Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver

by Scott Stossel

  Sarge has sometimes expressed what might be called a conservative relationship to Catholic tradition: a deep respect for the institution of the Roman Catholic Church, for its hierarchy and traditions. This is expressed most obviously in Sarge’s affiliation with Opus Dei, a “zealously orthodox” Catholic lay organization founded in Spain in 1928 that espouses a highly traditional (some would say retrograde or even reactionary) version of Catholic moral values. Many liberal Catholics dislike or are suspicious of Opus Dei, resenting its influence within the Church and considering it more of a secretive fraternal organization, like the Freemasons, than a real Catholic organization. The theologian Hans Kung, one of the progressive theologians the Shrivers gathered around them in the 1960s and 1970s, says that Opus Dei is “medieval” in its outlook; he can’t understand how the Shrivers, who were once so progressive in their views, could have become associated with it.

  Yet Sarge’s association with Opus Dei—he is not a full-blown member—makes some sense. Its retrograde, antifeminist principles aside, the focus of the organization is on “sanctifying the world”—the idea that ordinary Catholic citizens, going about their mundane daily lives, can achieve holiness through hard work and living by Christian ethics. Even for lay people, Opus Dei stresses, work should be a spiritual calling. In its emphasis on energetic action by the laity, Opus Dei naturally appeals to Shriver. Some of its maxims include: “I don’t understand how you can call yourself a Christian and lead such an idle, useless life. Have you forgotten Christ’s life of toil?”; “Work without resting”; and “To be idle is something inconceivable in a man who has apostolic spirit.”

  Today, it seems in some ways that Sarge has come full circle: fifty-five years ago, he was working for Eunice in Washington, and now he is doing so again. To those with a cynical view of the Kennedy family, this confirms their worst impression of Sarge’s relationship with it. He does the family dirty work—then gets out of the way while others get the credit. In this view, Sarge can never escape being Eunice’s hen-pecked husband, the dutiful servant to her overweening needs.

  Two images, bookending the Shriver marriage, reflect this point of view. One is of their first apartment. Eunice had a suite of elaborately appointed rooms, which overlooked Lake Michigan. Sarge occupied what used to be the servant’s quarters: a small, spare room in the back of the apartment, its only adornment a crucifix hanging over his bed. The second image is of Sarge in his office at the Special Olympics. He is meeting with, say, Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, or with a reporter from the New York Times, when a call from Eunice interrupts. His physical bearing shifts from authoritative to deferential. “I’m sorry,” Sarge will say. “This meeting is over. I have to do something for my wife.” “It’s a master-slave relationship,” jokes Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  To view Sarge as a hen-pecked husband and Eunice as an overbearing Kennedy wife, however, is to succumb to a pinched, narrow view of a rich and complex relationship. It has been, for more than half a century, a political, romantic, and religious partnership. Sarge regards serving Eunice as serving God; Eunice regards Sarge as her spiritual and intellectual anchor. Theirs is a formidable marriage.

  In recent years, both Sarge and Eunice have had to deal with health problems. In 1988 Sarge had triple bypass surgery for a heart condition, and he underwent radiation treatment for prostate cancer. Yet he refused to let that slow him down. He continued flying around the world “as if jet lag did not exist.” His doctors were concerned about the threat his frenetic lifestyle posed to his health, especially while he was recovering from heart surgery, but they could not persuade him to slow down. Finally his family asked Schwarzenegger to provide a bodybuilder/babysitter, who would forcibly prevent Sarge from overexerting himself. Yet, as soon as his doctors deemed him ready, Sarge was back at work and beating men half his age on the tennis court.

  Sarge’s health problems pale in comparison to his wife’s. Yet Eunice is like the Timex watch in the old advertising campaign: She takes a licking but she keeps on ticking. In recent years, much attention has been directed to the serious health issues her brother Jack suffered, including when he was in the White House. JFK suffered from Addison’s disease, colitis, and back trouble. Eunice has endured all these ailments and others as well—plus multiple hospitalizations for injuries suffered in car crashes and other accidents.

  At least twice in the last dozen years, Sarge has summoned priests to administer last rites to his wife. And each time not only the priest but the medical doctors have gone away shaking their heads at her seemingly inhuman fortitude.

  Part of the problem is that Eunice has no patience with getting from point A to point B; she wants to be at point B instantaneously, and if she is going to have to waste time driving somewhere, she is going to make the most of it, talking on the phone, dictating memos and speeches, and looking through her files. In January 1991, driving south to her office along Canal Road, a narrow, winding route in Washington, DC, she collided at high speed with a van. Her car was destroyed; it took the jaws of life to extract her from the crumpled wreck. When Sarge got the call from the state police, he was told it was doubtful she would live. She suffered two broken arms, a shattered elbow, a crushed hip socket, massive internal bleeding, and lacerations all over her body, but she survived. “By all the laws of time and nature,” one Kennedy family biographer has written, the accident should have left the sixty-nine-year-old Eunice “if not a partial invalid then at least relegated to a cautious and sedentary old age.” But within days, she was making calls from her bed at Johns Hopkins Hospital to her staff at the Special Olympics, making her usual, impossible-to-satisfy-quickly-enough demands.

  In 2000, Eunice’s longtime adrenal problems finally necessitated the removal of part of her pancreas. Doctors wanted to do the procedure immediately, but Eunice insisted on delaying the surgery until after the Best Buddies fund-raiser that year, which was held at the Shrivers’ home in Potomac, Maryland, so that she could help her son Anthony raise money for his program. She went into Johns Hopkins Hospital for the procedure the next day. She came home after ten days but then ended up back in the hospital with major complications, including a raging infection, and several days later she plunged into a coma. Anticipating her death, television and radio news programs broadcast specials on her life, with the commentators frequently referring to her in the past tense, as though she were already gone. After the coma had lasted for several days, the doctors told Sarge that her chances for recovery were practically nonexistent. Several times in the first week of her coma, she hovered near death. Shriver summoned a priest to administer last rites.

  Yet astonishingly, after several weeks, Eunice began to stir. One day, Sarge swore he saw her open one of her eyes. He called for the doctors, but when they examined her they told him he must have imagined it. Her coma persisted. Over the next several days, however, Eunice’s eyes began to flutter, and one day they flickered open for a full ten seconds. Her eyes closed again, but the next day they opened again, for longer this time, and within a few days after that she was clearly conscious, although not yet speaking. Within a week after that she was sitting up and talking. The doctors told Sarge they couldn’t understand it; it was “miraculous,” they said. Several weeks later she was at home and starting to eat solid food.

  Eunice’s colleagues and employees at the Special Olympics were relieved she had survived, but if they were hoping that her near-death experience would soften her, they were disappointed. Within weeks she was barking orders into the phone and had her secretary working full-time out of the house. Rather than slowing her down, the confrontation with her own mortality had, if anything, caused her to speed up. There was still so much work to be done.

  Over the summer of 2001, the day before a planned eightieth-birthday celebration in Hyannis Port, Eunice was involved in another car accident. This time, she shattered one of her legs. The party was cancelled, and she was bedridden for weeks. And still she refused to slow down. Once again he
r secretarial staff was summoned to her home, and she worked full days from her bedroom, writing memos, receiving visitors, barking orders at her secretary, and yelling into the telephone.

  Sarge did his best to keep up with her, but by the end of 2002, at age eighty-seven, he was beginning to have a hard time keeping pace. His memory betrayed him sometimes, and his mind wasn’t as sharp as it used to be. In early 2003, he learned he had Alzheimer’s disease. “It’s great,” he said of the diagnosis, typically cheerful. “It finally gives me an excuse for not remembering everyone’s name.” There was some debate within the family circle about whether to publicize his illness. Shriver himself had no problem being forthright, but there were those who worried about the specter of Ronald Reagan or Charlton Heston, whose Alzheimer’s diagnoses seemed to diminish them in the public eye and to cast retrospective doubt on some of their earlier ideas and pronouncements. (When I asked Shriver about this issue, he said it wasn’t a concern to him. “Reagan had a much worse affliction than I did,” he said. “Hard-core conservatism. Whatever I’ve got now, I never suffered from that.”) But because Shriver wanted to remain actively involved in Special Olympics work, his family deemed it best that he go public with the diagnosis; that way, any statements he made would not necessarily be taken as the official writ of the Special Olympics.

  In June, when he officially stepped down as chairman of the Special Olympics, he sent a letter disclosing his illness to dozens of his closest friends. It is a remarkable document, totally representative of its author: cheerful, optimistic, forward looking, and a call-to-arms. “Dear Good Friend,” he wrote.

  Please forgive this impersonal correspondence, but time is of the essence! After all, I will turn 88 later this year and in a few short weeks I will retire from what has been a full-time position for me—Chairman of Special Olympics International. Who knows when the next assignment, if any, might be? …

  The joy, the challenge, and the results of Special Olympics are one of the reasons I consider myself to be “the luckiest man on earth.” While I will step down from my formal responsibilities, I will never stop doing my part to encourage the world to see the miraculous power of what Eunice has given to all of us. Her creation, Special Olympics, has given me pleasure and fulfillment beyond description, and I will be grateful for as long as I live.

  Nevertheless, it is time to start a new chapter, and at 87, I’m hoping I still have a few chapters left! For all these years, I have done my best to challenge others. Now, I want to challenge myself! I want to keep my ideas fresh so I can actively take part in public debate.

  But as we all come to learn sooner or later, desire is only part of the equation. To play a role, one needs not only desire, but skills too; not only a vision, but the ability to put it into action; not only a willingness to work tirelessly, but the friends and allies who together can create the results that make a difference. All of these, I have had, but time has brought unwelcome news too, and for me, it’s been tough to accept. Recently, the doctors told me that I have symptoms of the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease! From my point of view, this disease means one thing, and one thing only: my memory is poor. It’s a handicap, and it’s a challenge. But it does not mean that I am ready to stop challenging myself, or you.…

  I have no doubt that the world needs to be challenged again—challenged to search for the pathways to peace, challenged to overcome the horrors of poverty and neglect in this country and around the world, challenged to build the international institutions of cooperation that we failed to build in the 20th century. Hopefully, I can join others in calling on our leaders to do better. I know in my heart that we can.

  Shriver also wrote that he looked forward to spending time with his fifteen grandchildren and to continuing to marvel at his wife’s ongoing work. “I would gladly scrap any work of my own simply to watch her in action! Age has neither dimmed her anger at injustice nor her humor in overcoming any obstacles the foolhardy throw across her path. What a joy to be part of her whirlwind!”

  “I look forward to being in touch with as many of you as possible,” he concluded. “If names are slow to come to me, please forgive me.… Remind me of the great times we’ve had and of the great work waiting to be done. I’m eager to rise to face new challenges, whatever they may be.”

  On receiving the letter, Mark Shields called Mickey Kantor, President Clinton’s former secretary of commerce. After working together on Shriver’s 1972 campaign, Kantor and Shields had remained friends and fellow Shriver admirers ever since. Kantor had recently taken a twelve-hour plane flight with Shriver. “In twelve hours,” Kantor marveled to Shields, “Sarge never once reminisced about the good old days or the past. Everything was about what we had to do—today and tomorrow—about the challenges all of us still have to meet.” Shields recounted this conversation in a column in the Washington Post, “A Champion of Life,” in which he remarked how Shriver’s announcement that he had Alzheimer’s had “not so much as a syllable of self-pity.” Shriver’s faith, Shields continued,

  which he lives, is reflected in the Gospel of St. Matthew in the parable: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.” To which the listeners respond, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison and visit you?” And the answer, which has inspired and energized Sargent Shriver well into his ninth decade: “Amen, I say to you whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”

  Sarge was wrong. He is not the luckiest man on the face of the earth. That distinction is shared by all of us whose lives he has touched.

  Shriver hasn’t stopped moving forward—challenging, exhorting, inspiring. Several days after sending the letter to his friends, announcing his diagnosis, he traveled to Ireland with his family for the 2003 International Olympic Games, where as usual he dazzled everyone with his charm, energy, and good humor. Maria Shriver was amazed. “I do not know how my parents have so much endless energy,” she said. “I really do not know.”

  [During the International Games], you have to get up at six o’clock in the morning and deal with thousands of people every day and they’re pulling on you, and asking for photographs, and making demands, and it’s ninety degrees outside. And I found myself tired. But my parents, it’s like they’re running on batteries. I tried to study what they eat. I mean, most people I know think I have more energy than anybody they know—but my parents have far more energy than me. It would be nine o’clock at night, and my father would be dancing, laughing, intensely talking to people, interested in people, and he’s 87 years old. It’s not what he eats; it’s not a vitamin. I don’t know what it is. I can only think that it must be divine.

  A month earlier, a banquet had been given in Los Angeles by the National Center of Poverty Law to honor Shriver’s role in creating Legal Services. Kantor, former president Clinton, and other speakers were on hand to toast Shriver. On this evening, Shriver treated audience members to a forty-five-minute speech, rousing them to a passionate pitch. As usual, his focus was not on celebrating past achievements but on exhorting the assembled lawyers to do more for the poor. When Bill Clinton got up to speak, after listening to Shriver’s speech, he extemporized, “You know, the only reason Sargent Shriver accepted this award tonight was so he could come here and berate us about how we should be doing more!”

  “In my lifetime,” Clinton said, “America has never had a warrior for peace and against poverty like Sargent Shriver. In 1994, I gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor. Ten years later, he’s still up here telling us what we should be doing. It’s not a coincidence that there are so many former cabinet members and a former President here. Shriver touched us all.… His whole life has honored Learned Hand’s commandment: Thou Shalt N
ot Ration Justice. Sargent Shriver gave a lifetime and he’s still giving.”

  Sargent Shriver had many flaws. He was, in the end, a failure as a politician. He suffered from a surfeit of innocence and idealism. He ground good men and women to exhaustion, embittering some of them forever. He at times revealed a salesman’s affinity for style over substance. He could be stubborn. He was chronically, pathologically late, betraying at times what seemed to be a lack of respect for those he kept waiting. For all his great interest in the welfare of humankind, he could sometimes seem oblivious to the suffering of the man standing next to him. He made his share of grievous mistakes.

  And yet there is always a danger, when writing about someone like Shriver, who has done so much for so many and who is sincerely motivated more by concern for the commonweal than by his own self-interest, of sliding into hagiography. The word hagiography has two definitions, the second of which is “an idealizing or idolizing biography.” The word’s connotation, in this sense, is pejorative; it implies a lack of perspective on the part of the biographer or an unwillingness to apply the same scrutiny to flaws as to strengths, or to defeats as to victories.

  This book has tried—and it is up to the reader to judge with what success—to avoid being this kind of hagiography. The first and more historically precise definition of hagiography, however, is “a biography of a saint or venerated person.” And in the fullness of time the Catholic Church may render anything written about Shriver to be, in the original sense of the word, hagiography. “I do believe he will be canonized one day as a saint,” Colman McCarthy told me recently. “In 2300 or 2400, he and Eunice will be canonized together. I mean, St. Vincent de Paul was canonized after working among the poor in just one village. St. Francis was canonized after working in just Assisi. Sarge and Eunice worked among the poor on a global scale. I don’t think any couple in history has had more positive effect on more lives than those two.”