Jean Kennedy Smith—Ambassador
Jean Kennedy Smith had always striven to create a life of fulfillment for herself outside of her marriage, and as part of that effort, she was deeply and heavily invested in her Very Special Arts charity. In a sense, she had used Eunice’s Special Olympics as a template for how such a venture might be organized and run. At first it was a daunting task. There was a sense among the sisters—Jean and Pat—that no one could ever compete with Eunice’s philanthropy. Since the Kennedys had always been so extremely competitive, if one couldn’t do something better than another there seemed little reason even to try. But in the 1970s, when Jean first founded Very Special Arts, she became heartened by its tremendous success. It gave her a real sense of purpose and made her feel that perhaps she wasn’t so much in Eunice’s shadow after all. In June 1989, Jean hosted the first International Very Special Arts Festival, and more than a thousand handicapped people came from all over the world to converge upon the White House. President George H. W. Bush hosted this contingent, and the closing festivities were taped by NBC for a splashy television special. Jean felt that she was contributing on Eunice’s level, which was saying a lot.
Still, the last couple of years had been very difficult for Jean. She now felt a need to do something new and exciting with the years she had left—she was only sixty-four—and if she could be of service, she would feel as if she were doing something worthwhile. During the summer of 1992, she visited Ireland, and while there also visited the American ambassador’s residence in Dublin. As Irish Americans, the Kennedy family—especially the first and second generations—had a strong affinity for Ireland. In talking to friends in Dublin about it, she began to wonder what it might be like to serve in Ireland as American ambassador. When she returned to the States, she mentioned the idea to Ted. “It just came to me in a flash,” she once recalled. “I think my husband gave me the idea. It’s from heaven. I mean I think he [Stephen] must have in some kind of way because it just hit me that it would be a really good idea at this point in my life. And I think it sort of fit, you know? I knew how crazy they [the Irish] are about Jack and I thought, ‘Why not try?’ You know, I wasn’t very optimistic I’d get it. There would have to be a lot of [other] people wanting it.”
It was at around the time Bill Clinton was elected to office in 1992 that Jean decided to throw her hat into the ring and let it be known that she would be interested in an ambassadorship. Of course, there was some opposition from critics who didn’t know much about her. In fact, prior to the William Kennedy Smith trial, most people didn’t know her at all, and those who thought they did perceived her as one of the less ambitious or powerful of the Kennedy women, especially as compared to Eunice. For her part, Jean had had been very involved in the political career of her brother Jack, going all the way back to his 1947 congressional campaign, his 1952 Senate campaign, and of course his presidential campaign in 1960. Moreover, her husband had been intimately involved in all of her brothers’ campaigns; anyone who felt she’d not been privy to the working mechanics of all of those races didn’t know how much Stephen Smith confided in his wife about such matters. Besides that, Jean had been a member of the board of trustees of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation since 1964. She had also been a member of the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts since that same time. More importantly, though, she had been running her own Very Special Arts charity for almost twenty years. Those who had worked with her over the years could attest to her focus and tenacity; those who dealt with her during her son’s trial could certainly attest to her strength and determination. Also, having been born into a family that courted tradition and ceremony and had always observed the proper protocol in all manners, Jean Kennedy Smith was well suited to carry out the duties expected of an ambassador, of which so many were purely ceremonial and usually in the public eye.
However, it was true that Jean had not been involved in any sort of diplomacy, and thus for some it was quite a stretch to imagine her representing the United States’ interests in any foreign country. As far as Ted was concerned, though, her lack of experience in that regard didn’t matter. He loved his sister and wanted her to have exactly what she wanted at this time in her life. He felt that he had let her down in recent years, and in a sense he wanted to make it up to her if he could. He had such admiration for the way she handled herself throughout the trial of her son, and knew that his friend and brother-in-law Stephen was smiling down on her. He wanted to help her. So even though there were others in the running who were perhaps more qualified, Ted was willing to risk any opposition he might face and any criticism that might be leveled at him, and use whatever influence he might have to appeal to President Clinton on his sister’s behalf.
As it happened, Clinton liked the idea immediately. Of course, he realized that Jean Kennedy Smith had no history of diplomacy, yet he couldn’t help but see the sentimental value to appointing her as ambassador to Ireland. An admirer of the Kennedy family, he felt that this family had long ago established the paradigm for the ideal representation of Irish Americans. Certainly their sensational personal histories didn’t reflect who they were in total. It was their devotion to being of service that framed them historically, their long history of duty to America that went all the way back to JFK in 1960, and even before that with the Kennedy brothers’ years in the Senate and even their father’s ambassadorship to the United Kingdom in the 1930s. No matter what had happened over the years, or what personal difficulties the family had faced, what was inescapable about them was that they not only, as they say, talked the talk but walked the walk. The next generation, the third, was busy making its own impact by this time as well, many of them in government positions themselves. Jean wished to now take her own place as a representative of the previous generation.
President Clinton nominated Jean Kennedy Smith to serve as ambassador to Ireland on March 17, 1993, fittingly on the day we honor the patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick. She was confirmed by the Senate on June 16, 1993. A short time later, in 1994, Jean would make headlines by championing the granting of a U.S. visa to the leader of the Sinn Féin political party in Ireland, Gerry Adams. Sinn Féin—which translated from Irish means “ourselves” or “we ourselves”—is a left-leaning wing of the Irish Republican Army. In his memoir, True Compass, Ted Kennedy recalled, “Jean was convinced that Adams no longer believed that continuing the armed struggle was the way to achieve the IRA’s objective of a united Ireland,” and that “it took only a couple of hours’ conversation with Jean after we landed to discover what was the most important thing on her mind—the opportunity for a breakthrough in the Northern Ireland stalemate.”
“I was privileged to serve as America’s ambassador to Ireland during the critical time that gave birth to the peace process,” Jean would recall in 2008, “and I saw up close the immense struggle in the North to overcome bitter partisan divisions and finally achieve peace. One man more than any other embodied the persevering spirit and inspiring vision that led Northern Ireland out of its darkest night of the soul—Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume. At many difficult moments, the tactics of wily opponents of any peace agreement appealed successfully to divisive interests and supporters of violence, but John helped us all cling to the vision of a better future.” Jean further recalled that after a bombing at London’s Canary Wharf in 1996, which seemed to indicate that the cease-fire had come to an abrupt end, Hume did not give up. Jean had a gathering at the ambassador’s residence that night and “John stepped to the center of the room and led us all in a song of hope.” She added, “What John Hume taught me was similar to what my brothers President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy taught me earlier—that we need leaders who speak to our sense of hope, to the easily forgotten sense of fellowship that we all have with one another, and to our aspiration to live our lives in service to a worthy cause.”
Siobhan Walsh, who was a member of Jean’s staff in Dublin, recalled of her, “I found her to be a
fascinating woman, very smart, very dedicated to the notion of peace in Ireland. ‘All people should have the freedom and ability to assemble, to speak, to choose their leaders,’ she said. She’s a refined person who had her boundaries with people and made them known right away. There has been a lot of sadness in her life, we all knew that. But she was loath to discuss it. In fact, she practically never mentioned her family. If you thought you were going to get anecdotes out of her about JFK or Bobby or Ted, you were very wrong. Their names rarely, if ever, came up.
“I can recall many times when Ted or Pat or Eunice had visited, and I have to say, there was something rather stiff about the way they comported themselves. They were very formal with one another, or at least that’s how it appeared to me. Perhaps they were more familiar with each other when in private, but when in public they seemed quite stiff. For instance, I recall the ambassador taking her sister Eunice on a tour of the house one day. Eunice—who was wearing a gray cashmere sweater, a pair of charcoal capri pants, and sensible shoes—had a very thick notepad and was taking copious notes as Jean spoke about possible renovations. She was just writing feverishly, page after page after page. When they were finished, I recall Eunice telling her sister, ‘I shall have these notes typed up by my secretary and will have them delivered to your office post-haste.’ That’s how they talked! The language they used with one another was very formal, which I found curious. ‘Shall you be joining us for dinner?’ Jean would ask her sister. ‘Why, yes, I would be most delighted to join you,’ would be Eunice’s response.”
Jean’s term as ambassador, which would end in September 1998, would not be without its controversy, though. For instance, in late 1996 she was accused of pressuring embassy staff members to spend taxpayer money to refurbish the ambassador’s residence in Dublin. The residence, a sprawling white Georgian-style mansion built in 1776, is quite spectacular. Over the years, the guests staying there have included President Kennedy and George H. W. Bush, as well as celebrities like Bing Crosby and Princess Grace of Monaco. Jean didn’t see why taxpayers’ money shouldn’t be used to maintain the mansion, but found that there was, not surprisingly, a great deal of bureaucratic red tape attached to those kinds of decisions. There was also some controversy concerning an allegation of violations of U.S. conflict-of-interest laws. In 2000, the United States Department of Justice announced that she had paid $5,000 in a civil suit to resolve the matter.
“Jean’s work as ambassador gave her a sense of purpose like nothing else could have during one of the darker times in her life,” said one of the Kennedy family lawyers. “Her husband, Stephen, would have been proud of her, as would have her brothers Jack and Bobby.”
PART SEVENTEEN
Kennedy Wives—Old and New
Ted and Vicki Marry
It had become clear to most observers by the end of 1991 that Ted Kennedy was quite serious about Victoria Reggie and that he intended to marry her, if she would have him. Ted made it official on January 14, 1992, when he proposed to Vicki during a performance of La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. The couple kept it a secret for a couple of months before telling all of their children in March. They asked their offspring not to say a word to anyone for a while, and everybody promised. However, Vicki’s six-year-old daughter, Caroline, mentioned the happy news to a friend in her kindergarten class, who then told his parents—one of whom apparently worked for the Washington Post! So that was pretty much the end of that secret. At that point, Ted felt that the proper thing to do would be to ask Vicki’s father for her hand in marriage. “We knew they were dating so we weren’t surprised when the senator called,” recalled Vicki’s father, Edmund M. Reggie. “Vicki was on the line, too. Ted said, ‘As you must know by now, I love Vicki very much. I would love to make her my wife and I’ve asked her to marry me. So now I want to ask you and Doris for her hand in marriage.’ It was very nice. Of course, Doris and I were thrilled.” The official announcement was made on March 16.
The press immediately contacted Joan Kennedy for a comment. Unfortunately, she didn’t know anything about any of it and was taken completely by surprise. She seemed rattled by the call from a reporter from the Boston Herald. “Oh? Is that true?” she asked when told of the announcement. “I can’t talk now,” she said before abruptly hanging up. She was very upset. She spent a couple weeks in seclusion, not speaking to anyone but her closest friends. “It wasn’t that she had any hope of reconciling with Ted,” said one, “but, you know, there was always that little part of her that wondered if, maybe… And this announcement ended that for her and made her come to terms with the fact that he was gone from her for good. It wasn’t easy. I’m not sure she ever fell out of love with him, even after all that had happened. So, yes, it was hard. I know she spoke to Jackie about it, and also to Ethel and Eunice, though I don’t know exactly what their conversations entailed. Joan simply would not discuss it.”
Most of the other Kennedys were happy not only that Ted had finally found someone to love, but also that she was a strong-minded, independent woman who would see to it that he would live a more dignified lifestyle than he had in the past. “If you don’t,” she had told him jokingly, “I’ll cut your throat with a rusty razor!” In truth, Vicki wasn’t opposed to Ted’s drinking—just his overdoing it. She enjoyed a cocktail at the end of the day too, and she had a sense of humor very much like Ethel’s or Pat’s. That said, Vicki’s assimilation into the family was not easy.
No member of the second generation or their spouses (with the exception of Jackie) had ever remarried. Other than Jackie bringing Aristotle Onassis to the compound back in 1968, it just hadn’t happened that outsiders were brought into the original second-generation royal family of Camelot. Certainly, their accepting or not accepting Onassis into the fold wouldn’t have had major repercussions, since he and Jackie lived an independent and affluent lifestyle all their own. But it was harder to imagine what might have happened had Ethel remarried. Her new husband would have had to get along with not only all of his new relatives, but her many children as well. Ethel already had her hands full with her brood; bringing a mate into the mix would not have been easy. This was precisely the problem Ted Kennedy faced in trying to blend Victoria Reggie—who had two young children of her own, Curran and Caroline—into his family. There was immediate suspicion where Vicki was concerned, and many of the family members didn’t take to her easily.
The first big controversy had to do with Ted’s three children—Patrick, Ted Jr., and Kara—and their feelings about their father’s new relationship. How would it affect their inheritance, which was at the time estimated at roughly $30 million? The only way to control what might happen to their inheritance—and how it might end up being split with Vicki and her children—was for their father to insist on a prenuptial agreement. Ted considered as much, but ultimately decided against it. It was that decision that set the stage for many years of future suspicion where Victoria was concerned. Had she influenced him in regard to the prenup? If so, what was she after? Ted insisted that Vicki had nothing to do with his choice, that he felt that insisting on such an agreement was tantamount to saying that he didn’t trust her or their marriage. It wasn’t a matter of trust, as far as his children were concerned, it was a matter of practicality, and maybe even loyalty. Still, it was Ted’s money, not his children’s, and he said he could handle it as he wished. He had set up very substantial trusts for them, and that would have to be enough.
The other Kennedys of the second generation stayed out of the fracas, but that’s not to say they didn’t have strong opinions. “I don’t know for sure that I trust her yet,” Ethel told Eunice of Victoria in front of relatives. She had always been so protective of Ted, it was difficult for her just to blindly go along with the new program. “But I don’t know that I don’t trust her,” she added. “However, if this is what Teddy wants, we have no choice but to support him and then just wait and see what happens next.” Eunice agreed; she was also not inclined to
be critical of Vicki. “I’d be more unhappy if he broke up with her,” she said. “I think she’s the only reason he’s so happy now and we should be grateful to her for that.” That Vicki had somehow convinced Ted he was only allowed three drinks a day—two cocktails and a glass of wine—seemed like a small miracle to Eunice. She had long been trying to restrict his drinking and hadn’t been successful at it, so she had to hand it to Vicki, she said. Then, proving that Pat wasn’t the only Kennedy sister with a wicked sense of humor, Eunice concluded, “Sarge and I are too old to worry about Ted and Vicki now. We’re too busy taking all our medications.”
Ted and Vicki were married in a civil ceremony on July 3, 1992, at Ted’s home in McLean, Virginia. “I can’t remember the last time I saw my dad so happy,” Ted Jr., who was now thirty-one, said in his toast later at the wedding reception, “and it is all due to Vicki.”
Two Very Different Kinds of Kennedy Wives
In 1993, Ted Kennedy and his nephew Joseph—Bobby’s son—found themselves embroiled in controversies involving their marriages and the Catholic Church.
It started with Joseph Kennedy II—Joe. Back in February 1979, he married Sheila Brewster Rauch in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania. She was a bubbly, enthusiastic person, full of life and someone the Kennedy family seemed to like a great deal. The couple went on to have twins in 1980—Matthew Rauch Kennedy and Joseph Patrick Kennedy. However, when the marriage hit a rough spot in 1990, it never recovered and ultimately ended when Sheila filed for divorce. It was granted in 1991.
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