“Besides a matter of finances and scheduling, there was a huge controversy over whether or not Nixon had blown the Paris peace talks,” continued Dell, “which pitted Sarge against Nixon in a very acrimonious way. Sarge said a lot of unkind things about Nixon, suggesting in speeches that he was a crook, a liar, and worse. Nixon retaliated by trying to undermine Sarge’s reputation and his knowledge of the peace talks. It seems hard to believe now, but at the time Nixon was popular. People tended to believe him.
“Then there was the matter of Eagleton, which never went away and which was always at issue and in need of a response from Sarge. It was very distracting and kept pointing to McGovern’s lack of common sense and lack of judgment. In short, it did not go well for Sarge out there on the campaign trail, though he did get the public recognition that I think he wanted.”
Still, though most polls predicted that the Democrats would go down in the worst defeat in modern American politics, there was Sargent Shriver on the front lines, always believing there to be an upswing in support of the McGovern-Shriver ticket. “You just can’t predict these things,” he said at the time. “You have to roll with the punches.” With his patrician mien, outfitted in banker’s tailoring, Sarge was a tireless spokesman for a renewed liberalism, his charisma and Kennedy-like demeanor hard to resist. Newspaper columnist Mary McGrory assessed it this way: “To rouse his audience, he does everything but administer open-heart massage.” Meanwhile McGovern, downbeat and dispirited, failed to galvanize much support during the three-month campaign. Stanley Karnow of the Washington Post noted, “Although there is nothing less prestigious than running for the vice presidency on a weak team, Sargent Shriver is probably the most sparkling of the four candidates on the electoral race. In contrast to George McGovern, whose nasal piety borders on the self-righteous, Shriver exudes a natural sense of humor that seems to suggest that he considers the election is a game even if he is playing to win.”
Also playing to win was Eunice. She had finally decided that she would give her all to the campaign, and once she made that decision there was no stopping her. Not only did she make campaign forays on her own, but she and Sarge as a team spent fifteen-hour days crisscrossing the campaign trail in search of voters for the McGovern-Shriver ticket. “She was a force of nature out there,” said Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer and presidential historian who worked in a public relations capacity for the Shriver team. “There was nothing she would not do, knocking on doors, handing out flyers, speaking to a small group of women, shaking hands with factory workers… she would do it all with that characteristic Kennedy flair and so much energy you wondered where it all came from.”
Frustrating for Eunice, though, was the ever-lackadaisical support from the rest of the Kennedy family. Of course, they made some obligatory appearances—Ted and Joan, Rose and even Ethel—but they seemed halfhearted. There wasn’t much sparkle from any of them, especially not from Ethel, and Eunice felt the strong sting of their rejection. She didn’t focus on it, though. There was a lot to do and she wanted to do it all, as always. But she was very unhappy with the family, especially given all that Sarge had done for them in the past. It was disappointing,
The strongest family support the Shrivers received was from Jackie and Aristotle Onassis, who donated a large sum of money to the campaign. This was a surprise, because Eunice and Sarge hadn’t had much patience for Jackie’s relationship with Ari. However, in recent months, Eunice and Jackie had begun speaking about it and Eunice had apologized for having been so chilly. It was as if she now more fully understood what it was like to be on the outside looking in, and she wanted to make amends to Jackie and Ari. In return, Jackie made a number of appearances for Shriver and spoke well of him every chance she got. Characteristically, Shriver sent her and Ari a note a week after the election in 1972 to show his appreciation: “Both Eunice and I are grateful for all your encouragement and support during these past months and it gives us comfort to know you’re thinking of us now.” As a postscript, Shriver added, “Jackie, you were so solicitous and sensitive to my situation that I must add a note of special thanks.”
The loss was a big one, in fact, maybe even bigger than expected. Friends, business associates, and dozens of others came together at Timberlawn to watch the poll results, which from the beginning Eunice knew would be shattering. “This will be a hell of a night,” she said. “The first time a Kennedy loses an election.” In the end, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew would go on to win the election by an overwhelming majority. Nixon won 60 percent of the popular vote and 520 electoral votes to McGovern’s 17. Unbelievably, Nixon carried forty-nine of the fifty states, with only Massachusetts coming through for McGovern-Shriver. It was difficult to imagine a bigger defeat in any major election. “Well, we did our best,” Sargent Shriver said that night. “We didn’t have the support I had hoped for, I must admit. But you can’t take these things personally. You give it your best shot. That’s all you can do. That’s what Eunice and I did.”
“Same Ol’ Sarge”
Though he put on a brave face in public, privately Sargent Shriver was crushed by his recent loss. It would take him years to get over it, if he ever actually did. It wasn’t so much the election. That was politics and he understood it was all a game anyway—a high-stakes one, true, but a game just the same. What really bothered him was the way the Kennedys, and especially his brother-in-law Ted, had let him down. A friend of some years’ standing tells the story of a meeting he had with Sargent about a month after the election. The two were at the Kennedy compound, in the living room of the Big House. “I don’t feel very much at home here these days,” Sargent said, according to his friend’s account of the conversation. “I try to be above it, but I admit, I’m pretty pissed off.”
“Hey! You have a right to be pissed off,” his friend told him. “Look, they screwed you over, Sarge. That’s clear.”
Shriver nodded. “But I’m trying to rise above it,” he said. “It’s my wife’s family. What the hell can I do?”
“You can be pissed, that’s what you can do,” his friend said. “Why take the high road all the time, Sarge? It’s never done you any good in this goddamn society of Kennedys.”
“I know,” Sargent agreed. “But I have a responsibility to my kids to handle this thing the right way.”
The two men smiled at one another. “Same ol’ Sarge,” his friend said.
“Yeah,” Sargent said with a resigned smile. “Same ol’ Sarge.” A few moments later, he smiled sadly and concluded, “Funny thing is, I like Teddy. I respect him. I always have. Which just makes the whole goddamn thing worse.”
His friend had to agree. “Think you might try again one day?” he asked
Shriver laughed heartily. “Hell no,” he said. But then, after a beat, he added with a chuckle, “Well… maybe.”
Though Sargent Shriver tried to protect his children from the disappointment, there was no way around their feelings about what had happened. “My experience with politics was one of loss,” Maria Shriver would say many years later. “My father lost his vice presidential bid on the McGovern-Shriver ticket in 1972. The rejection of my father was so painful, so personal; I remember the sting of that defeat…. People who said they would support him didn’t. I’d learned early on that political life was about constant travel and being surrounded by fifty people in the house, and either you lose or you get assassinated. So I wanted nothing to do with that.”
Of course, Maria would have to have a change of heart about her interest in politics when her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, told her he wanted to run for governor of California in 2003. Before she knew it, he won and she was the Democratic First Lady of a Republican administration.
Or, as her father used to say, “You just can’t predict these things. You have to roll with the punches.”
PART EIGHT
The Third Generation in Trouble
An Accident Results in Paralysis
It was Augus
t 13, 1973. Ethel and Jean Kennedy along with three Kennedy employees—including Rose Kennedy’s secretary, Barbara Gibson—were standing in the lobby of Cape Cod Hospital. Pacing nervously, Ethel seemed out of breath and in great distress, as if she were having a panic attack. “I demand to see my sons,” she said to a nurse who happened to be walking by her. She grabbed the nurse by her elbow and held on tightly. Startled, the nurse looked to Jean Kennedy for assistance. “Why are you standing there looking at me?” Jean demanded to know, also seeming very anxious. “We’ve been standing out here for an hour and no one has said a single word to us about anything.” When the nurse told the Kennedy women that a doctor would be seeing them soon, Ethel sighed heavily and collapsed into a nearby chair. “As you can see, Mrs. Kennedy is very upset,” Jean said, motioning to Ethel. Then, to Barbara Gibson, she said, “Call my husband [Stephen Smith] and ask him to meet us here as soon as he can get here. Tell him that David and Joe have been in a car accident and we need him here.” As Gibson walked to a pay phone, she heard Ethel say, “I don’t know what these kids have done now, Jean. And I’m afraid to find out.”
Another hour passed. Finally, Stephen Smith arrived. “I’ll take care of it,” he told Eunice and Ethel. “You two wait here. I’m going back there.” When a nurse looked as if she might try to block Smith from going beyond a door that was marked “Staff Only,” he said, “I am staff. I’m Kennedy staff. And I’m going back there, so it’s probably best that you don’t try to stop me.” The nurse let him pass. Within fifteen minutes, Stephen Smith brought a doctor out to meet with Ethel and Jean, and he had Joe with him. Ethel jumped out of her chair and wrapped her arms around her son. “Thank God,” she exclaimed. After a beat, she backed away from him and closely studied his face. Then she hauled off and smacked him on the shoulder with her open hand. “Where’s David?” she demanded. “And what happened? You tell me this instant what happened,” she said.
Joe seemed pale and shaken. It had been just a day since he and Ethel and Ted had sat down and had a heart-to-heart about his responsibility as a Kennedy. He was the heir apparent to the Kennedy dynasty and Ethel and Ted wanted to remind him to be careful, to “make the right decisions,” as Ted had said. “The other boys are looking up at you for example,” Ted reminded him, “especially David. And we just want you to be aware.” And now, only twenty-four hours later, he found himself in a hospital at a loss as to how to explain to his mother how he and David had ended up there. “It’s my fault,” he said. “David’s here because of me, Mom. It’s because of me.”
Here’s the story Joe Kennedy told his mother:
On Sunday, August 12, Joe—who was now twenty-one—invited David, eighteen, and his girlfriend at the time, Pam Kelley, nineteen, to a barbecue with some other friends at Nantucket. The brothers and their friends spent the day sailing, and then that night enjoyed a barbecue on the beach. The next morning, Monday, everyone went swimming before their intended trip back to Hyannis Port. Joe borrowed a friend’s Jeep to drive David and Pam back to the jetty. “I guess I was driving too fast,” Joe told his mom and his aunt and uncle, his voice quivering. “And on the way back in the Jeep, it somehow turned over and everyone sort of spilled out of it.”
“What do you mean, you guess you were driving too fast?” Ethel demanded to know.
“Okay,” Joe conceded, “I was driving too fast, Mom.”
Ethel just shook her head angrily. She was holding her rosary beads and gripping them so tightly that her knuckles had become white.
“And now everyone’s hurt except me,” Joe said. “I don’t know what else to say.”
Ethel looked at her son with cold eyes. The suspicion on her face indicated that she knew there was more to the story. However, she decided to let it go. Now she just wanted to see David. When a doctor finally took her, Jean and Stephen Smith, and the others to David’s room, it was very difficult for her. Lying in bed in a traction device, David appeared to be paralyzed. Barely able to move his head, he just stared straight up at the ceiling when the small contingent came into his room. Ethel went to his bedside and held his arm, Jean standing behind her with her hand on her sister-in-law’s shoulder. Barbara Gibson was also present. “Whatever happened,” Ethel finally told David, according to Gibson’s memory of these events, “it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re okay.” As David looked up at his mother, a single tear fell onto his pillow. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said. Ethel nodded. “I know you are.” At that moment, according to Gibson, Stephen Smith said, “I should call Ted.” Joe smiled. “Yeah! Uncle Teddy can get us out of this mess,” he said happily. Ethel just glared at him. Meanwhile, Smith left the room and went to a pay phone in the hallway. As she later walked by him, Barbara Gibson heard Steve speaking on the telephone to someone she believed to be Ted Kennedy: “It’s not good,” Smith said. “I think we have a real problem on our hands here, Ted. These kids are out of control. We have a lot to consider in terms of how this thing is going to play out in the court of public opinion.” In that moment, Smith saw Gibson standing in the hallway. He glared at her and said, “Whatever it is that’s your job for my mother-in-law, I suggest you do it. Now!”
Of course, there was much more to the story than what Joe had told, as his mother had suspected. As it happened, there were five girls in the car with Joe and David, including David’s girlfriend, Pam. “It was Kennedy horseplay, of course,” Pam Kelley would say many decades later. “We were all laughing and screaming and having a good time as Joe spun the Jeep ’round and ’round and ’round. And at one point, someone said something about going to a rest area across the street. Joe turned the car around and headed over to that spot at a fast speed. He didn’t notice a station wagon coming down the street. When he finally did, he steered hard to avoid it. He swerved. We hit a ditch. That’s when the Jeep started flipping over and over. I remember David and I holding on to the roll bar to keep from flying out of the vehicle, and I can still in my mind’s eye see David’s face as we were forced to let go of the Jeep and start tumbling out of it. That’s the last thing I remember, David’s face. I hit the ground real hard. Then I tried to get up. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move.”
Pam and another of the girls were hospitalized in serious condition, while the other three young women were all treated and released. David’s injuries included a severely sprained back, but Pam’s spinal injuries were much more serious. After a three-hour operation, it was clear that she would be paralyzed. Tragically, she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. To think that a girl had been paralyzed for life as a result of her son’s reckless driving was very difficult for Ethel to accept. “My own boys are responsible for this,” she said at the time, “which makes me responsible.”
Joe was inconsolable that the accident had resulted in permanent paralysis for a girl he barely knew. It caused a rift between him and David that would take years to heal—and in truth, things were never quite the same between them again. “He would visit me every day,” Pam Kelley recalled of David. “Ethel would come too, almost every day. She would try to cheer me up, bringing presents, and act optimistic. My impression of her at that time was that she couldn’t deal with any more upsetting news, so she was just cheery, cheery, cheery. David hated that about her. ‘She just can’t be real,’ he told me, ‘or she’ll fall apart. And she can’t fall apart because she’s Ethel Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy can never fall apart. It’s a vicious cycle.’ ”
One day, Ethel and Ted brought Rose Kennedy to the hospital to see Pam. On this day, Ethel couldn’t seem to force herself to be jovial. She stood against a wall in the room and looked somewhat stricken as Rose and Ted spoke to Pam. Eventually, Ted pulled up a chair to the bed so that his mother could sit down next to the patient. Ted stood behind Rose, his hands resting on her slim shoulders. “You know, sometimes things happen in life that we can’t predict or understand,” Rose said. “In my own life, I have seen so much tragedy. But take it from me,” she said, smiling gently at Pam. “God d
oes not make mistakes,” she added, looking upward. “We have to accept that He knows what He is doing, and we have to go on. In my heart,” she concluded, “I don’t believe He will give us more than we can take.”
After they chatted for about thirty more minutes, Ted helped his mother out of the chair and said it was time for them to take their leave. Rose kissed Pam on the forehead. She then pulled a rosary out of her purse and placed it on the girl’s chest. “This is for you,” she said. “This will give you strength.” Rose was then helped from the room by Ted.
After the two left, Ethel approached Pam and put her hand on her shoulder. “I just want you to know that I am praying for you,” she said. The girl looked up at her and nodded. Ethel then reached out and touched the rosary. After holding the crucifix in her fingers for a few moments, she nodded and smiled sadly at Pam. “God bless you,” she said. She then turned around and walked out of the room, seeming very much older than her forty-four years. Obviously, all of this misfortune was hard on Ethel. Years later, one of her personal assistants, Noelle Bombardier, would recall, “She could be very guarded and you wouldn’t see a lot of emotion. Sometimes, though, I’d find her alone by the pool, crying. She’d stop as soon as she realized someone else was there.”
“Uncle Teddy didn’t go to jail after Chappaquiddick, and that was a lot worse than this. So I don’t think you have to worry too much,” David Kennedy told his brother Joe on the day Joe had to face a judge. “I sure hope you’re right,” was Joe’s response. In fact, the Nantucket Police Department would only charge Joe Kennedy with negligent driving. He could—and some observers felt should—have gotten two years in jail, especially considering what had happened to Pam Kelley. Instead, he was just given probation and a $100 fine.
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