Then what some felt was the inevitable finally happened: Caroline lost her steam. One friend of hers reported meeting her for lunch at her home in New York. There were photographers staked outside her estate’s front gates, her children were scared, their lives turned completely upside down. All the chaos was stressing her marriage, Caroline admitted. “Ed is unhappy,” she told her friend. “He said it’s up to me but he thinks I should quit this thing. We had such a nice, quiet life and now we have this,” she said as phones rang all over the house and aides dashed about, talking to one another about this story in a newspaper, or that one in a magazine.
“She was disgusted with the whole thing,” said Caroline’s intimate. “She said she wished she could change her mind. I told her it was not too late. ‘Just say you’re done,’ I told her. But she said that quitting wasn’t an option. She said she wished she’d just released a simple statement, a letter to the governor saying she was interested in the seat. Then giving a few reasons why and let that be the end of it. The tour of New York and all of the interviews and photo ops and interaction with this naysayer and that one, she now believed, hadn’t been in her best interest. When I left her, I embraced her and could feel the bones in her spine. She was thin and seemed somehow frail and I thought, No, if she continues with this thing, it will for sure be the end of her. I said, ‘Caroline, get your old life back. This is not good for you.’ She looked at me and nodded.”
At this same time, a new controversy began to build relating to Caroline’s spotty voting record and rumors that some members of her household staff were in the country illegally. Who knew if it was true or not? By the end of January, though, there would be a few more mediocre interviews and weak personal appearances, and Caroline looked as though she was finished. It was as if one day she was in, and the next she was out—a lot like her cousin Max Kennedy years earlier. “Politics will do that to a person,” said Maria Shriver. “It can be life-ruining. I have seen it in my own family. I have seen it in others’.”
Complicating things further was a strong rumor that Caroline’s operatives traced back to the governor’s office that he really wasn’t going to name her to the position, anyway. “Are you kidding me?” Caroline asked one of her team members. She was irate. After everything she’d been through, the governor might name someone else? Of course, this had always been a possibility; there was never a single moment during which she or anyone on her team felt her to be an absolute shoo-in for the appointment. However, combined with everything else going on, the possibility that she might be passed over pushed Caroline closer to the edge.
She knew who she had to call: Uncle Teddy. When Caroline finally reached him, he was weak, barely able to talk. It was a bad day for him. However, he spoke to her in depth and, ultimately, suggested she drop out. If she felt strongly that Paterson would not name her, Ted didn’t even want her in the race. Being overlooked by the governor would look bad for her and the family, he said.
Ted had a caveat to his advice, though: he wanted Caroline to spend the next two years studying in order to get a firmer grasp on all the pertinent issues affecting her state. He wanted her to learn the ropes of being a politician, he said, because he still believed she had it in her. Running for the seat in two years would be difficult, he reminded her, because a real competitor would have it in for her and do whatever he or she could do to make her look bad in the eyes of the voting public. Therefore, she should steel herself. “It’s New York,” he reminded her, according to one account, “and, as is New York’s way, they’re going to come at you hard. They love scandal there, and as you’ve seen, if they can find a hint of it, they thrive on it.” Still, he felt she could handle it if she took the time to really prepare for it. For now, though, he felt she should drop out. He urged her not to let Paterson have the final word. She should have the final word, he told her: “A Kennedy always has the final word.” Caroline thought Ted’s advice was good. She thanked him for it.
Two days went by. There was more waffling. It was still a tough decision and, as it would happen, one that would ultimately be made by her children. “The way I heard it,” recalled one of the Kennedys’ intimates, “the kids felt their mom was changing, and not for the better. They asked their mom to please bow out. That was it; that was all she needed to hear. She would never disregard the opinion of her children. So she talked to Ed about it, and he agreed that she should let it go. And that was the end of it.”
On January 22, an email was sent to the media from Caroline’s team that announced that she was dropping out of consideration, with no reason given other than “personal reasons.” In the end, Governor Paterson would end up appointing Kirsten Gillibrand, a congresswoman from Hudson, New York, to fill Hillary Clinton’s vacated seat.
Caroline’s entire senatorial gambit had lasted for just seven weeks. However, it had taken everything out of her. It would be some time before she’d be able to come to terms with it. In many ways, it felt to her as if she’d been living someone else’s life. She felt exposed for the first time, unable to shape public opinion about herself. None of it was familiar terrain. In the end, she had to wonder if it had all been a big mistake.
Transitions
By the summer of 2009, Caroline Kennedy had put her senatorial gambit behind her and her life had returned to normal. However, now she and the rest of her many relatives would have to cope with the passing of two of the most important members of the Kennedy hierarchy. Or, as Mark Shriver put it, “the last lions were staging their exit from the arena.”
First, Mark’s mother, the indomitable Eunice Kennedy Shriver, passed away on August 11 at the age of eighty-eight. Her death was tough on her children, of course, but particularly difficult for Sarge, who was by this time deep in the throes of Alzheimer’s.
The day after Eunice died, Kara Kennedy stood in for her ailing father, Ted, at the White House as President Barack Obama presented him with the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Twenty-five years earlier, this same award was bestowed to Eunice by President Ronald Reagan for her work with the mentally disabled. Now, all these years later, it was Ted’s turn. Teddy and Patrick were present for the ceremony, as were Vicki and her two children, Caroline and Curran Raclin.
Kara looked elegant and classically understated in a white silk top with dolman sleeves and black cigarette slacks with heels. Her spiky, short brown hair was smartly tinged with blond streaks. As Obama put the medal around her neck, she smiled proudly.
Though gravely ill, Ted was somehow able to attend Eunice’s viewing and prayer service; for many of the Kennedys, this would mark the last time they would ever be in his company. He was too ill to make the later church service. With Ethel and Vicki both flanking him and trying to steady him, he bent over to kiss Eunice on the forehead and then broke down in tears. Two weeks later, on August 25, 2009, the Senator followed his beloved sister in death.
The finality of Ted’s passing seemed unfathomable to his family, as it did much of the country. He had been a senator for almost forty-seven years. With the help of Vicki, over the last twenty, at least, he’d turned his life around to become one of the great liberal legislators of all time, “the Lion of the Senate,” as he was so well known.
For Ted, there would be a vigil at the compound in the sunroom of the Big House, where his body would lie in state. Then there would be a two-day public viewing at the JFK Presidential Library preceding a private memorial service there. The funeral Mass would take place in Boston at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the same church in which Ted had prayed for the miracle that had been granted to Kara after her cancer diagnosis. President Barack Obama was set to deliver a eulogy while three past Presidents would all attend. Once upon a time, Ethel would have been the one trying to boost everyone’s spirits during such a sad time. Now she was subdued and seemed overwhelmed. Everyone knew how hard it would be on her losing Ted, especially so soon after Eunice.
By this time, Leah Mason had been employ
ed by Ethel for almost thirty years. She’d taken some time off, moved to Europe for a while, and then returned. A day or two after Ted’s death, she found Ethel sitting in front of her vanity, gazing sadly at herself in the mirror. She walked behind her and gently placed one hand on her shoulder. “Is there something I can do for you, Mrs. Kennedy?” she asked. Looking at their reflection, Ethel shook her head. She then said she’d known the precise moment Ted passed because she’d been sleeping and had been jolted awake, “as if someone walked on my grave.” The same thing had happened with her nephew John, she said. She’d been asleep and sprung up in bed and somehow knew that he and Carolyn were gone, though she didn’t want to admit it to anyone. Leah looked at her with sympathy. She’d long admired Ethel’s invincible strength in the face of adversity. The two shared a moment before Ethel shook it off and visibly steeled herself. “Okay. Enough of this,” she said as she rose from her chair.
With the “old guard” dying off one by one, it was as if a torch was now being passed. It fell to Vicki to help make for a smooth transition, no small feat considering all the details of Ted’s service for which she was responsible. In a surprising and upsetting turn of events, she decided that she didn’t want Patrick to speak at the service. “This is a big deal,” she told Kara and Teddy, according to one account. “How can we be sure Pat isn’t going to show up completely out of it?” He would never do such a thing, his siblings said. Vicki wasn’t so sure; this was a tense, emotional time in his life, she noted. Patrick was grieving his beloved father. If ever he was going to turn to drugs, she feared it would be now. “He’s going to embarrass us all,” she said, “and I’m not going to allow it.” Of course, Vicki was in an emotional state. In fact, though, she did have a point. Could they really trust Patrick?
Deep down, Patrick would later say, he understood Vicki’s concern. After all, he’d be the first to admit that he still hadn’t conquered his addictions. His stepmother was right: his grief could be a trigger. Still, he felt that for Vicki to rob him of such an important moment was cruel. It was also devastating. Because they’d never had an easy rapport, he feared there was no way he would ever be able to change her mind. When he went to talk to her about it, he couldn’t even find the words. While he tried his best to defend himself, she cut him off before he had a chance to finish the speech he’d probably spent hours practicing. She said she was sorry, but her mind was made up about it. She wasn’t willing to take a chance. Vicki was right; if Patrick was ever going to relapse it would be now, but maybe it wouldn’t be because of his father’s death as much as it might be because of her decision relating to the funeral.
When Patrick talked to Kara about the problem, she suggested they bring their mother into the conversation. Though Joan understood Vicki’s concern, she was also worried about her son. She believed he should be given an opportunity to prove himself. So she felt she and Kara should appeal to Vicki. Therefore they arranged a meeting with her.
One always had to wonder how Joan felt whenever she pulled up to Ted and Vicki’s enormous Federal-style home in Northwest Washington. The house in McLean, Virginia, in which she and Ted had spent most of their marriage, was certainly nothing like this. Richard Burke, Ted’s former aide, once described that home as “an average, gray-shingled ranch house.” Ted’s home with Vicki was anything but average. Standing in the front entryway, with its large white columns and other stately influences reminiscent of White House design—such as the semi-elliptical fan transom over the black-lacquered front door and the large suspended lantern swinging above it—must have been difficult for Joan. While she was content in her present small but well-appointed apartment on Beacon Street in Boston, it’s likely that this sprawling residence took her breath away. It had to make her wonder, If only …
After a servant answered the door, Joan and Kara were escorted though the grand marble-and-wood foyer, where they would have seen hanging on one of its walls Ted’s impressive oil painting of the Kennedys’ Cape Cod compound; it was inscribed “To Mother, always happy days at the Cape.” In a parlor filled with French antique furniture with striped fabrics hung a 1926 oil painting of the patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy. On the grand piano in the corner was a collection of family photographs assembled with enormous displays of fresh roses in oversized vases of Baccarat crystal. Joan and Kara followed the servant as he took a sharp left through the enormous kitchen, past the morning room, and out French doors that led to a well-manicured terrace that extended along the entire length of the house. There they found Vicki in a sunlit corner, as if posed for an Architectural Digest photo shoot. She was sitting in one of the elegant seating areas on green wicker furniture centered between two enormous pink blooming hibiscus plants. She was alone; an abundant breakfast arranged on the large round table before her. In the middle of the table was another crystal vase overflowing with dozens of white peonies. “Thank you,” she told a maid who had brought out even more food. “That will be all for the moment.” For just one person, everything seemed … big. And lonely. Kara and Joan joined her.
“Kara told me she didn’t say much to Vicki,” said Meghan Strayhorn, one of Kara’s closest friends at this time. “Joan took control. ‘Do you remember when you came to me a few years ago and asked me to back off where Kara’s caretaking was concerned?’ she asked Vicki. ‘You told me that out of love for Kara, I should let you and Teddy be in charge of the big decisions having to do with her cancer. Now,’ she said, ‘I am coming to you with a favor.’” Joan told Vicki that it would “kill Patrick” if he wasn’t allowed to speak at his father’s service. She said that he’d been preparing his eulogy for weeks. He loved his father so much, Joan said, it would crush him not to be able to eulogize him.
Vicki was usually a strong, stoic person. However, with Ted’s loss weighing so heavily on her, it seemed that Joan’s plea was more than she could handle. She broke down in tears. Joan reached across the table and took both her hands into her own. “Kara told me it was an incredibly moving moment: her mom, the so-called Old Wife comforting the New Wife,” said Meghan Strayhorn. “Joan promised Vicki that Patrick would not embarrass them, that he would never let them down. Vicki said she would take Joan at her word; so, yes, Patrick would be permitted to speak at the service.”
What’s most interesting is that, at least from all available evidence, Joan and Kara elected not to tell Patrick that they’d intervened on his behalf. Apparently, to this day, Patrick thinks that his making it clear to Vicki and to the executor of his father’s estate, Ted’s longtime friend Paul Kirk, that he would be speaking was what did the trick. Who knows why mother and daughter kept their involvement from him? Maybe they just didn’t want to embarrass him with the knowledge that they’d intervened. All we know for sure is that after Paul Kirk informed him that he could speak, Joan told her elated son, “I’m counting on you. You are Patrick Joseph Kennedy. I believe in you. Do us all proud.”
Happily, Patrick did not disappoint. In his stirring tribute to his father, he spoke of a childhood during which he suffered “chronic and crippling asthma attacks,” saying his father was always at his side, “holding a cold wet towel on my forehead until I fell asleep again” after debilitating headaches caused by his medication. He recalled that because he always required a no-smoking, non-allergic room during family trips, that meant he would end up with the nicest accommodations, and his father as his roommate. “I couldn’t have seen it at the time, but having asthma was like hitting the jackpot for a child who craved his father’s love and attention,” he said. “When his light shined on me alone, there was no better feeling in all of the world.” He also spoke of the fun of boating expeditions and shared many sentimental memories as well as mentioning that father and son had been the primary sponsors of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Law. He closed by saying, “Now it’s time for you to rest in peace. May your spirit live forever in our hearts, and as you challenged us so many times before, may your dream for a better, more just America never
die. I love you, Dad, and you will always live in my heart forever.”
When he was finished, an emotional Patrick left the lectern and walked back down to the first row of pews, where a tearful Vicki stood to greet him, her eyes full of warmth. She embraced him. That’s when he knew he’d done his father and her proud. He then looked at his mother; she smiled and blew him a kiss.
Senator Edward Moore Kennedy would be buried at Arlington with his brothers John and Robert and his sister-in-law Jacqueline.
* * *
WITH TED KENNEDY now gone, his niece Caroline felt even more of a desire to be a public servant, if only because she knew how much it would mean to him. There were many reports in magazines such as Time and Newsweek that speculated about the line of succession in the Kennedy family, and there seemed no clear answer as to which Kennedy might take the family into a new age, especially with rumblings that Patrick would be giving up his Congressional seat. Eight months earlier, when she withdraw from consideration for the open Senate seat, Caroline had felt she let her uncle down. He assured her that this was not the case; she took him at his word. However, about a month before he died, she and Ed went to see him at the compound. “She just needed to be sure that he was not disappointed in her. It meant so much to her,” said one of her cousins. “Of course, Uncle Teddy put her mind at ease.” Ted told his niece it was never easy to push oneself out of a comfort zone as she had during her brief political gambit. It took real courage for her to put herself out there. He was proud of her, he said, and he believed that her parents and brother would have been as well. Caroline couldn’t have appreciated her uncle’s words more; he always knew exactly what to say to her to make any difficult situation in her life feel just a little better.
The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation Page 46
