The Kennedys

by Thomas Maier

  Al Smith Dinner. In 1960, at the annual event named for the former New York Governor, Jack Kennedy used humor to mask his anger at Cardinal Spellman’s all-but-formal endorsement of Republican Richard Nixon. But Joe Kennedy, who counted on Spellman to help his son’s candidacy, felt betrayed and let their mutual friend at the Vatican, Count Galeazzi, know of his feelings. Kennedy Library

  The Two Johns. The early 1960s witnessed an extraordinary but short-lived period of liberalism for American Catholics, personified in Rome with Pope John XXIII (seen here with Rose Kennedy and Count Enrico Galeazzi) and Kennedy in the White House. When both died in 1963, Hannah Arendt said,“The whole world changed and darkened when their voices fell silent. And yet the world will never be as it was before they spoke and acted in it.” Kennedy Family Private Collection

  Homecoming. During his 1963 trip, President Kennedy was embraced by the Irish people, including those pictured here in New Ross, where his great-grandfather left for America more than a century earlier. Wide World

  Tea Beside the Fire. On a sentimental journey to his family’s ancestral homestead, “Cousin Jack” recalled his earlier 1947 visit and shared a sip of tea with Mary Kennedy Ryan and his other Irish cousins.“We want to drink a cup of tea to all the Kennedys who went and to all those who stayed,” he toasted. Wide World

  Eire. Decades afterward, Mary Ann Ryan fondly recalled President Kennedy’s visit but said she doubted her American cousin knew much about their family’s Irish Republican past. While speaking of her father’s memory, she pulled out his old IRA medal inscribed with the words “Eire” and “Cogadh na Saorise” (The Fight for Freedom) with a crest of the four provinces and a soldier standing at attention. On the back, her father’s name is etched along with his Wexford outfit. Joyce P. McGurrin

  “King of Ireland.” Out near the barn where Jack Kennedy once took their picture, Mary Kennedy Ryan and her daughter, Mary Ann, flanked the American President at a brief ceremony, also attended by his two sisters, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Jean Kennedy Smith.“John Fitzgerald Kennedy barely squeaked to election as President of the United States, but it seemed Thursday that he was King of Ireland by popular demand,” the Boston Globe reported on its front-page. Wide World

  Why, God,Why? His brother’s death left Robert Kennedy shattered, trying to rectify his faith with such a tragedy. In his first public speech after Jack’s death, Bobby addressed a St. Patrick’s Day crowd in Pennsylvania, invoking his brother’s words about “the emerald thread” running through Irish immigrant history. United Press International

  “They Cried the Rain Down.” In Ireland, John Kennedy’s death was met with the same shock and sadness, the image of this fallen hero venerated like some icon. Both Prime Minister Eamon DeValera and Kennedy cousin, Mary Ann Ryan, flew to Washington to attend JFK’s funeral. In his tears, DeValera realized his hope of seeing the reunification of partitioned Ireland, at least in his lifetime,was now probably gone. Library of Congress

  Father McSorley. After the death of her baby and the shooting of her husband, Jacqueline Kennedy confided her sorrows and suicidal feelings to Georgetown priest, Rev. Richard McSorley.“Do you think God would separate me from my husband if I killed myself?” she asked. When Jackie moved to New York, McSorley visited and took three-year-old John Jr. to the World’s Fair (seen here). Georgetown University Library

  A Friend in the Church. At her husband’s funeral, Jackie Kennedy was genuinely touched when Cardinal Cushing referred to his departed friend as “dear Jack.” Cushing’s loyal friendship to the Kennedys proved itself when the Vatican threatened Jackie with excommunication for marrying Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis. Cushing said he’d resign as cardinal unless the criticism of Kennedy’s widow stopped. Kennedy Library

  Coming Back in the Springtime. When JFK left Ireland in 1963, he promised to return in the springtime. In 1967, Jacqueline Kennedy returned with their children, riding horses in Waterford and going for a ride along the sea. They also visited the Kennedy cousins in Dunganstown. United Press International

  “Huelga.” Robert Kennedy’s strong support for the striking United Farm Workers earned him the loyalty of its union leader,Cesar Chavez, and thousands of Latin American immigrants in California.“With Senator Kennedy, it was like he was one of ours,” said Chavez (seen here next to Kennedy at a mass to mark the end of a hunger strike). Kennedy Library

  The 1968 Campaign. On St. Patrick’s Day, Robert Kennedy announced his presidential candidacy in Washington and then traveled to New York to march in the annual parade honoring the Irish in America. Along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, Bobby turned and recognized Jackie and John Kennedy Jr.,waving from their apartment window. Wide World Photo

  Sen. Eugene McCarthy. Long before they faced each other in the 1968 Democratic primaries, Bobby Kennedy disliked McCarthy, a feeling mutual with the liberal Minnesotan.“Gene McCarthy felt he should have been the first Catholic President just because he knew more St. Thomas Aquinas than my brother,” said Bobby (both seen here attending the funeral services for slain civil rights leader,Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.). Wide World Photo

  Tragedy Again. Bobby Kennedy’s maverick campaign, built on votes from minorities as much as traditional white Democrats, came to a tragic end when he was shot after winning the California primary. A busboy placed a small crucifix and rosary beads in his hand while Kennedy lay bleeding on the floor.“Is everybody safe, OK?” Bobby asked, before he passed out, never to regain consciousness. United Press International

  Stoic Faith. Rose Kennedy sat alone in silent prayer in a Hyannis Port church after a mass for the recovery of her son, Bobby Kennedy, fighting in vain for his life in a Los Angeles hospital. When asked by Cardinal Cushing, Rose confirmed her belief in God’s love despite all the tragedies that befell the Kennedys. Besides, she added,“If I collapsed, the morale of the family would be lowered.” United Press International

  Family in Mourning. At his funeral, the awful consequences of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination were evident in the faces of his pregnant wife, Ethel, and their children.“I remember, after my father died, the desolation I felt, the endless ache of missing him,” later recalled Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, Bobby’s oldest son, elected to the same Congressional seat once occupied by JFK and Honey Fitz. Library of Congress

  A Third Generation. The grandchildren of Rose and Joseph Kennedy carried on the family’s legacy of public service, despite some much-publicized instances of destructive behavior. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (seen here as a teenager with her grandmother) was one of several Kennedys who took to heart Rose’s reminder from the Bible: “To whom much is given, much will be expected.” Wide World Photo

  Busing in White and Black. In the 1970s, Boston’s Irish objected strenuously to court ordered busing of blacks and other minorities into their schools, and sharply attacked Sen. Edward Kennedy’s support of the plan.“We can’t express one rule for Birmingham,Alabama, and another rule for Boston, Massachusetts,”Ted explained at a news conference before being shouted down by an angry crowd at City Hall. Wide World Photo

  Solidarity Forever. After a disappointing run for president in 1980, Sen. Kennedy remained one of the most effective legislators for improving health care, human rights and immigration reforms.“You do not have to be Irish to appreciate the Polish,” he said during a 1980s visit to Communistruled Poland where he met with Solidarity’s Lech Walesa,“but it helps, because our two proud people share. . . a role as victims in world history.” WideWorld Photo

  IRA Violence. A 1975 terrorist bomb planted by the IRA in the car of an old JFK friend in London nearly killed Caroline Kennedy and took the life of an innocent passerby. On St. Patrick’s Day two years later,Ted Kennedy and three other well-known Irish-Americans — Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, New York Gov. Hugh Carey and soon-to-be Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York—denounced the money and armanents sent to the IRA by private American organizations. Wide World Photo

  In the Name of the Father.
The Kennedys used their famous name to heighten public awareness to the legal injustice against Paul Hill (pictured here flanked by his wife, Courtney Kennedy Hill, and brother in-law, Rep. Joseph Kennedy II). Hill’s conviction in Northern Ireland as an accused IRA murderer was later overturned after he spent years in prison. Wide World Photo

  Golden Handshake. President Bill Clinton, who as a teenager once shook JFK’s hand at the White House,was very friendly during his administration with the Kennedys, including John Jr., pictured here in 1998.At the urging of the Kennedys, Clinton’s administration became actively involved in Northern Ireland’s “troubles.” Wide World Photo

  Kennedy Women.With the same chieftain-like qualities as the Kennedy men of an earlier generation,women in the family emerged as leaders during the 1990s, including U.S.Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith (seen here with Ted Kennedy and his second wife,Victoria). In appointing Smith, Clinton proclaimed her “as Irish as Americans can be. I can think of no one who better captures the bonds between Ireland and the United States.” Corbis

  Peace for Ireland. The Kennedy family’s intervention on behalf of Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams led to the successful 1998 peace negotiations in Northern Ireland. At an award ceremony hosted by Caroline Kennedy at the JFK Library in Boston that year, key participants in bringing about peace were honored, including Adams (at left), Northern Irish leader John Hume and U.S. envoy George Mitchell (right). Kennedy Library

  A Minority President. JFK’s election in 1960 shattered the long-held maxim that a Catholic couldn’t win the White House. But without fanfare, it also began a new era of political empowerment by minority groups in America. As author Theodore H. White later said:“To elect John F. Kennedy President was to make clear that this was a different kind of country from what history taught of it, that it was rapidly becoming, and would become in the next twenty years, so much more different in its racial and ethnic patterns as to make life in some of America’s greatest cities completely unrecognizable.” Library of Congress

  The Irish Brahmin. Unlike many Irish Catholic politicians in the past, John F. Kennedy didn’t act, talk or look like a big-city ward boss. His Harvard education and his 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage, gave him the appearance of an “Irish Brahmin,” said another Massachusetts politican. As he assumed the American presidency, many wondered if Kennedy would live up to his promise of church and state separation. Kennedy Library

  We Band of Brothers. Kennedy defused accusations of nepotism and dynasty-building by using wit. When asked about how he’d announce his brother’s appointment as U.S.Attorney General, Jack said:“I’ll open the front door of the Georgetown house some morning about 2 A.M., look up and down the street, and, if there’s no one there, I’ll whisper,‘It’s Bobby’.” Wide World Photo

  Catholic Culture. Whether a sinner or a saint, Jack Kennedy’s religious practice remained traditionally Catholic throughout his life (seen here attending Easter mass with wife Jackie and their two children). Shortly after his 1960 election, Kennedy’s namesake son, John Jr.,was baptized in a ceremony that made front pages nationally. Wide World and United Press International

  Texas. Texas produced some of the most hateful screeds of the 1960 campaign but was vital to Kennedy’s victory. Joe Kennedy pushed Lyndon Johnson on the ticket,much to the chagrin of Bobby Kennedy and purportedly JFK himself. After Jack’s 1963 assassination in Dallas, Bobby privately accused LBJ of saying “divine retribution”was responsible for his brother’s killing. United Press International

  West Virginia. During the 1960 campaign, both Robert Kennedy and his brother were genuinely distressed by the poverty they witnessed in the nation’s poorest state and, in various speeches, vowed to do something to improve their lives while in the White House. Kennedy Library

  Kennedys and King. As Irish Catholics, the Kennedys viewed blacks as another immigrant group among America’s minorities. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (seen on left) later said there were “two JFKs” during his thousand days. Initially, King thought JFK would compromise his basic principles regarding civil rights in order to maintain power. In time, King said a second JFK emerged who developed “a great understanding of the moral issues” surrounding civil rights. Kennedy Library

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Primary Lessons

  DINNER CONVERSATION with the Kennedys that night in 1959, inside their elegant nineteenth-century Georgetown town house, touched lightly and gracefully upon many topics before inevitably settling down to politics. Eugene McCarthy, his wavy hair still more dark than gray, relaxed and enjoyed the insights and humor of his host and the company of his beautiful wife, Jacqueline. At the table was another invited guest, columnist Joseph Alsop, a long-time Kennedy family friend.

  McCarthy wasn’t here to be converted. As a Minnesotan, McCarthy had committed himself firmly to the state’s favorite son, Senator Hubert Humphrey, expected to run against Kennedy for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. The two young senators not only enjoyed each other’s company but also shared a common background. McCarthy’s ancestors came from Ireland just as Kennedy’s did, his great-grandfather leaving Ireland in 1803, well before the Famine, and his family had settled in the cold but fertile farmland of Minnesota by the 1860s. Casually but clearly interested, Jack wondered aloud how McCarthy, an Irish Catholic, had managed to pull off a victory in a predominantly Protestant state.“It wasn’t a place where Catholics were running for the Senate,” McCarthy recalled in an interview a half century later. “It was a success if they were running at all.”Without using the hard sell, Kennedy asked him “not for advice but a description of what happened in Minnesota. . . . He assumed Minnesota was a Protestant state and he wanted to talk about the fact that I was the first Catholic to get elected in Minnesota in a hundred years. He felt there was something that I could tell him about how to do it.”

  McCarthy knew he could be frank with Kennedy. In the scramble for vice-presidential votes during the 1956 convention, Kennedy had sent Ted Sorensen over to the Minnesota delegation to try to pick up some more support. “All we have are Protestants and farmers,” then-Congressman McCarthy told Kennedy’s aide. In his own 1958 Senate contest, McCarthy faced a Republican incumbent, Senator Edward Thye, a Lutheran married to a Catholic. Yet obvious attempts were made to interject religious differences into that race. As he shared anecdotes at dinner with Kennedy, McCarthy pointed out that Minnesota’s Catholics were not looked upon with much suspicion or rancor. “I told him religion wasn’t a major factor in Minnesota,” he remembered.“I said the states where you’d have the most trouble is where you have 15 or 20 percent Catholic. If you have 35 or 40 percent, a lot of people know them; if you have 2 or 3 percent, people don’t know them. There’s a range of about 20 percent Catholic minority—that’s a problem for you.” McCarthy was a darling of American liberals, particularly the subset who were Catholics. Alsop once told Kennedy that he had spotted McCarthy riding on a plane with his head buried in a large missal. “Well, Joe, there’s an old saying in Boston politics,” Kennedy replied with bemusement,“never trust a Catholic politician who reads his missal in the trolley car.”At this private dinner, though, Jack didn’t say much. He nodded politely, absorbing all that McCarthy had to say, and at the end of the evening thanked him for his help.

  THE PUBLIC IMAGE surrounding Jack Kennedy’s candidacy often focused on his large extended family and their devotion to each other. The genuine sense of family loyalty—a clannishness fostered by blood and supported for years by their parents—was now packaged, buffed and shining, for the cameras and the American electorate. Readers and magazine editors reacted enthusiastically, unable to get enough.“The Rise of the Brothers Kennedy,” an eight-page spread in Look magazine in August 1957, featured a photo of the two brothers working side-by-side at a Senate hearing and relaxing on the beach with their wives. “Seldom in Washington annals have brothers come so far, so fast, so young,” it reported, with the kind of hyperbole usual
ly reserved for the trailers of Hollywood B-movies like those Joe Kennedy once produced.

  With their religious and ethnic customs presented almost as eccentricities, the Kennedys were lionized as the all-American ideal, the triumph of family over rugged individualism—indeed, the type of family to which anyone sitting home alone might want to belong. Laughter and engaging conversation, touch football games played with gusto, handsome ambitious men and their beautiful wives, all in their prime, hordes of children and two smiling, lordly grandparents beaming in delight were all part of the image making, the raw stuff of legends.“At clan reunions, the din of argument is deafening, the enthusiasm overpowering,” the magazine observed. Another carefully choreographed photo-essay in Life magazine in April 1958 pictured the Kennedys at a church baptism for Bobby and Ethel’s newest arrival, Michael, amid a swarm of cherubic, energetic kids orbiting the couple in a chaotic but joyous procession. Whatever concerns may have existed about family privacy or the sanctity of the moment gave way to the need for positive publicity as Election Day neared.“Mother and father seemed to get so much happiness out of us that all of us want a big family too,” said Jack, seen on the cover holding four-month-old Caroline. “Bob and Ethel will get there first, but all of us will be close behind.” How Jacqueline Kennedy, with her history of miscarriages, felt about this proposition was not mentioned. Her husband’s comment was chalked up to “Kennedy competitiveness.” As if trading an aura of destiny around the Kennedys, Life reminded readers that it had been following this clan’s exploits for more than twenty years. It reprised an old photo of the whole brood printed in a December 1937 issue, just before Joe Kennedy’s appointment as ambassador. A similar article in the Saturday Evening Post titled “The Amazing Kennedys” described Jack as “a talented combination of scholar, lawmaker, and astute politician with a prodigious zest for work and an Irish flair for vote-getting.”