By 2009, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who was now eighty-eight, had also been unwell for some time, her body breaking down with the passing of time. The last six years of Eunice’s life had been extremely challenging as she dealt with a series of strokes at the same time that she was trying to reconcile herself to her husband’s deteriorating condition. Ted and Jean were with her as much as possible, especially given the concerns and demands of Ted’s own illness. It was a difficult time for all of the Kennedys as they faced the prospect of possibly losing three of the best of their ranks—Ted, Eunice, and Sarge. “After all we have been through, I don’t know, you sort of hope that maybe things might get easier with time,” said Jean Kennedy Smith at the time. “They don’t, though. You really have to persevere.”
Eunice echoed those sentiments to one of her nursing assistants at this time of her life. “Aging can be cruel,” she said. “I think now the reason one must be so strong in one’s youth is so that it becomes a part of who he or she is as a person, because God knows that when you get older you need all the strength you can muster just to get through it. It is by no means easy.” Then, to this aide who was at the time in her late twenties, Eunice said, “I urge you to do what I did with my life. Do not waste a day. Make every day count. Make it important. That’s what I did and, as God is my witness, I have not one regret—not a single one.”
As her health continued to deteriorate, Eunice became too sick to attend Mass. Therefore, a priest came to her almost every day to perform the Mass in her bedroom. Her son Timothy recalls “at least—I’m not exaggerating—thirty separate images of the Blessed Mother” in his mom’s bedroom, “and I mean thirty. I don’t mean seven that looks like thirty.”
Eunice Kennedy Shriver died on August 11, 2009, at the age of eighty-eight. She was survived by her husband, Sargent, who was ninety-three, her five children—Anthony, Bobby, Mark, Timothy, and Maria—and nineteen grandchildren.
“In the last few years of her life, I found Mummy to be almost more awe-inspiring than in her eighty-five years,” her daughter, Maria, said in her moving eulogy of her mom. “She who never sat still was forced to confront stillness, and it was hard for her, but she never complained and she never asked for pity…. If you had told me a few years ago that at the end of my mother’s life she and I would sit in a room and just be, I would have said you were crazy. If you had told me that at the age of fifty-two, I would finally get up the nerve to crawl into bed with my mother, hold her, and tell her that I love her, I would have said you were nuts. And if you had told me that Mummy and I would write poetry together, I would know for sure you that you’d lost your mind. But all those things really happened, as Mummy learned to let go.”
* * *
Sargent Shriver would follow his beloved Eunice in death on January 17, 2011. He would be buried with a rosary in his hands, having never lost his faith, even during the darkest of times.
“Sarge’s knowledge of God’s love was the structure that supported his public life,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl would say at his funeral in Potomac, Maryland. “From this faith, hope, and love flowed his thirst for justice and peace and the courage to speak for those who had no voice. He spoke not from political expediency or correctness, but from an abiding sense of conviction.”
President Bill Clinton framed it best that day when, in speaking of Sarge, he asked, “Could anybody be as good as he [Shriver] seemed to be? Every other man in this church feels about two inches tall right now.”
But no one could summarize his life better than Sarge himself did, in an interview he gave to the Chicago Tribune in July 1987:
“I haven’t done everything I’ve wanted to do with my life. I can’t say I’ve been 100 percent successful. But with respect to the things that count—my marriage, my kids—I’ve been very, very lucky. I don’t know anybody in the world that’s been as lucky as I am. Period. Think of anybody you’ve ever read of in any area, politics, business, government, finance, I don’t know a single solitary person—Franklin Roosevelt, Johnson, Kennedy, General DeGaulle, I’ve known all those people, not one of them, not one has been as lucky as I’ve been.”
Ted—Rest in Peace
Two weeks after the death of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, on August 25, 2009, Ted Kennedy passed away at the age of seventy-seven.
Just a couple days before his death, the senator was still seen around the Cape on a golf cart being driven by Vicki. The two were always amenable to speaking to anyone who approached, as Mabel Simmons learned. She was visiting relatives on the Cape from San Diego. “I had been to the Kennedy compound several times but never had the nerve to actually try to get inside,” she recalled. “I would get close and just stand there and hope maybe I would see one of them. One day, I was standing on a street near the home taking pictures of the ocean view when a golf cart approached. I looked and, sure enough, it was Vicki and Ted. It happened to be a very scenic spot, and Vicki stopped the golf cart and, much to my amazement, walked over to me. She said, ‘Would you mind taking a picture of me and my husband?’ I was so stunned. ‘Of course,’ I barely managed to say. She handed me the camera and we walked over to the cart and there was Ted sitting there wearing a large straw hat and sunglasses. He looked very weak to me. But his smile was dazzling as he introduced himself and shook my hand. Vicki got back into the cart, they posed and smiled, and I took their picture. Instead of saying, ‘Say cheese!’ I remember Ted said, ‘Say Kennedy!’ and we all laughed.
“So, how are you feeling these days, Senator?” Simmons asked Ted.
“The fact that I am out here with my beautiful wife on this gorgeous day is the best medicine in the world,” he answered, “so I am doing just fine. Thank you for asking.” Mabel asked Vicki if she was taking good care of Ted. Flashing a gorgeous smile, Vicki said, “We take good care of each other.” The tourist then told Ted how much of a fan she was of his, how much she admired him and his family. Ted smiled and asked her if she had ever been “down to the house.” Of course, she hadn’t. “Next time you are in the area, stop by,” he said. He told her that if a security guard stopped her, she should tell him “the senator sent you.” They then said their goodbyes. “God bless you,” Ted said as he and Vicki drove off. That was just three days before Ted died.
“Edward M. Kennedy—the husband, father, grandfather, brother, and uncle we loved so deeply—died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port,” said the statement from his family. “We’ve lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever. We thank everyone who gave him care and support over this last year, and everyone who stood with him for so many years in his tireless march for progress toward justice, fairness, and opportunity for all. He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it. He always believed that our best days were still ahead, but it’s hard to imagine any of them without him.”
“The greatest comfort that I have is that we had those fifteen months,” says his wife, Vicki, speaking of the length of time Ted was ill and they had to prepare for his death. “We said everything,” she says.
What a career he had in the Senate—forty-six years. He was responsible for almost twenty-five hundred bills, three hundred of which became law. The antiapartheid campaign, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, all that he did in the name of health care reform, and reams of other important legislation speak for his life’s work in the Senate. But what also can’t be overlooked is the tenacious way he lived his life, refusing to give in to his demons—of which even he had to admit there were many. Somehow, Ted Kennedy always found a way to rebound, even when it looked as if he was truly on the brink of self-destruction. Maybe the great story of Edward Kennedy’s life is simply that he was a man who refused to either give in or give up. He always believed in his core that he had important work to do—that his life had real purpose—and that he had to find a way to do it, even during those times w
hen his own human nature presented itself as his biggest distraction, his greatest foe.
When Ted died in 2009, his son Ted Jr., founder and president of the Marwood Group, a firm that advises corporations about health care and financial services, was forty-seven; Kara, who worked as the media director of her aunt Jean’s Very Special Arts program, was forty-nine; and Patrick, still a Rhode Island congressman, was forty-two. While Ted and Kara were leading well-adjusted, happy lives, Patrick still faced some significant challenges. In 2006 he was in a car accident that ultimately was the catalyst for another stint in rehab for abuse of sleeping pills. Today, he, like his mother, is sober, but he realizes that the work to stay that way will continue for the rest of his life.
Joan Kennedy was devastated by Ted’s death. She’d never stopped loving him, after all. Now all there was left to do was to grieve for her first and, it would seem, only love. Joan attended the Mass at the Big House that was said for Ted right after his passing and prior to the funeral. She wasn’t sure that she should be present, however, saying that she didn’t want to intrude. “Of course she should be here,” Vicki decided, who called Joan and personally invited her. “Ted loved her very much. Her children love her, and they are grieving now as I know Joan is. So this is a time for all of us to be together,” she said.
Joan Kennedy’s public appearances of late—first at Eunice’s funeral in August and then at Ted’s—reminded many people who perhaps had long ago forgotten not only her struggles as a Kennedy wife but also her important place in the family’s storied history. At one point, Joan was overheard telling President George W. Bush, “I admire your family so much because I know how hard it is staying close to one another when you’re a political family.” Bush took both of Joan’s hands and said, “You are a woman America holds so dear, do you know that?” She just smiled and nodded her appreciation.
The funeral service for Ted Kennedy would be held on August 29 at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston. At the end of the touching memorial service, two tenors and a choir sang, as everyone joined in the chorus of—what else?—“When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” Ted would later be buried at Arlington National Cemetery alongside his brothers Jack and Bobby and his sister-in-law Jackie.
“Of course, Jean was bereft at losing her brother so soon after her sister, but Ethel took it quite, quite hard,” said Ethel Kennedy’s former assistant, Leah Mason. “Ted had been the rock the family had stood on for so many years. Ethel always felt he was a stabilizing influence on the family, no matter what was going on. They had such a special bond. I mean, who in this world was more loyal to Ted Kennedy than his Ethie? Probably no one.”
“I thought for sure I would go before Teddy,” Ethel told Leah Mason after the funeral service, according to Mason’s memory of the conversation. “I just thought… or maybe I hoped… I don’t know.” She seemed at a loss for words.
“He’s with Jack and Bobby now,” Leah Mason said, holding both of Ethel’s trembling hands and echoing what Ethel had often said upon the death of a loved one.
“And Grandma and Grandpa, and David and Michael,” Ethel added with a sad smile. “You know, I wouldn’t have survived one single day after Bobby died if it hadn’t been for Teddy,” she added. She then reminded Leah that Ted had been with her in the delivery room when she had Rory, who was born after Bobby died. “And from that time on, he never left my side. Not once,” Ethel said. “Even through everything that happened with David and then with Michael, never did that man leave my side.”
Leah nodded. “And he won’t leave your side now, either,” she told Ethel. “You can count on that.”
Ethel nodded and then embraced her former assistant.
A short time after that conversation, Ethel Kennedy was seen walking along the sandy Cape Cod beach in front of the Kennedy compound, occasionally stopping to enjoy the view as the orange sun melted into the distant horizon, just as Kennedys had been doing for many decades. In years past, as she took her nightly walk and passed the Big House, Ethel would always be sure to look up at one of the windows to Ted’s den. There he would be, almost every summer’s night, sitting in a chair, peering over his reading glasses as he reviewed paperwork under the warm glow of a single reading lamp. Sometimes he would look down to the beach and notice Ethel standing in place, gazing up at him. He would beam at his sister-in-law, Bobby’s still devoted wife, and he would wave at her. Ethel would always smile, knowing in her heart that as long as Ted Kennedy was in that den in that house, all was somehow right with the world.
On this evening, as Ethel walked along the Kennedys’ stretch of beach, she looked up at the Big House, her eyes searching out and then finding Ted’s den, pretty much out of habit. But the light was out and the room was black, causing her—as she would later tell it—to feel almost overwhelmed by a sense of sadness and grief. But then, as she looked closer, she saw the strangest thing. The shadows of the distant clouds, the colors of the setting sun, and the iridescence of the dazzling sea had somehow conspired to paint a vivid image on glass, a reflection that she could have sworn was the handsome and smiling face of her brother-in-law Ted. She stopped walking and looked closer. “Am I seeing things?” she asked herself, as she would later recall, “or…” She stood in place, squinting at the window, trying to discern whether or not her eighty-one-year-old eyes were deceiving her when, just as magically as it had appeared, it was gone—whatever it was, it was gone. In her heart, “Ethie” knew what it was, though. And she couldn’t help but smile.
About a week after the funeral, the family convened once again in the parlor of the Big House for hot coffee and warm memories. “How many years ago was it that we were all in this same room celebrating Jack’s election?” Joan asked at one point, according to witnesses. “Remember? We took that family portrait right over there?” she said, pointing to a corner.
“Wow. How long ago was that?” Jean asked.
“My gosh! Next year it will be fifty years,” Joan said, doing a quick calculation in her head. “I was just twenty-two,” she added. “So young to be at the center of all of that history.”
“We were all so young,” Jean said, now holding Joan’s hand. “Do you remember how Jackie looked on that day?” The two women smiled at one another, a wave of nostalgia no doubt washing over them. “In some ways it seems like a lifetime ago,” Jean Kennedy Smith concluded, “and in other ways… just yesterday.”
CODA
The Kennedys endure as one of the great families of American history, garnering as much curiosity, interest, and attention as ever. While many of its most dynamic personalities are no longer with us and others have withdrawn into private life, the legacy of “Camelot,” and of all its tragedy, destiny, and promise, is one all of us share, as Americans, in our own way. It unites us across decades and generations and attracts us as few others have, not simply because of its fame, its “curse,” or its scandal; not only because of its beauty or its ugliness, its achievements, or occasional falls from grace. It is a name that spoke to us then, and still does today, because for so long it came to represent our humanity: our flaws, our hopes, our disappointments, our fortitude and fragility, our successes and mistakes.
This family, America’s family, at one time or another was the best of us, and the worst of us.
For those of us long fascinated with the legends of our time, eager to know them, to understand them—to break through the wall that so often separates them from the rest of the world—what are we to make of the impact of this family’s story on us as individuals and as a nation? As we arrive at the denouement of this epic journey, can we point to one thing in particular that endures as the Kennedy legacy? Is it the Kennedy presidency? Dallas? Sargent and Eunice Shriver? Bobby Kennedy? Chappaquiddick? John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette? Perhaps the answer lies in the eye of the beholder. Or maybe there is an enduring legacy staring out at us from this story that explains why an entire generation came to love the Kennedy family with such passion and z
eal—something that transcends the lure of celebrity, sensation and fame, achievement, mission or purpose. Perhaps it is something far simpler and easier to find, something as foundational and precious for all of us as it has been, and still is, for them.
Perhaps Jackie herself said it best:
“Here we Kennedys are, all these many years later, trying to pick up the pieces of our lives. Trying to survive after Camelot. Clinging to each other with the fear that what little that remains of our kingdom will come crashing down around us, leaving us with nothing but the memory of what was once so great. But the truth is this can never happen. Because the family is the kingdom. And it can never fall.”
Acknowledgments and Source Notes
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE AUTHOR’S SUPPORT TEAM
A comprehensive book such as After Camelot is many years in the making, and during that time its author must depend on a core group of professionals in order to get the job done. As with all of my books, many people became personally invested in this project, from researchers and investigators to copy editors and fact checkers to designers, publicists, and, of course, even attorneys. In my view, it’s only when this kind of group effort occurs that a project becomes a truly rewarding working experience. Without others who care, where does a writer find himself? Sitting in an office alone, writing. That’s a lonely proposition, but luckily it’s never been the road I’ve had to travel. I have always been surrounded by a dedicated and loyal team of people with whom I could bounce ideas, count on for constructive criticism, talk about storytelling… laugh, cry… whatever it takes to get the job done.
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