by Larry Tye
Not everyone is sentimental. To this day, Jimmy Hoffa’s children, along with Dean Rusk’s, can recite the wrongs Bobby did to their fathers. “I kind of dreamed of being invited to one of those Kennedy touch football games on the White House lawn,” says Richard Rusk, who was captain of his high school football team. “I would have wanted to catch [Bobby] on the open field and just plant him in the ground. And when he woke, I’d let him figure out why it was that Dean’s son had done that to him. You know, he really went after my father in a big way.” LBJ was equally unforgiving. He questioned whether RFK had the right to be buried at Arlington Cemetery. He balked at appropriating money to maintain his grave site and at naming the football stadium in Washington after him. He failed to acknowledge Bobby’s remarkable odyssey from cold warrior to liberal icon, or to concede that Bobby might have succeeded him in the Oval Office. LBJ’s “feelings about Bobby’s death were complex,” said the president’s friend and adviser Clark Clifford. “More deeply than before, Lyndon Johnson feared that history would always trap him between the martyred Kennedys.”
The tribute Bobby undoubtedly would have liked best was from his son David. “Daddy was very funny in church because he would embarrass all of us by singing very loud. Daddy did not have a very good voice,” the thirteen-year-old wrote as part of a Christmas surprise for his mother at the end of that year of their terrible loss. “There will be no more football with Daddy, no more swimming with him, no more riding and no more camping with him. But he was the best father their [sic] ever was and I would rather have him for a father for the length of time I did than any other father for a million years.”
* * *
* David died in 1984 of a drug overdose. Michael died in an accident while playing football on the Colorado ski slopes in 1997, the same year that he was accused of having an affair with the family’s teenaged babysitter. For all the well-documented woes of Bobby and Ethel’s offspring, however, there were the joys of seeing Kathleen elected lieutenant governor of Maryland, Joseph II win the congressional seat held by his Uncle Jack, and nearly all the children engage in the kinds of public crusades that Bobby would have relished and that Ethel has.
A freckle-faced Bobby, when he was small and shy enough that his father discounted him as the runt of the litter even as he was his mother’s pet. COURTESY OF ETHEL KENNEDY
Joe and Rose Kennedy with their nine children. Bobby is wearing a light-colored suit and standing behind Ted, who is sitting on his father’s lap. PHOTO BY ULLSTEIN BILD/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES
Dockside with his mother and his sisters Eunice and Kathleen, on New Year’s Day 1942, shortly after Bobby turned sixteen. PHOTO BY NEW YORK TIMES CO./GETTY IMAGES
Bobby and Ethel on their wedding day, June 17, 1950. The ceremony was at St. Mary Roman Catholic Church in Greenwich, Connecticut, the reception was at Ethel’s family home nearby, the honeymoon was in Hawaii, and Bobby’s best man was his brother Jack. PHOTO BY ULLSTEIN BILD/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES
Bobby converses at a 1954 congressional hearing with his boss, Republican senator Joseph McCarthy, as Democratic senator Henry Jackson looks on from Bobby’s left. PHOTO BY HANK WALKER/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES
For six weeks in 1955, Bobby and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas tour factories, libraries, and any place they can talk their way into throughout Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and other outposts of Soviet rule. PHOTO BY ULLSTEIN BILD/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES
Ethel was Bobby’s second self. Her lightness relieved his heaviness and her love was the kind he had craved—without conditions. They even looked alike, from protruding front teeth to thick mops of hair that made them seem like teenagers. COURTESY OF ETHEL KENNEDY
Seven kids and counting at bedtime, when the Kennedy children assembled to recite as one “Now I lay me down to sleep.” COURTESY OF ETHEL KENNEDY
Team Kennedy huddles to plot the next play in touch football, the signature game for Ethel and Bobby’s offspring as it had been for Rose and Joe’s. COURTESY OF CHRISTOPHER KENNEDY AND ALAN DABBIERE
Horsing around with his oldest boys—Joe, Bobby Jr., and David—at Hickory Hill, where RFK and his brood frolicked as friends rather than as father and children, which was the right fit for this man-sized child. COURTESY OF CHRISTOPHER KENNEDY AND ALAN DABBIERE
Bobby and Ethel’s Hickory Hill estate in McLean, Virginia, whose fourteen rooms included marble fireplaces, crystal chandeliers, and the space to expand should they keep making babies, as they knew they would when they moved there in 1957. COURTESY OF CHRISTOPHER KENNEDY AND ALAN DABBIERE
Counsel Robert Kennedy sketches the alleged pattern of Teamsters corruption at a 1957 hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. PHOTO BY ED CLARK/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES
The Kennedy family and campaign aides anxiously watch election returns in 1960 at Bobby and Ethel’s place in Hyannis Port. After Jack, the sixteen telephone operators, the pollster Louis Harris, and everyone else had headed to bed, Bobby remained at his makeshift command post. COURTESY OF ETHEL KENNEDY
The newly elected president announces his brother’s nomination as attorney general. Just before he did, Jack kidded Bobby, “Don’t smile too much or they’ll think we’re happy about the appointment.” PHOTO BY KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES
Bobby takes a moment with his firstborn, Kathleen, named after his sister who had been killed in a plane crash. COURTESY OF ETHEL KENNEDY
A month after JFK’s swearing-in, he and Bobby meet at the White House with the man who would become their nemesis, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. PHOTO BY ABBIE ROWE/PHOTOQUEST/GETTY IMAGES
Ethel and Bobby have a private audience at the Vatican in 1962 with Pope John XXIII, who afterward blessed the “pens, hearts and tongues” of the newspapermen traveling with the attorney general. COURTESY OF ETHEL KENNEDY
Peering over the Berlin Wall in 1962 with Willy Brandt, the governing mayor of West Berlin, who went on to become chancellor of West Germany and winner of the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize. PHOTO BY KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES
Bobby and Ted grieve for their brother Jack, with fellow mourners Jackie, Caroline, and John Jr., outside St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C. PHOTO BY CONSOLIDATED NEWS PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES
Their grim expressions mirror their mutual contempt, as President Lyndon Johnson joins the newly elected Senator Robert Kennedy in December 1964 at the groundbreaking for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. PHOTO BY FRANCIS MILLER/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES
Ted called the older brother he adored “Robbie”; Bobby returned the gesture with “Eddie.” COURTESY OF ETHEL KENNEDY
The classic RFK hairstyle, thick on the top with an unruly cowlick flopping onto his forehead. Bobby loved that haircuts from the Senate barber were free, although nobody could tell the difference after he’d had one, and he seldom had coins to tip the shoeshine boy or barber. COURTESY OF ETHEL KENNEDY
Senator Robert F. Kennedy visiting with the children who were his favorite constituents, this time at a playground in Brooklyn. PHOTO BY BUYENLARGE/GETTY IMAGES
Bobby showing off his formidable forehand, which he perfected on the Kennedy tennis courts in Hyannis Port and Palm Beach and at Hickory Hill. Ethel is in the background. COURTESY OF ETHEL KENNEDY
Bobby rides through Los Angeles in 1968 in his typical campaign pose: standing in an open-air car, smiling and reaching out to touch the endless hands that greet him. PHOTO BY LAWRENCE SCHILLER/POLARIS COMMUNICATIONS/GETTY IMAGES
Just after Bobby is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, busboy Juan Romero places rosary beads in his hand and tries to cushion his head as Ethel pleads with the pressing crowd to “give him room to breathe.” PHOTO BY ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES
More than a million Americans turn out along the Penn Central tracks to say their last goodbyes as a train carries Bobby’s body from his funeral at St. Patr
ick’s Cathedral in New York to his burial at Arlington Cemetery outside Washington. PHOTO BY DECLAN HAUN/CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM/GETTY IMAGES
To my mentor, Bill Kovach, and his mentor, John Seigenthaler.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Write a good book, because he’s a good man who deserves a good book,” urged Melody Miller, who had worked for Bobby, Ted, and Jackie and echoed the advice of nearly everyone I interviewed. The stories they told me made that challenge infinitely easier. I am grateful to them all, and especially to John Seigenthaler, who gave me the confidence to push ahead by telling me that the book his friend Bobby deserves had yet to be written.
Jill Kneerim, my agent for life, believed in this project from the first and supported me through the last sentence. Will Murphy, who has edited my last three books, did what he always does: got excited early on, gave me the freedom I cherish during the research and writing, then jumped back in with just the right guidance as the final product took form.
Experts on my various chapter themes offered context and texture and saved me from more errors than I’ll admit. Those able reviewers were Historian of the Senate Donald Ritchie on the Senator Joe McCarthy years, journalist Victor Navasky on the Kennedy Justice Department that he wrote a book about, former NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer Michael Meltsner on the Kennedy civil rights record, Cold War historian James Hershberg on the missile crisis and Operation Mongoose, Terence Smith on the U.S. Senate campaign that he covered for the New York Herald Tribune, Kennedy Senate aide and Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman on Bobby’s career as a senator, and Washington political commentator Elizabeth Drew on RFK’s run for president.
Three friends—Bill Kovach, Marty Nolan, and Tom Gagen—read the complete draft and provided the careful commentary I had counted on. Sally Jacobs was the writing counselor she has been for all my books and most of my newspaper stories. Veteran editor David Sobel supplied the deft word fixes and big-picture critiques that gave me the assurance to hand in the manuscript to Random House. My partner there, in sharpening my thinking and Bobby’s voice, was the wise and skilled Mika Kasuga. Thanks, too, to publisher Susan Kamil, for the extra care she gave to this book, and to Evan Camfield and his copyediting team, who again proved how much better a manuscript can become when red pencils are in the right hands.
None of this could have happened—or would have been nearly as much fun—without the backing and feedback of my extraordinary wife and partner, Lisa Frusztajer. My other in-house boosters, Alec and Marina, helped me see what their millennial generation might want to know about Bobby Kennedy and his era. And there with perspective were my pals Teri Bergman, Jerry and Susan Cohen, Gene Dean, Andrew Dreyfus, Kitty and Michael Dukakis, Judy Glasser, Steve Kurkjian, Dick Lehr, Gail Leondar-Wright, Tom Palmer, Phil Primack, Judy Rakowsky, and Phil Warburg.
As part of my research I visited the places that mattered most in Bobby’s world—from Hyannis Port, Palm Beach, New York, Washington, D.C., and McLean, Virginia, to the West Coast and Deep South. As I went, I filled in gaps with assistance from hundreds of Kennedy friends, colleagues, and chroniclers, who provided reminiscences, manuscripts, and other materials they hadn’t shared before, and whom I list in the bibliography. Those I went back to more often than I had any right to were Bill Arnone, Wendy Cimmet, Ramsey Clark, John Doar, Phil Johnston, Paul Kirk, Sheldon Stern, and Adam Walinsky. I am indebted as well to RFK biographers Arthur Schlesinger and Evan Thomas, whose works still stand out. Bobby’s family recently opened up fifty-eight boxes of his papers at Boston’s John F. Kennedy Library that had been under lock and key for more than forty years; helping me dig into those and other new and old files were Tom Putnam, Karen Abramson, Stephen Plotkin, and, notably, Michael Desmond. The staff of the LBJ Library in Austin also was terrific, from Claudia Anderson and Barbara Cline to Mark Updegrove.
I hired a stream of student researchers to assist with library and Internet searches, transcribe recorded interviews, and undertake other research. The ones who stayed longest were Katie Abbondanza, Josh Adams, Mina Asayesh-Brown, Corey Barr, Olivia Boser, Cate Ferson, Lauren Helper, Catherine Lockhart, Maryrose Mesa, Lauren Prescott, Whitney Stohr, and, from first word to last, Nick Catoni. Going back further, Dorothy and Mauray Tye helped me see what was special about the Kennedys and instilled in me the skepticism that every journalist and author needs.
Thanks, too, to Bobby’s family and, most of all, to Ethel. She has never stopped talking about her Bobby over this last half century, but she has seldom done so in public. I am grateful for her vetting of my theories on what motivated her husband, both as the unformed young man she fell in love with and the one by whose side she stayed through that terrifying last night in Los Angeles. She welcomed me into her home, helped me see how she was his full partner in the very way she professed not to have been, and let me copy photos that are on public display for the first time in these pages. Other pictures are published here thanks to the generosity of Alan and Ashley Dabbiere, the current owners of Hickory Hill; the Kennedys; and Jonathan Klein, chairman of Getty Images. Bobby’s children also were great, especially Christopher, who never tired of my repeated requests for “one more thing,” or at least he never let me know that he did.
A couple of notes on sources: My endnotes generally are abridged listings, with the full references in the book’s bibliography. I have donated to the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University all my research papers, along with recordings and transcripts of my interviews, and I have left to the John F. Kennedy Hyannis Museum my more than five hundred books on Bobby and his family.
NOTES
PREFACE
“Each time a man”: RFK “Ripple of Hope” speech, University of Cape Town, June 6, 1966. (rfksafilm.org/html/speeches/unicape.php).
healing magic: Guthman and Allen, RFK: Collected Speeches, 380; and Kennedy, Honorable Profession, 90.
less documented car trip: Newfield, RFK: A Memoir, 200–201.
“Some people see”: There are different versions of this quote, which RFK and JFK both borrowed from George Bernard Shaw. Shaw began his, “You see.” Other variants start with “Some men.” The “Some people” rendition used here is from RFK’s speech in March 1968 at the University of Kansas.
1. COLD WARRIOR
one man faltered: Edwin Bayley Oral History (OH), October 10, 1968, 12, JFKL; and David, Making of a Folk Hero, 76–77.
Joe at Boston Latin: Nasaw, The Patriarch, 21–22.
all his other deals: Smith, “Fifty-Million-Dollar Man,” Fortune; and “Amazing Kennedys,” Saturday Evening Post.
Joe Kennedy’s vision: “Reform & Realism,” Time; Joseph Kennedy, “Shielding the Sheep,” Saturday Evening Post; and Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt, 88.
“I have no political ambitions”: Joseph Kennedy, I’m for Roosevelt, 3 and 10.
“I’m willing to spend”: Lyons, “Kennedy Says Democracy,” Boston Globe.
“I have four boys”: Ross, “Joseph P. Kennedy,” New York Post.
not one to wallow: Linn, “Truth About Joe Kennedy,” Saga; and “Amazing Kennedys.”
“my plans for my future”: The Patriarch, 572.
simple question of succession: Author interview with Peter MacLellan.
Rose’s mother worried: Rose Kennedy, Times to Remember, 103; and Kennedy and Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 535.
“I was the seventh”: Shannon, Heir Apparent, 43; and Thompson and Myers, Brother Within, 43.
“I wish, Dad”: Undated RFK letter to JPK and Rose, JPK Files, Box 5, JFKL.
low expectations: Visiting Berlin, Ethel confided to students at a German-American school that Bobby had flunked third grade (David, Ethel, 151); Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life, 36–37, 399; and author interview with MacLellan.
In letters home: “Official Military File of Robert F. Kennedy,” National Archives and Records Administration; Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 45; Stein and Plimpton, American Journey, 37; and author
interview with Piedy Lumet.
“what I remember”: Newfield, RFK: A Memoir, 41–42.
vacation getaways: Times to Remember, 362.
the Malcolm cottage: There is disagreement over when Joe bought the Malcolm cottage. Damore suggested it was 1929, Nasaw said it was November 1928, and John Allen, director of the JFK Hyannis Museum Foundation, says, “we use the date 1926 as the date when they bought the cottage and then expanded it in 1928.” Damore, Cape Cod Years,19–20; The Patriarch, 92; and Allen email to author.
“When are you going”: Undated RFK letter to JPK and Rose, JPK Files, Box 5, JFKL.
Bobby would cower: Burns, John Kennedy, 28.
