have an agenda, to tackle it and make sense of it. She quickly realized it wasn’t possible, though. “Once you see one case of Alzheimer’s, you’ve seen … one case of Alzheimer’s,” a doctor told her. There was no way to predict how it would unfold for Sarge, and there was nothing anyone could do but pray.

  True to his nature, Sarge wanted to maintain his schedule for as long as possible. A few weeks after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, he and Eunice were off to Ireland, the family’s homeland, for the first Special Olympics World Summer Games ever to be held overseas. As Eunice stood onstage holding hands with Nelson Mandela, who officially opened the games, at historic Croke Park in front of sixty-five thousand cheering people, Sarge stood on the sidelines and beamed. It was as if nothing could slow these two down. The next day, Sarge gave a stirring speech to the Special Olympics board of directors at Dublin Castle. “It would be his last appearance at the Olympics, but he went out with a bang,” said Mark Shriver. “We all marveled at his ability to rise above … to be the man he had always been even though there was this … thing … Alzheimer’s going on in the background.”

  By the beginning of 2004, Sarge’s condition had gotten much worse. At eighty-eight, he was older than all those in the old guard—seventeen years older than Ted, who was seventy-two. Now he had slowed down to the point where it had actually become heartbreaking for his children to watch. After all, Sarge had been one of the great minds of President Kennedy’s New Frontier, well loved by almost everyone in government, regarded as “a good man,” which is what President Bill Clinton would call him, in a world of politics where there weren’t many left.

  Determined not to let it all get to her, Eunice continued to insist on enlisting Sarge in dinner conversation when the children and their children came to visit. “What do you think, Sargie?” she would ask when someone made a point. “And how do you feel about that, Sargie?” she would wonder when someone else had an idea. She would not let the man she’d loved for more than fifty years slip away, not on her watch, anyway.

  All four Shriver sons were present for the visit of Archbishop O’Malley, as were their wives and children. “After Mass, the boys—I call them boys, but they were all obviously grown men—sat down with the archbishop to pray privately,” recalled a priest who had accompanied O’Malley on the trip. “Later I spoke to Mark, who was having a crisis of conscious about his father.”

  “I don’t know how to do this,” said Mark Shriver with tears in his eyes to the priest. “This isn’t Dad,” he said, pointing to Sarge sitting in front of the fireplace, vacancy in his eyes. “So many people say you end up becoming a parent to your parents,” he observed. “That notion falls far short of the truth for me. A parent can control a five-year-old. But I can’t control anything about my dad, least of all what’s happening to him.”

  “But you must have faith,” said the priest. “God is with your dad, wherever he is in his own mind in this moment. Look at him. He’s safe and happy in his own world, Mark.”

  The two peered at Sarge, who smiled back at them from across the room.

  Mark knew his cousins—Kara, Teddy, and Patrick—had been dealing with a failing parent, his aunt Joan, for many years. Now he, too, faced a different kind of debilitation in a beloved parent. “I know it’s called growing up,” he concluded, “but I have to
confess, Father, it’s been a long time since I had much hope.”

  The priest shook his head. “You need faith, Mark. Not hope. Faith.” The rest of 2004 would remain challenging for the Shrivers as Sarge’s disease continued to take its natural course. However, as Eunice liked to say, “The sun comes up every morning. No matter what, every morning it comes up.”

  At the beginning of the new year—on February 18, 2005—the family grew just a tad bigger when Mark and Jeanne Shriver welcomed little Emma Rose Shriver to their fold. Pretty much nothing could compare to the moment when Mark handed Emma to her grandfather to hold for the first time. “This is life,” Eunice said as she watched her husband gently cradle his new granddaughter. “It goes on, doesn’t it, Sargie?” she asked him.

  Gazing down at his granddaughter with tears in his eyes, Sarge nodded. “Change is the law of life,” he said softly, almost trance-like. “And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” Eunice looked at her husband with amazement. It was just a line, but he had quoted her brother President Kennedy … and it was perfect.

  PART V

  Family at War and Peace

  “Well Done, Mommy”

  When he closed his eyes and called upon the moment, in the dark recesses of his mind Patrick Kennedy could always find his mother, Joan, on an expansive stage, sitting before a black Steinway piano in front of a mammoth orchestra. She would be playing for thousands of people, all formally dressed in tuxedos and gowns. Her flaxen hair was parted in the middle and cascading to her shoulders. Her skin was flawless; her occasional smile to the audience bright, engaging. A blue spotlight shimmered off her black-and-white lace Valentino gown with its sloping neckline and long sleeves; the image was somehow angelic. She played effortlessly, her fingers gliding over the keys. Sometimes she would soften her expression, seeming lost in the moment as the tempo slowed and then, with a slight change in her face, pick up again. Occasionally, she would tilt her head back, as if savoring the experience. She seemed to be loving her life, the music coming from a place deep within, setting her free and acting as medicine for her … healing her.

  Once finished with her piece, Joan Kennedy would stand up and take her bows. The audience would rise in unison. Overwhelmed, she would walk to the wings in tears. There, Patrick would lock eyes with her for just a second. In that moment, he would feel such an abundance of affection for him, especially as she mouthed the words I love you. Then she would walk back out onto the stage, the sound of the audience’s applause continuing to be thunderous.

  Someone would come forth with a large bouquet of red roses.

  The curtains then closed.

  What a moment.

  Did this really happen? Was it a genuine memory? Or was it just a story passed down in the Kennedy family about something Patrick hadn’t actually witnessed but that felt real to him simply because he’d heard it so many times? As a grown man, he could never be quite sure. It was difficult to remember his troubled mother in such happy circumstances. Somehow, though, he could still recall her walking quickly toward him backstage while he and his father continued to applaud her. She was crying now, at least in Patrick’s memory. She scooped him up in her arms and held him close as flashbulbs popped all around them. “It was a great success,” he remembered his proud father saying while patting her on the shoulder. “Well done, Mommy. Well done.”

  Patrick was actually three on October 13, 1970, when Joan Kennedy performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 21 in the key of C and Debussy’s Arabesque no. 1 for three thousand people while backed by the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. The event was a fund-raiser for the election campaign of Democratic politician Milton Shapp, who was running for governor. Thirty-four-year-old Joan—who’d lately been receiving rave reviews for her narration of such great orchestral pieces as Peter and the Wolf by the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev—had been asked to appear as a guest pianist. Even though the marquee outside the theater read MRS. EDWARD (JOAN) KENNEDY—WORLD PIANO DEBUT, it really wasn’t true. She’d been onstage not only narrating, but playing piano in public many times in the past, ever since she was a young girl in Bronxville. She started piano lessons when she was five and continued until she was twenty-one.

  Patrick still isn’t sure he was there. If so, where was Kara? Where was Teddy? With the passing of the years, no one seemed to remember if they were present or not, but Patrick felt sure he was there, snuggled in his mother’s arms. He would decide it had all happened just exactly as he remembered it. It was a memory that would sustain him, always. He’d never let it go.

  When the Child Becomes the Parent

  At about four a.m on the morning of March 29, 2005, Patrick Kennedy was awakened by the relentless ringing of the telephone on his bed stand. At thirty-seven, he had been a respected Rhode Island congressman for the past ten years, responsible for much important legislation having to do with health care, a cause he and his father had championed for years. Recently, he’d finished an intensive thirty-day rehab stay at the Mayo Clinic. Upon his release, he gave an impassioned speech at the National Press Club relating to a report called “The State of Depression in America,” part of a larger effort to forge a public understanding of the mental-health parity bill to which he was dedicated. Patrick was still single, having thus far devoted his life completely to politics; he hadn’t dated in two years and also had no children.

  “Hello. What is it?” Patrick asked as he tried to force himself awake.

  It was Teddy, calling from his home in Connecticut. “Mom’s at Mass General,” he said. “They found her sprawled out on the sidewalk on Beacon Street. Bleeding. In the rain.”

  “Holy shit. Who found her?”

  “I don’t know,” Teddy answered. “Some Good Samaritan. You gotta go to her,” he concluded. “She needs you, Pat.”

  After they spoke for a few more moments, Patrick agreed to go to Massachusetts General and see to Joan while Teddy promised to call Kara with the upsetting news.

  Patrick hung up; he fell back onto his mattress, staring up at the ceiling for a long moment, his mind racing. At thirty-seven, he was now four years older than his mother had been back when she had her triumphant night at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. With the swift passing of the years, he had to wonder how things had gone so wrong.

  “There had always been a special relationship between Patrick and Joan,” once noted Dun Gifford, who had worked for Ted in the 1960s and remained a good friend until his death in 2009. “Kara and Teddy knew it, too, often joking that Patrick was ‘Mom’s favorite.’ Joan would say he was the ‘sweetest of the three’ and would often recall a Christmas when he was about ten and felt badly that he didn’t have a present for her under the tree. He went into his bedroom on Christmas morning and carefully did his best to wrap one of his scarves in colorful paper, and then came back out and handed the clumsy offering to his mother. ‘It’s not much, Mommy,’ he said, ‘but since you bought it for me, I know you like it, so…’ It was a memory Joan cherished.”

  Once Patrick got to the hospital, he found a tangle of reporters already on the scene. Looking exhausted, his eyes glazed and red-rimmed, he told them, “You want to make sure there’s someone there for her all the time, but at the same time you don’t want to encroach on her privacy too much. When things like this happen, it makes you feel as though maybe you should have done more to make sure there’s someone with her twenty-four/seven, and perhaps that might become necessary.”

  When he finally made his way to Joan’s room, Patrick found her lying in bed with a bandage on her forehead and a sling on her arm. It was heartbreaking. She looked terrible, very thin, her usually bouffant hair plastered down, her makeup streaked. Patrick lay next to her and spent the rest of the morning curled up at her side. He would say he couldn’t help but be reminded of all those times when he, as a little boy, was suffering from asthma and his mother would come into his room and slip under his sheets to comfort him.


  In a few days, Patrick and his siblings would have to go to work to extend their guardianship over Joan. It was then that they would learn that she’d taken to secretly drinking again. Since, by court order, there was to be no liquor allowed in her household, apparently she was getting high on vanilla extract. It was just that bad. The Kennedys knew that something would have to be done, and soon.

  The Interloper

  One day at the end of April, Patrick, Kara, and Teddy found themselves in the conference room of a law firm in Boston meeting with one of the Kennedy family’s attorneys. “It’s a rite of passage,” Kara was saying. “The young ones take care of the old ones, the same old ones who once took care of the young ones. So now we have to take care of Mom the way she took care of us.” Kara looked well; it had been two years since her surgery, chemo, and radiation. Her hair had grown back, she was working out regularly at a gym, and had resumed her life. There was seldom a day when she wasn’t filled with gratitude; she refused to accept anything other than joy in her life, not after all she’d been through. She was totally devoted to her children, Grace, eleven, and Max, nine. Two months prior, she had turned forty-five.