Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  I’d thought of the Scoundrel Pykes, the landlord family in Ireland that had nearly destroyed the Kellys altogether. They’d rack-rented land, raped my aunt Máire, starved their tenants to death, and then employed the Black and Tans to keep Ireland enslaved. Did fathers and sons in those big houses meet and maneuver like this? Did they scheme to keep power and property in their own hands? We Irish weren’t like that, were we? All the descendants of Granny Honora had made their own way. True, Ed’s position had given us a boost. The city of Chicago had paid my salary for twenty years but I’d done my job. Earned my money. Had Kennedy taken that chance away from Jack? Denied him the satisfaction of making it on his own?

  And Mike. What was he expecting from Ed and the Cook County Democratic Party? Mike had said to Jack, “Congress … I suppose serving there would be a way to have a real impact. Maybe I could run too. The two of us together, that would be something.”

  Joseph Kennedy had laughed and turned to Ed. “Better set this young man straight. Washington is not Chicago. Why, your pal Roosevelt wouldn’t even let you run for the Senate, Ed.”

  I’d wondered what he was talking about. Ed had never said anything to me about wanting to be a senator.

  “Just an idea, Joe. I didn’t really pursue it. In fact, I’m surprised you even knew,” he’d said. “I never meant—”

  Kennedy had interrupted him. “Hey, I’m not saying you wouldn’t have done a damn good job. All those old men in Congress are doddering fools but they look the part and face it, Ed, you just don’t. I heard it was Eleanor put the kibosh on you. She said it was bad enough to have Truman, a senator representing a boss, but to actually have a senator who was a boss … She called you, what was it she called you? Oh yeah, an archetypal Irish pol. It’s your mug, Ed, and the red hair. If I was casting a movie and needed a big city Mick mayor you’d get the part. But Senator Kelly, it just wouldn’t work. Why do you think Jimmy Byrnes converted before he ran? So they couldn’t call him a Papist.”

  I’d had to speak up. “I can’t believe Eleanor—”

  “You don’t know New England WASPs the way I do,” Kennedy had said.

  “But you think there’s a place for Congressman Kennedy, Senator Kennedy…”

  “President Kennedy,” Joe had finished. “Yes, I do. I did right by my boys. Prepared them.” He had turned to Mike. “Where did you go to high school?”

  “St. Rita,” Mike said.

  “And college?”

  “DePaul.”

  “See what I mean,” Kennedy had said. “You kept him within the tribe, Ed, and now it’s too late. Joe and Jack went to top prep schools. Wiped the asses of those pansies both academically and athletically and then did the same at Harvard. Proved themselves in the big arena.”

  “And stayed Catholic?” I’d asked.

  “Of course! Their mother would have killed me if I’d ever have suggested anything different. And I didn’t want to. Didn’t have to. I follow the faith, Miss Kelly. I give to the Church. I say my prayers every night and there’s a Jesuit I go to for confession who’s a man of the world. I don’t think Rose could have survived Joe’s death without attending daily Mass. She started going every day after Rosemary.” He’d stopped and looked at me. No secret that their oldest daughter lived in a home run by nuns. Though exactly what was wrong with her I didn’t know.

  “I’m not here to give you our family history,” Kennedy had said. “I’m sure Mike’s pedigree will stand him in good stead in ‘city politics.’”

  He’d made the words so dismissive that Ed laughed. Jack had caught on.

  “I’d say our family owes a lot to city politics,” Jack had said. “After all, I’m John Fitzgerald. Don’t leave mother’s father out of our family history. As mayor he did a lot for Boston and for you too, Dad.”

  “He did. He did. But could you ever imagine Honey Fitz in Washington? They’d grind him up. No, lad,” he’d said to Mike. “Stick to what you know. Maybe there’ll be a second Mayor Kelly someday. Wouldn’t that be grand, Ed?”

  “Chicago’s not keen on dynasties, Joe,” he’d said.

  “Another mistake we Irish make. Every WASP in the Senate is grooming his son to take over his seat. Bush was parading his Naval aviator boy around Washington last week. No hesitation there. We could learn from them.”

  I couldn’t let that go past. “Come on, Mr. Kennedy, you want America to be ruled like England by rich families. You don’t know much Irish history then.” I’d tried to sound like I was joshing him but he wasn’t buying it.

  “I don’t need any lectures, thank you. And I don’t think we need any more photographs either.” He’d waved at me, pointing his hand toward the door. Well that put the tin hat on it.

  “Oh I’m sorry if I offended you, Mr. Kennedy. I forgot that your daughter is Lady Harrington now. Was that part of your plan? Get one of your girls to marry a marquis? Out-WASP the WASPS. Even the Bushes don’t have a title,” I’d said.

  Joseph Kennedy stood up. “That’s enough,” he’d said.

  “It’s not,” I’d said. “I let it go before, but how dare you make a joke of the Miami assassination. Only a fluke that Roosevelt survived. And Mayor Cermak did die. You’re so proud that you’re sending your son into the same arena. Senator Kennedy. President Kennedy. Anything could happen.”

  “That fellow in Miami was a nut,” Joseph Kennedy had said. “A once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.”

  “Oh really? What about the guy in Milwaukee that almost killed Theodore Roosevelt? And remember Teddy only became president because an assassin had gotten McKinley and not long before that it was Garfield. My grandmother took her children down to the courthouse to see Lincoln’s body brought by horse-drawn carriage. My own father was called up to sing ‘The Lament for Owen Roe O’Neill’ in honor of the dead president. But of course that’s more mickology and you wouldn’t be interested. You’ve probably never even heard of Owen Roe, the chieftain who took on Cromwell’s army. They couldn’t beat him in a fair fight so the English poisoned him. Probably relatives of your daughter.”

  Ed had stood up. Dear God, I’d thought, if he reprimands me, that’s it. I’ll walk out of this office and never come back. But to my amazement Ed had begun to sing.

  Did they dare, did they dare to slay Owen Roe O’Neill?

  Yes, they slew with poison him they feared to meet with steel.

  May God wither up their hearts! May their blood cease to flow,

  May they walk in lasting death who poisoned Owen Roe.

  “Well done, Ed,” I’d said.

  “Excellent, Mr. Mayor,” Jack had said, and he turned to his father. “There’s something for you, Dad. You’ve always enjoyed revenge.”

  “Sing the rest, Ed,” I’d said.

  He took a breath and began.

  Sagest in the council was he, kindest in the hall!

  Sure we never won a battle, ’twas Owen won them all.

  Your troubles are all over, you’re at rest with God on high,

  But we’re slaves, and we’re orphans, Owen! why did you die?

  We’re sheep without a shepherd when the snow shuts out the sky,

  O why did you leave us, Owen. Why did you die?

  Now Ed was a bit of an actor. Part of the reason Pat Nash chose him to be mayor, the front man, was because Pat knew Ed was a performer. Could give a speech and be master of ceremonies at Knights of Columbus dinners and party conventions. He did have a beautiful tenor voice and even Joseph Kennedy had joined Jack and Mike and me in applauding.

  “Very nice, Ed,” Joe had said. “But you make my point. No Irish songs are sung in the White House.”

  “Well not yet,” Jack had said.

  And dear God I saw it in his eyes. The same calculation I’d observed in Harry Truman. “I could do this,” he was thinking. Jack had turned to Mike. “Let’s stay in touch.” I think my nephew would have enlisted in Team Kennedy right there on the spot.

  So. The Kennedys had left. Ed and Mike and I
were having a second glass of whiskey. Joseph Kennedy and Jack were lunching with Adlai Stevenson at the Century Club. Joe had assured us that Stevenson was going to be the next governor of Illinois. Ed had laughed. “Well his grandfather might have been vice president of the United States and his father secretary of state but the party isn’t so sure about young Stevenson.”

  “You’ll choose him. He’s got the pedigree,” Joseph Kennedy had said.

  I had gotten in one parting shot. “His family is Irish too, Joe. They’re from the North but then so was Owen Roe. Of course they weren’t Catholic. So they were fit for higher office.”

  “So Mike, what did you think of the Kennedys?” Ed had asked him.

  “I like Jack,” Mike had said.

  “And you want to get into this rat race, Mike?” Ed had asked him.

  “I think I do,” Mike had said.

  “What did Kennedy mean about your wanting to run for the Senate?” I’d asked Ed.

  “Just a notion I had. But what Joe said was true. I got no encouragement from the president.”

  “Geeze Louise. I thought you’d never give up being mayor.”

  “Well,” he’d said, “a couple of fellows came to the office after the Midway Airport incident and told me that if I didn’t stop blathering on about open housing I could forget about having another term. I told them to go to hell.”

  “Oh, Ed. They can’t get rid of you. Can they?”

  “Not now. But the dogs are yapping at my heels.” He’d leaned forward. Looked Mike right in the eye. “Mike,” he’d said, “you’re young and strong. You’ve survived so much. You’ve got a great wife, a family. Forget politics. It’s a dirty business, Mike, and we don’t have to do it anymore.”

  Mike and I had looked at Ed. I had been surprised. The man who had lived and breathed politics for forty years and had just said that we don’t have to do it anymore. “A dirty business?” But he had wanted to be a senator and they’d turned him down. And never said anything to me, or Margaret either. She would have told me. Too proud to have acknowledged the rejection, I had supposed. And was Kennedy right? Would we Irish only ever be allowed to go so far and no further unless we made ourselves over in their image? He’d scrubbed away Jack’s past to give him a future. Would this Harvard-educated Navy hero be the one to breach the barricade? Nothing of the Irish pol about John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

  Joseph Kennedy had essentially told Ed that for all his tailored suits and good grammar, he was still a Mick, a Papist, a mackerel-snapper. But had Joe been reacting to the Boston-Brahmin prejudice that had pressed down on him his whole life? I should have said that in Chicago we didn’t have to erase who we were to succeed. We didn’t apologize for being Irish. We’d built this town, I should have told him, and had never let meatpackers and tradesmen make us ashamed.

  I had tried to put these scattered thoughts into words for Mike and Ed. “Mr. Kennedy’s been infected,” I’d said. “He thinks the WASPs are better than he is. Probably saw them sneer at his father-in-law. I imagine he cringes at the very name Honey Fitz.”

  “Not easy to have a powerful father-in-law when you’re a young man starting out,” Ed had said. What had he meant? Margaret’s father was long dead. And then I remembered. Mary Roche, his first wife, had been the daughter of a rich man. A power in the city when Ed had been cutting trees on the banks of the canal. He might have remained there if he hadn’t punched the Republican boss on the job for discriminating against him and discovered that Colonel McCormick, the man in charge, liked a fighter. He promoted Ed. Which to a city job as an engineer. Only then had he courted Mary Roche.

  Joseph Patrick Kennedy has no idea who the Irish were, I’d thought. He knew so little of his own heritage that he actually admired the English aristocracy. As the American ambassador to England, the Court of St. James for goodness’ sake, he should have enjoyed forcing the English into accepting an Irishman as the representative of the most powerful country in the world at a time when they needed our help. But I think he’d fallen for the pomp and preening. All those titles—lord and lady this, dukes and barons, not to mention king and queen, were made up really—smoke and mirrors. Or maybe Joseph Kennedy was so competitive that he’d wanted to beat the Brits at their own game?

  I’d wondered if Kennedy understood that Ed was Irish above all? And yet, neither he nor Ed had ever touched the vellum page of an Irish manuscript, marveled at the intricate script, the fabulous animals drawn in the margins. Never wondered at how the monks had copied and preserved classical manuscripts, illuminated the Gospels, recorded the history over thousands of years. They had never walked through the ruins of a thousand-year-old monastery and imagined monks and nuns and lay people living together cultivating farms, celebrating magnificent liturgies. Nor did they know the old stories of Maeve and Cuchulainn, the oldest epics in Europe. Never visited one of the holy wells or climbed a sacred mountain. Our ancestors had kept the faith alive through all the darkest days of oppression. Had remained Irish above all. And we had triumphed. A nation once again. Had outmaneuvered the British Empire and turned them out after eight hundred years.

  “We wouldn’t die and that annoyed them.” Granny Honora’s words. One million of our people murdered yet two million escaped. We’d saved ourselves, one helping the next. One of the great rescues in human history. Doing well all over the world while still rooted in that little island.

  Eire. Named for a goddess, and Joseph Patrick Kennedy had the nerve to wince when Ed sang a song of one of our heroes. And he had made Ed feel just that bit ashamed. After that meeting with the Kennedys I had resolved that I was going back to Ireland and Ed was coming with me. I was not going to take no for an answer. And so I said again. “You owe me, Ed.”

  We’d sung happy birthday to little Mary Pat. Applauded as she pointed to each of us and said our names. Aunt Rose, Aunt Nonie, Uncle Ed. The next generation.

  “Nonie,” Ed said, as we walked from the house to his car. “It’s too late. The flight is leaving the day after tomorrow. This is my chance. If I can make Chicago the headquarters of the United Nations, I’ll have all the clout I need to run for mayor—whatever the party says. And I’d win. I can’t risk the distraction.”

  “And that’s what I am? After all these years? A distraction? And is Ireland a mere distraction, too?”

  “I know you, Nonie. You couldn’t help yourself. You’d be insulting the English, causing all kinds of problems.”

  Ed didn’t say another word to me all the way back to the apartment, didn’t even invite me in for a coffee. Margaret was off visiting Pat at her convent. Each generation of Kellys gave one girl to the nuns, and Pat was this generation’s offering. Steve was away at college, but Joseph was home on leave from the Navy, waiting to be released. I wondered if he would be traveling with Ed.

  “Good night, Ed,” I said at the door. “Slán.”

  NOVEMBER 20, 1945

  I hadn’t argued with Ed or asked again, I just showed up at the airport with my camera, passport, and a suitcase, wearing the my green coat with the fur collar he and Margaret had given me. American Airlines had arranged a special lounge for the delegation. “I’m with the group,” I said to the young woman at the desk.

  “At last,” she said, “a female,” and guided me to the restricted area. Twenty of them. And not one woman. Ed and the lieutenant governor were the only politicians. I knew some of the others. Barnet Hodges, the corporation counsel, Jimmy Cleary, who worked for the advertising agency that had prepared Chicago’s pitch to become the headquarters. The others looked like bankers. There were three reporters. One from the Tribune, one from the Sun-Times and the other from the Chicago American, and dear God, sitting next to the bar, was Manny Mandel. I should have known he’d get himself included. Now he called out to me. “Nora Kelly, traveling on the taxpayer’s dime.”

  The look on Ed’s face when Manny hollered his accusation. He’s going to send me away. Humiliate me in front of everyone. The rest of the delegate
s had stopped talking and were staring at me. Ed stood up.

  “Nora has paid her own fare,” he said. “And she has very kindly agreed to act as my guide to Ireland, where we will visit my grandmother’s birthplace in…” He paused.

  “Galway,” I said. “Barna. On the shores of Galway Bay.”

  And I walked over to Ed. “Thank you,” I said. We stood smiling at each other as three reporters surrounded us and Manny photographed me with Ed and his son Joseph who I was glad to see.

  “I’m so happy you’re coming with us, Aunt Nonie,” Joseph said to me. Here was another good-looking Irish-American Naval officer, I thought. He was waiting to be demobilized too. Younger than Jack and Mike but well turned out in his uniform.

  “Thank you,” I said to him. “I wouldn’t miss it and you’ll get to see the land of your ancestors.” Manny heard me.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Aren’t the mayor’s children—” But I turned and walked away before he could say “adopted.” Took Joe’s arm and headed for the buffet American Airlines had provided.

  Margaret and Ed knew the identity of their children’s birth parents, but Margaret had decided that unless the kids asked for the information there was no reason to tell them.

  “I’m their mother and Ed’s their father,” she’d told me, and none of the three had ever inquired. But over the years Margaret had talked to me about Steve’s Irish temper, or how the twins had the map of Ireland on their faces, so I knew that Joe was probably returning to the land of his ancestors in every sense.

  But first I had to settle Ed down. He came smiling over to the buffet. “Excuse us for a moment, Joe,” he said, took my arm and walked into the hallway. “What do you think you’re pulling, Nora Kelly? Blindsiding me like that.”

  “You rose to the occasion, Ed.”