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

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  The calm didn’t last long. A couple of nights later, Kerry and some other friends were at Mary’s home when she came completely undone and started talking about killing herself. “Mary! You need to keep your shit together,” Kerry told her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. Everyone was startled by Kerry’s outburst. “You have to fight this thing in you,” Kerry said as she started crying. “At least for your kids, don’t you dare stop fighting it.” Kerry warned her that every time she threatened suicide, she risked having her children taken from her.

  Kerry really was at her wits’ end. “The system is Kafka-esque,” she would later explain. “Here’s Mary, teetering, possibly suicidal. If she admits that she is, the court takes her kids away and her therapist has to commit her, calling police if she won’t go voluntarily. So she was stuck. If she saved herself, she risked losing her children—her greatest fear.”

  * * *

  IN THE WINTER of 2010, Bobby met a woman who apparently helped him understand just how destructive his marriage was not only to him but to Mary as well as their children. She was the television actress Cheryl Hines, who played Larry David’s wife on the popular sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm and was presently in a role on TV’s popular series Brothers & Sisters. Her own marriage was ending; she had one child. In his darkest moments, Cheryl gave Bobby hope. Her love for him provided the trigger he needed to finally make his move: He filed for divorce after sixteen turbulent years of marriage to Mary.

  Of course, Mary didn’t take it well and neither did her and Bobby’s children, especially their oldest boy, seventeen-year-old Conor. Of the four kids, Conor had always been the most attached to his mother. He was protective of her, hated seeing her so unhappy, and couldn’t help but blame his father. For a time, he didn’t even want to speak to him.

  Conor (and his brother, Fin) had long suffered from severe asthma and anaphylaxis allergies. In addition to peanuts, Conor was particularly allergic to almost thirty other substances. “Mary had to take him to the emergency room twenty-five times in the first three or four years of his life,” Kerry Kennedy would recall. “Back in 1998, she helped Bobby raise more than $30 million to establish the Food Allergy Initiative, a nonprofit organization to fund research. She would become one the world’s great experts on food allergies.” (In the years to come, Bobby would also dedicate himself to looking into the role vaccines might have played in his sons’ conditions since neither he nor Mary suffered from allergies.)

  Despite his allergies, Conor was still a happy and content child. In recent years, though, he’d become withdrawn while also seeming to lose self-confidence; he would mumble at people rather than speak to them plainly, not looking them in the eye. When someone suggested therapy, not just for Conor but for all Mary’s children, Bobby was reluctant; he said he didn’t want his offspring to end up as another generation of Kennedys dependent on therapists. The more pressing issue was Mary’s state of mind, he decided, and hopefully there would be more time later to deal with that of his children.

  Bringing Her Home

  When the sun rose on Wednesday, May 16, 2012, Mary Richardson Kennedy was nowhere to be found. Though the housekeeper and her husband had thoroughly searched the premises, they couldn’t find her. They found her driver’s license, cell phone, glasses, and car keys, but not Mary. Searching her bedroom, the couple was disturbed to find a short span of rope tossed haphazardly onto the bed. They then remembered that, two weeks earlier, Mary had asked them to purchase it for what she said was a sofa repair. They didn’t think much of it then, but they certainly did now. At about one o’clock in the afternoon, after searching the outdoors, they decided they had no choice but to call Bobby.

  This call was one Bobby had feared for the better part of the last ten years. He knew instantly that Mary had done something to herself. When he arrived at the estate he, too, searched the premises. Not knowing what to think, he got into his car and drove to the nearby town of Armonk to ask around about Mary; the answers back were all the same—no one had seen her. He then located her AA sponsor, who said she hadn’t seen her since Monday at her meeting, where she seemed just fine.

  By this time, thirty minutes had passed since Bobby had gotten the call; that’s how fast things were moving. He said he was going back to the house; the sponsor followed him. Once they returned to the property, the two searched a wooded area around the estate. As Bobby continued looking in the forest, the sponsor joined the caretakers as they checked an old barn. “Wait, what’s that over there?” the housekeeper’s husband asked when something caught his eye.

  In a corner was a terrible sight: a woman suspended by a rope from a beam, slightly above eye level. The rope appeared to have been wrapped at least a half dozen times around her neck and then carefully knotted. Her face was a mask of terror, her eyes bulging, her skin gray. Her hands were gripping the rope at her neck as if in a futile attempt to pull it away. It was Mary. At the sight, the housekeeper became hysterical, falling to the ground and curling into a fetal position while crying. Her husband stood in place, horrified. Meanwhile, the AA sponsor ran out to her car and began to frantically press on its horn to summon Bobby. He arrived within minutes. “No, no, no, Bobby,” she pleaded as he rushed by her. “Don’t go in there.” Not heeding her advice, Bobby raced toward his wife and enveloped her with his arms. He struggled to pull her down. He couldn’t do it. Bursting into tears, he fell to his knees. “Cut her down! Cut her down!” he screamed out as he looked up at Mary’s corpse swinging at the end of the rope. “Somebody get a knife and cut her down!”

  “No, Bobby,” said the sponsor, now also sobbing. “It’s too late. She’s gone.”

  Bobby called 911. He then began to pray while standing in place and staring at Mary as if mesmerized, his eyes not blinking as tears splashed his face. Somehow he’d always known it would end like this, with Mary taking her own life. The sight of it, though, transfixed him. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He also couldn’t look away.

  * * *

  NO ONE COULD believe that Mary would actually take her life, if only because they knew how much she loved her children. Obviously, Bobby, Kerry, and all of the family were devastated, but Ethel took it particularly hard, having long thought of Mary as a daughter. She said at the funeral that she’d tried to convince Mary that if she got help and was able to save her marriage, perhaps one day she’d end up running a household on the Cape at the Kennedy compound in her old age. Of course, this idea was in direct conflict to what Bobby wanted, but Ethel said she was just trying to give her daughter-in-law a little hope.

  Not surprisingly, Mary’s children—Conor, seventeen; Kyra, sixteen; Fin, fifteen; and Aidan, eleven—were all left deeply traumatized. It must have seemed to them that they never had a chance at happiness. After all, their mother had been ill for their entire lifetimes. Of course, Bobby tried to be present for them, as did their half siblings—Bobby III, twenty-eight; and Kathleen, twenty-four—but there remained a troubling sense of foreboding. Everyone Mary left behind seemed to be suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, not sleeping well, appearing either jittery or withdrawn.

  In the weeks to come, Bobby took the kids to visit the family’s former governess, Ena Bernard, in Florida, where she now lived. Ena, who was now 104, had always been there for him after his father died, and he sensed that maybe she could help his children come to terms with the tragedy in their own lives. They’d always loved her; anytime she came to visit from Florida was special for them and their half siblings. When Fin saw Ena, he hugged her tightly and began to sob, causing Fina to express concern about the boy’s overwrought emotion. “It’s just that he loves your mother so much,” Bobby told Fina. Everyone knew, though, it was more than just missing Ena.

  “Like millions of Americans, Mary suffered from mental illness,” Kerry Kennedy would say after the death of her best friend. “She fought it as hard as she knew how. But that disease was not Mary herself. She was deeply Catholic, and she was an
angel, a beam of light calling us all to our better angels. And like the archangel Michael, who battled Satan when he tried to take over Heaven, Mary fought back the demons who were trying to invade the Paradise of her very being. She fought it with dignity and with love, but in the end the demons won. I think God said to her, ‘Mary, you have been my warrior on the front lines for too long, you have fought valiantly and now I’m bringing you home.’”

  PART X

  The Family Endures

  Kennedy Fascination

  In the summer of 2012, the Kennedys would do what they’d done throughout their storied history after the occurrence of great tragedy: by the grace of their God, they would pull together and get through it as a family. This healing would occur, as it always did, in their coming together at the compound on the Cape. Different this year, though, was the emergence of an unlikely character. She was a young woman who would provide not only much-needed distraction for all who were still grieving Mary’s death, but even a bit of romance for the teenaged son she’d left behind, Conor. This new player was the young, doe-eyed pop star Taylor Swift.

  By the summer of 2012, Taylor Swift was twenty-two and incredibly successful, with millions of records sold and seven Grammys won. As it happened, she was also quite the Kennedy aficionado. Not only had she read numerous books about the family, she’d also seen a number of TV documentaries and miniseries about them. An avid collector of memorabilia, Ethel was her favorite, she explained, “because when you look back at the pictures of her and Bobby, they always look like they are having the most fun.” After seeing one photograph of the two at a dance in the 1940s, she said, “I kind of wrote a song from that place. I just was so in love with them.”

  In the summer of 2011, upon reading that Taylor was a fan of her mother’s, Rory Kennedy reached out to her office to ask for concert tickets for her and her daughters—nine-year-old Georgia and seven-year-old Bridget. (She and Mark Bailey also had a four-year-old son, Zachary.) Swift’s office happily granted the request. After the show, the Kennedys went backstage to meet the pop star. An excited Taylor then told Rory about the song she’d written in honor of her parents. “I asked Rory if it would ever be possible for me to meet her mother,” Taylor recalled. “She said, ‘Sure. Here’s her number.’ Ethel was kind enough to have lunch and spend a few hours talking with me, and ever since then I’ve been so inspired by how full of life she is and the way she tells her story.”

  A few months later, Rory invited Taylor to the Sundance Film Festival to see the documentary Ethel, which she had directed about her mother. So exuberant was Taylor on the red carpet posing with Ethel, a bemused Teddy Kennedy referred to her as “a Kennedy groupie.” Afterward, Ethel, who was eighty-three by this time, offered to host her in her home over the Fourth of July weekend. Taylor eagerly accepted.

  Taylor then had what she thought was a great idea. She is known for her big Fourth of July soirées; they’re usually celebrations held on a sun-drenched beach, a splashy affair that is greatly anticipated by her friends. In all her reading about the Kennedys, Taylor had always been fascinated by Joe and Rose’s legendary Big House; she wondered if she could host her annual party there. She called Rory to ask, promising that this year she’d make sure it was a low-key affair. Understanding that staying at the legendary property would be thrilling for a young woman so fascinated by the Kennedys, Rory said she’d look into it.

  By this time the deaths of Ted, Eunice, and Sarge had precipitated a sea change in Kennedy culture; life at the compound wasn’t quite the same. Ted had promised his mother, Rose, that when he died the Big House would be repurposed for charitable and educational programs. Therefore, in his will, he stipulated that the home be absorbed as a holding of the newly created Edward M. Kennedy Institute. “This is what Mrs. Rose Kennedy and Senator Kennedy wanted,” explained institute trustee Nick Littlefield, “that the house would continue to serve public purposes and be preserved for the American people.”

  Ostensibly, the Big House would eventually be open to the public, though that seems unlikely for many years since there are still Kennedys living at the compound. For instance, Teddy Jr. now owns Jack and Jackie’s former residence—the President’s House—and lives there with his wife and family. Meanwhile, the Senator had bequeathed Patrick a structure akin to an apartment attached to the Big House. It’s small but functional, and Patrick had always loved it. He would remodel it beautifully in 2018 so that he and his family would be able to enjoy the summer months there. Other family members are scattered here and there; Ethel’s son Christopher—for instance—and his wife, Sheila, have a summer home on Squaw Island near where Joan Kennedy often summers.

  Of course, Ethel still lives next door to the Big House in the home she’s owned for decades. In 2011, much to the surprise of many, she reluctantly sold Hickory Hill. She’d actually put the estate on the market in 2004 for $25 million, but it took seven years to unload it and not until she reduced the price to about $8 million. Leaving was incredibly emotional for Ethel given her cherished memories of her marriage to Bobby and the raising of their children together.

  Ethel telephoned Ena Bernard to commiserate about the sale with someone she felt would truly understand. “She told my mother she had a lot of anxiety about letting the old place go, but that it was just too expensive to keep up and too big for her to stay in now that everyone had their own lives,” recalled Fina Harvin. “My mother understood. She loved Hickory Hill, too. ‘It will be with us, always,’ she told Mrs. Kennedy. ‘Everything that happened in that great big house is stitched into our hearts forever. So you can let it go now, Mrs. Kennedy. You can let it go.’”

  Ethel also told Ena that one of the many heartbreaks connected to selling the family’s beloved homestead was knowing that it would probably be demolished due to its age and outdated amenities. She was correct. The new owners completely gutted the place. Now Ethel would split her time between the compound in Massachusetts and her home in Florida.

  When Rory checked with Vicki about the possibility of Taylor Swift hosting a party at the Big House, she was told that it wasn’t possible because doing so would jeopardize the property’s tax-exempt nonprofit status. Though Taylor was disappointed, she still wanted to take Ethel up on her invitation to spend the holiday with the Kennedys. How could she resist?

  Blessed to Be Alive

  On Sunday night, July 1, 2012, Taylor Swift arrived at the Kennedy compound for her promised visit. She could not have been more excited; she and some of the younger Kennedys, including Patrick (Maria and Arnold’s son) and Conor (son of the late Mary and Bobby), both of whom were eighteen, spent the night on the beach, drinking, swimming, and having a good time playing flashlight tag—a favorite Kennedy pastime, basically “tag” in the dark. She and Patrick seemed to have instant chemistry, which was not so surprising. He was slim, good-looking with a smile like his mother’s, and apparently difficult for Taylor—who’d had a wide array of boyfriends in the public eye, such as Joe Jonas, John Mayer, and Jake Gyllenhaal—to resist.

  On her first morning at the compound, Taylor was treated to a little taste of the Kennedys’ summer lifestyle, which in many ways hadn’t changed in the last fifty years. One thing that was different, though, was the absence of sign-up sheets for meal shifts. Now there was one meal prepared in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one for the evening.

  The day started with a huge breakfast in the nook of Ethel’s enormous kitchen, prepared by her chef and served by her waitstaff. According to the menu (one was provided to guests every day), Ethel had the cook prepare his Palm Beach crab stack with poached eggs—basically, crab cakes on English muffins with eggs, tomatoes, cheese, and hollandaise sauce. There was also a side of Irish potato cakes—topped with Irish smoked salmon—as well as homemade blueberry-orange bread with marmalade butter.

  The atmosphere was boisterous as always, much less formal than it would be at dinner, with Kennedy youngsters, teenagers, and young adults coming and going in th
eir swimsuits and the older adults—on this day, including Patrick, Teddy, and Rory with their spouses and, of course, Ethel—properly seated. “Elbows off the table,” Ethel kept telling the kids; it had always been a pet peeve of hers and remains so. There was no serious discussion about politics or world affairs, though. Rather, the conversation had to do with which yacht was going to be taken out for sailing that day … who was going to be on which touch football team … where the volleyball game would be taking place … all the usual Kennedy summer concerns. As a diehard fan coming into this rarified world, Taylor Swift had to have found it all pretty exciting.

  Lunch was served on Ethel’s patio—grilled lobster or mushroom gorgonzola and bacon burgers or hardwood-grilled New York sirloin steak. Joe told the chef to take the day off so that he and his twin sons, Matthew and Joseph III, could man the barbecue. They had a lot of fun serving up food for everyone.

  After lunch, the entire family gathered on Ethel’s patio, where Taylor—in red shorts and a black T-shirt with white polka dots and a red polka-dotted scarf folded around her head—played guitar and performed an acoustic rendition of the tune she’d written in honor of Ethel and Bobby. It was called “Starlight,” with lyrics such as: “I met Bobby on the boardwalk, summer of ’45/Picked me up late one night at the window/We were seventeen and crazy, running wild.” (Ethel actually did meet Bobby in 1945 when she was seventeen.) Ethel was moved, her smile genuine. She said the impromptu performance took her right back to her youth and reminded her of that lovely time in her life. When Taylor then asked Ethel what her reaction had been to seeing Bobby for the first time, her eyes twinkled and she answered with one word: “Wow.”