Though Patrick was also suffering from bipolar disorder, he didn’t discuss that diagnosis at that time. Still, this bold statement marked a seminal moment in his life, the true beginning of his work as an advocate for reform. In the years to come, he would continue to do his work in Congress, now with even more urgency when it came to issues having to do with mental health care.
When the Right One Comes Along
Though she was a tall, stunning brunette with hazel eyes and a dazzling smile, a big mistake was to underestimate her, because her beauty was the least of her attributes. At thirty-eight, Victoria Anne Reggie—known as Vicki—was a powerful woman: engaging, smart, and determined. She was of Lebanese Catholic descent, born on February 26, 1954, and raised in Crowley, Louisiana. A law school graduate, she’d worked as a partner in a Washington firm. In 1980 she married Grier C. Raclin, a telecommunications attorney; the couple had two children, Curran in 1982 and Caroline in 1985. They were just recently divorced, in 1990. She hailed from a strongly Democratic family; Vicki’s father, retired judge Edmund Reggie, had known and supported the Kennedys for years, having run primary campaigns for Jack, Bobby, and Ted in his state. Reggie had also been a special envoy to the Middle East for President Kennedy.
Vicki came into Ted Kennedy’s life on June 17, 1991, though she’d actually interned for him back in the seventies. The occasion was the fortieth-anniversary party of her parents. During that gathering, Vicki had an immediate connection with Ted. “You know what the problem with you is?” she asked him after a few dates. “It’s that you’re so insulated. No one ever tells you the truth. You can’t live like that. You need honesty in your life, not all of these bootlickers.”
Vicki was right. Ted did have his coterie of flatterers, most of them in government, who showed him unquestioning deference. Many of these sycophants were single. This gang, some in his own family, became Ted’s band of merry men as they went out carousing for women and making bad decisions, such as those that led to the circumstances surrounding his nephew’s rape trial. By this time, despite Ted’s significant advances in the Senate, the respect of many of his colleagues as well as his constituents had continued to decline due to personal behavior they found abhorrent.
What a shame, Vicki thought. Here was a man who was almost sixty and who’d dedicated half his life to his country, a person who had truly been of service just as required of all those in his family. Yet he was widely viewed as being morally bankrupt. His troubled marriage to Joan, his high-profile womanizing, his alcoholic binges—it had been just one thing after another for many years. The cumulative effect was that Senator Edward Moore Kennedy had a serious image problem.
In a sense, Vicki felt it wasn’t fair. In her opinion, Ted was grossly undervalued. “I think that some of the clichéd and easy perceptions about him, as just being fun, good-time Teddy and not serious and all that, were wrong,” she would say. “He certainly did have a kind of fun—we’ll call it fun—side of his life, and he had enough tabloid fodder in there, but you can’t look at his life and not see these incredibly serious and focused moments as well. He was very complex—that’s what made him so interesting. Hard work and discipline were very much a part of who he was.”
Vicki could detect that Ted’s many years of misadventures had taken a personal toll on him. He was unhealthy, and he looked it. He seemed sad and alone, even in a room full of people. He always appeared to be depressed. Deep down, though, Ted had a big heart. He really cared; it wasn’t just a political act for him. In a short time, she had seen so many moments of his reaching out to the disadvantaged, trying to find ways that the government might lend a helping hand. It was as if every one of his days was filled by thoughts of legislation he wanted to spearhead that would help in the day-to-day lives of the disenfranchised. In his private world, though, she felt he was a man crying out for help.
“Within months of meeting her, Ted seemed to have a different outlook on life,” observed Dun Gifford in 2005. “He and Vicki spent hours talking about his life, trying to figure out where it had gone wrong and what they, as a team, could do about it. She was an influential person, a smart woman who could see things in maybe a different way than Ted. He told me she helped him realize he’d made certain mistakes over the years. She came into his life at just the right time and ended up being a catalyst for great change. Influenced by her, Ted decided that one way to move forward was to publicly apologize, to admit that he was guilty of bad choices and, while he wouldn’t come out and mention it, his involvement in the William Kennedy Smith business was maybe one of those missteps. I thought it was great. I was proud of him for the decision.”
In October 1991, Ted gave what amounted to a mea culpa speech at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government:
I recognize my shortcomings—the faults in my conduct of my private life. I realize that I am alone responsible for them, and I am the one who must confront them. Unlike my brothers, I have been given the length of years and time, and as I approach my sixtieth birthday, I am determined to give all that I have to advance the causes for which I have stood for almost a third of a century.
Many of Ted’s critics were impressed. His speech seemed genuine. But did he really mean it? He wasn’t going to change overnight, was he? However, the fact that he was at least trying to be a better man mattered to Vicki; the effort was admirable and made her feel even more warmly toward him. His children didn’t buy it, though. They knew that Ted had been privately raging about recent public condemnation relating to his part in the William Kennedy Smith debacle. In one sense, he felt he maybe deserved the criticism, but on another even deeper level he believed he was not only misunderstood but completely unappreciated for all he’d done for his country.
While his children felt the basic sentiment behind the speech was genuine, they sensed a begrudging aspect to it and, likely, a secret motive. They knew their father well. Ted was a politician to his very core and pretty much everything he ever said or did was done with an eye toward how it would play in the court of public opinion. He actually did have a hidden agenda with his speech. He hoped that after delivering it the general consensus might be that he was being too hard on himself. Maybe he would come out looking more sympathetic. Much to his chagrin, the response was just the opposite; it was along the lines of “What took you so long?” Ted wasn’t happy with that reaction. In other words, he didn’t feel liberated by the speech, he actually felt victimized by it.
As far as Kara, thirty-one, Teddy, thirty, and Patrick, twenty-four, were concerned, their father could save the public theatrics and do something privately that would have an even greater impact on his life: He could just stop drinking.
For as long as most people in the family could remember, Ted drank too much. Though many of those of the younger generation felt they’d no choice but to accept Ted’s disease—and, as they grew older, they better understood the reasons behind it—after the trial, many of his nieces and nephews felt the problem needed to be addressed and that Ted’s kids should be the ones to do it.
Everyone knew that forcing Ted to address his demons would be no easy feat. After all, his nieces and nephews had always viewed him through the prism of great history, even in their most private moments with him. He was “the Senator,” after all—that’s what almost everyone in the family called him except for his three children, who usually called him “Dad.” He was the family patriarch, and his mere presence in a room could cause those of the next generation to practically shake in their boots. By the end of 1991, though, it was time to get down to brass tacks with the Senator about his drinking. His kids knew what they had to do.
Intervention
“Drink up,” Ted liked to say when he had friends over to the house for happy hour. “That’s what men do.” He would then toss a couple of ice cubes into a tumbler for each person, splash in some of the best scotch money could buy—usually a Macallan that cost about $1,500 a bottle—and then get good and liquored up with his friends. Som
etimes Patrick would come by and use the opportunity to bond with his father. When they were both a little tipsy, things somehow seemed better between them. They were able to talk more freely, anyway. Patrick always felt guilty about it, though. He didn’t want to encourage his father in his overindulgences. He felt it was wrong and agreed with his siblings that something should be done to address Ted’s drinking. Therefore, after much deliberation, he, along with Kara and Teddy, decided it was time to confront their father. The date was set: Monday, December 30, 1991.
Talking to Ted about his drinking presented a frightening prospect to his children. They realized they would have to break convention and be truly candid with their father and, in the process, actually be critical of him. This kind of totally honest dynamic was not the norm in their relationship. They loved, honored, and respected their father; they’d never before challenged him. They also had no idea how to express a genuine feeling to him or be hurt or vulnerable with him. It just wasn’t the way they were with one another. Joan Kennedy recalled, “Our kids were all used to a certain kind of formality with their father, which they viewed as respect, but which was actually, if you really want to know the truth about it, fear. Plain and simple fear. We were all scared of Ted. I don’t know that it was his fault as much as it was just the history and the legend and all of the Kennedy crap that, I guess, always stood in the way of true intimacy.”
Patrick was especially nervous since he had his own secret addictions. He was taking prescription medication to excess as well as drinking. It was easy to get away with it; he was single and there was no one to monitor him. He was also young and figured he had time to address his issues, whereas his father maybe didn’t have that same luxury. Still, talking to Ted about his vices while knowing he had his own—and maybe his were even worse—wasn’t going to be easy. As soon as it was decided that the difficult conversation was going to happen, Patrick started to take copious notes on index cards of what he wanted to say. He practiced different variations of commentary as if he were about to appear on Meet the Press. He would later confess he was more afraid of facing his father than he’d ever been of anything else he’d done.
The three Kennedys asked to see Ted at his home in McLean, Virginia. Upon arriving, they were led across a huge entryway and through the parlor by a butler, who showed them into the study. “He will be with you shortly,” the servant intoned before bowing and retreating. Patrick described the study this way: “… big comfortable couches; books everywhere; windows overlooking the Potomac; a high ceiling with an original harpoon from whaling days hanging from it; a scrimshaw coffee table made from planks from the USS Massachusetts; and a fireplace with a picture of my grandfather above it.”
Ted sat down on one side of the room, his children on the other. Teddy began by saying how much he and his siblings loved their father and then tentatively broached the subject of his drinking. He said they were worried about it, and about him. Kara and Patrick agreed with their brother that they wished Ted would just stop. They also said they felt his habit was ripping the family apart. They wanted a more satisfying relationship with him, and they believed that his drinking was standing in the way of it. Then … the three of them just burst into tears. Apparently, it was too much for them; facing the father for whom they felt so much respect and concern was more upsetting than they’d even imagined. The way the scene has been described doesn’t sound as much like an intervention as it does maybe group therapy without professional guidance. “You matter to us, Dad,” Kara said in finishing. “We love you.”
Ted sat with an implacable expression. “Are you finished yet?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Then, in a controlled voice, Ted said he had actually been consulting a doctor about his drinking, though he wasn’t specific. Also, he claimed to have been talking to a priest. “If you had bothered to ask me instead of just accusing me, maybe you would have known that,” he said. Then, without another word of explanation, he rose and walked out of the room.
The Kennedy siblings looked at one another with disbelief, a feeling of dread sweeping over them. Maybe Patrick put it best: “Oh, shit.”
* * *
AFTER THE “INTERVENTION,” Ted couldn’t make up his mind as to which emotion he felt more deeply: regret or rage. In his mind, he had given his children a wonderful, entitled life; they had no right to criticize him. “Kids don’t get to talk to their parents that way,” he said, making clear his old-school way of parenting. “I think it’s very traitorous.”
The next day, Ted sent each “traitor” a long letter, lambasting them for the audacity they showed in their meeting with him and telling them that he’d gotten the message loud and clear, or as he wrote to Patrick, “the point had been made.” What bothered him most, Ted wrote, was when they told him his drinking had affected the family. “What in heaven’s sake does anyone think has been on my mind day and night,” he wrote to Patrick, “in restless dreams and sleepless nights—My God, Our family—my sisters and the cousins and the brutality of treatment to John and Bobby and I wonder how much I am to blame for all of this…” He finished his note to Patrick by saying he had written it not in anger but “with great disappointment and enormous sadness.”
It was clear that Ted was in pain. He certainly had valid reasons for it. However, he also had no insight into his illness. For too long, he had deluded himself into believing that it was not a serious issue in his life or in the lives of his children, and there seemed to be no getting through to him. Also, it bears noting that Ted knew how to manipulate his family. Guilt was his weapon of choice, and it worked, piercing the hearts of his children, who were already so wounded. They could see through it, too. “Typical filibuster from the Senator,” is how one of them described the letter. In the end, Ted told them that they should stay with one another for the foreseeable future when wanting to get together as a family. Considering what had happened, he said, he felt it best if he not host them at his home.
In February, Ted would turn sixty. Less than two months had passed, and already he missed his kids. After he’d had a little time to think about it, he began to regret the way he’d acted, especially after talking to Vicki about it. Vicki didn’t know a lot about the Kennedys yet, but she’d been around long enough to know that it had probably taken everything in them for Ted’s children to intervene as they had with their father. “Do you know how much courage it took for them to be able to do that?” she asked him. “Poor Patrick? Confronting you? Do you know what that must have been like for him?”
Ted knew Vicki was right. Things had gone too far, he decided. He certainly couldn’t turn sixty without his sons and daughter at his side. Therefore, he wrote to all three again and invited them to his parties—not just one, but the many that would be held in honor of his milestone birthday. He didn’t apologize to them, though. That wasn’t Ted’s way. “I don’t apologize,” he’d often say. “Ever.” “He liked to think of himself as unapologetic,” Joan Kennedy once said. “‘People in power don’t say they’re sorry,’ he once told me, ‘because that’s a sure sign of weakness.’ You actually could get an apology out of Ted if you really worked at it, but it was pretty rare and often not worth the trouble.”
Patrick and Teddy both responded saying they would be happy to attend, but only if Ted promised not to drink. Patrick, in particular, said he realized these sorts of parties “were always particularly well lubricated.” To Ted, this request smacked of emotional blackmail; he would most certainly make no such promise. “How about this?” he angrily proposed, according to one account. “You take care of your business, and I’ll take care of mine.” Fine, decided his sons; they weren’t in any kind of party mood anyway and definitely wouldn’t be going.
Kara decided not to push her father; always a pragmatist, she felt they’d lost the battle and could maybe try again once the dust settled. Therefore, when Ted asked her not only to attend but to help with the planning of the parties, she readily agreed. She also pleaded
with her brothers to reconsider. It wasn’t going to happen, though. Therefore, Ted Kennedy would turn sixty without his sons present for the celebrations.
Joan’s Voice of Experience
In January 1992, just six months after their first date, Ted asked Vicki to marry him. “I want you to be a part of my life in every way,” he told her, according to her memory. He added that he didn’t want to come home and report back to her about a trip he’d just taken. Rather, he wanted her to be with him. “He didn’t want a separate life,” she recalled. “He wanted a partnership for the first time in his life. He had enough of loneliness and separateness. He wanted togetherness.”
Vicki was an accomplished woman, a well-respected attorney and someone to be taken seriously; “I’ve always been a substantive lawyer who helped devise strategies for resolving complex legal problems,” she’s said. Still, stories of the Kennedys’ initial response to her have become the stuff of legend handed down in the family and, maybe not surprisingly, are specific to gender. The Kennedy men didn’t quite know what to think of her. She was articulate, elegant, and refined. She was stunning, too … which was maybe the problem.
There were a lot of snickers among Ethel’s sons about “what a looker” their old uncle Ted had somehow managed to reel in, especially after he announced his engagement to her. Some of them crassly wondered aloud what she was like in bed. They talked among themselves, saying that if Ted couldn’t satisfy her, maybe they could give him a helping hand. In other words, they were Kennedy men through and through.
“I also heard that a male attorney who’d been around the family for years said of Vicki, ‘Wow, what a vamp. I haven’t seen anything like that come down the pike since Jackie Bouvier,’” Dun Gifford once recalled. “Ethel overheard the remark and smacked the guy right across the chest,” he recounted with a chuckle. ‘“Don’t you dare be disrespectful of women in my house,’ she said. She hated that kind of thing. She was raising four daughters. If you think she liked that kind of talk, you’d be wrong.”
The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation Page 8