Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver
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In the summer of 2000, Shriver traveled to Beijing for a Special Olympics meeting with top Chinese officials. This was to be a major public relations event for the organization: Shriver’s son Timothy, in his role as Special Olympics CEO, would be making the trip, as would Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his role as a celebrity ambassador for the program. (The weekend Arnold was to arrive, the Chinese national television station ran Schwarzenegger movies around the clock.)
Sarge, eighty-five years old, had flown all night, and when he arrived his hosts asked him if he wanted to rest at his hotel before going to the first meeting. No, Shriver said, he wanted to go early to meet with the retarded children at the school where the meeting was to take place. So Shriver and his translator Bill Alford, a Chinese expert at Harvard Law School, were taken to the site.
It was a sweltering day, ninety degrees or higher, and Shriver was wearing what has become, in his later years, his trademark double-breasted suit. The school was packed—not just with students and faculty but with some 50,000 other people, many of whom wanted to meet the leaders of the Special Olympics, far more of whom wanted to meet Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold and Timothy weren’t scheduled to arrive for an hour or so yet, however, so school officials had arranged for some of the mentally retarded students to put on a show for Shriver and the assembled Chinese crowd, in which they demonstrated some of the skills they had learned through the Special Olympics.
Shriver watched with his typical warmth and enthusiasm, and when the students were done with their performance they swarmed him, grabbing at his arms and indicating that they wanted to play basketball with him. The Chinese hosts, deeply embarrassed to see the distinguished octogenarian harassed in this way, intervened and said, “Oh no, leave him alone. He doesn’t want to play basketball.” But Shriver interrupted. “Sure, I do,” he said, as Alford recalled. “I’d love to play basketball with them. These kids were so nice to perform for me, I would like to do that with them.” And to the astonishment of the crowd, this eighty-five-year-old American, just off the airplane from the United States, began happily shooting baskets with the retarded Chinese children, with not a hint of self-consciousness evident.
Eventually Timothy and Arnold arrived and the formal proceedings began. Sarge gave a speech. “It was an unbelievable speech,” Alford recalled, “about how grateful he is to learn from retarded people.” “When I was younger,” Shriver said, “I thought I knew a lot more than these people who were retarded. Well, I began to see that they had some attributes I didn’t have. What I learned most from them was the meaning of the word love. When you see someone who is mentally retarded express love it is genuine love; there is no guile. It is pure emotion, what God intended.” The message carried even through the translation. The audience was rapt; some of them were crying.
The next speaker was former deputy minister Yan Ming Fu, who had been Mao’s translator before spending seven years in prison during the Cultural Revolution and then recovering to become a powerful official in his own right. After the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989, he had briefly fallen out of favor with the party because he had been one of the few officials who had taken a soft stance toward the student revolutionaries, but he had recovered to become vice minister of civil affairs, the rough equivalent of being director of homeland security in the United States. By the summer of 2000, Yan had retired from political life to become the head of a large Chinese charitable organization. But to the Chinese people, he remained a formidable figure.
After Shriver’s speech, everyone expected Yan to get up and read some official standard proclamation. But to everyone’s amazement, he departed from the official script. Standing up from his chair on the dais, he pointed to Sarge. “Look at this guy,” Yan Ming Fu said.
He’s eighty-five years old. He’s not in great health. Yet he got on an airplane from America yesterday to fly here. He’s a rich and powerful and important American, from the Kennedy family. He doesn’t have to do any of this. He could just be sitting back in America, enjoying himself. He doesn’t have to be here. But he keeps doing this because working for retarded children is important. If we Chinese people have any pride in ourselves, we ought to match this kind of commitment to humanity. This man who has every right to be sitting back in retirement is putting himself through all this to come tell us that these people matter. We ought to treat these children with more respect.
The speech was, Bill Alford recalled, “one of those moments in life when you’re really overcome.”
After the event was over, the chief school administrator came up to Alford and said, “For years we’ve been trying to get local political officials to pay attention to us and fund us but they’ve always ignored us. But now, because of vice minister Yan Ming Fu and this Kennedy family person, we know that when we need something from the local government, we will be well-treated.”
Then, the school administrator turned to Shriver. “Thank you, old man,” he said.
NOTES
Part 1: Youth (1915–1945)
Chapter 1: States’ Rights, Religious Freedom, and Local Self-Government
1 The first Shrivers: Men of Mark in Maryland, vol. 4.
2 Andrew and Anna Margareta Schreiber: Shriver, “The Narrative of Abraham Shriver,” 1826, in History of the Shriver Family, 13.
3 The Shriver bloodline’s powerful aversion: Ibid., 19.
4 On November 8, 1774: Nead, The Pennsylvania German, 187; Shriver, History of the Shriver Family, 20.
5 In 1797, as George Washington served: Robert Fowler, “AHI Visits the Shriver Homestead, at Union Mills, Maryland,” American History Illustrated, July 1968.
6 Until 1826 all the Shrivers in America: Shriver, History of the Shriver Family, 60.
7 The county that included Union Mills sent: Klein, Just South of Gettysburg, 4.
8 “Our two families”: Ibid., 17.
9 “For God’s sake, Shriver”: Robert Fowler, quoting William H. Shriver, in Civil War Times, February 1962, 2. Much of the foregoing Civil War account is drawn from William H. Shriver’s manuscript, reprinted in Just South of Gettysburg, and from the recollections of Sargent Shriver, who heard the stories in his youth. Additional detail and corroboration provided by various secondary Civil War sources listed in Bibliography.
10 “There has been a sort of bitter feeling”: Frederick Shriver to Henry Wirt Shriver, July 12, 1863, Carroll County Historical Society.
11 The bullet tore: Louis E. Shriver, “Memoirs,” in Klein, Just South of Gettysburg, 182–83. 8 Herbert was shot and wounded: L. VanLoan Naisawald, “Little Devils with the White Flag,” Civil War Times, February 1962.
12 The “hurrahs and songs”: William H. Shriver manuscript, in Klein, Just South of Gettysburg, 201–2.
13 Herbert continued: Shriver, History of the Shriver Family, 81.
14 In 1908 he was a delegate: “Hilda Shriver Dies; Political Activist in Md.,” Washington Star, August 19, 1977.
15 “Lately [T. Herbert Shriver] has been mentioned”: Men of Mark in Maryland, 49.
16 Superficially, the cousins appeared: Sargent Shriver, interviews August 10, 1997; December 28, 1997; March 22, 1999. Helen “Babs” Shriver, interview June 22, 2000.
17 “Catholic capital of the United States”: Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons, 7–15.
18 The councils of the American Catholic Church: Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons, 7–15.
19 Upon his discharge from the Confederate army: Sargent Shriver, interview August 15, 1997; Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons, 7–15. 11 “In the simple and dignified atmosphere”: Ibid., 182–83.
20 Green Street: Descriptions of Westminster based on Sargent Shriver, interviews August 10, 1997; December 28, 1997; March 12, 1999; June 22, 2000; and on author’s visit to Westminster and Carroll County Historical Society, June 22, 2000.
21 Hilda succeeded early on in converting: Sargent Shriver, interviews August 10, 1997; December 28, 1997; March 12, 1999. Dorothy Brown, “Maryla
nd Between the Wars,” in Maryland: A History—1632 to 1974, 687.
22 great “wet hope”: Ibid., 672–97.
23 Afterward, Shriver and his cousin: Mollie Shriver Pierrepont, interview August 14, 2000; accounts of 1924 and 1928 conventions based on Sargent Shriver, interviews August 10, 1997; December 28, 1997; March 12, 1999.
Chapter 2: The Education of a Leader
1 watching the great Lefty Grove pitch: Shriver’s love of baseball, which he carried into adulthood (between 1988 and 1993 he and his son Bobby were part of the ownership team that ran the Orioles), provides a hint of the leadership style that characterized his years in public life.
Through high school and college, Shriver’s preferred position was always catcher. Although catcher is often considered the most grueling field position to play—the hours of uncomfortable squatting behind the plate, the bruises from foul balls and backswung bats, the cumbersome protective equipment—Shriver loved it. The catcher is the only member of the team who can survey the whole terrain of the field: He is looking at the infield, the outfield, the pitcher, the batter, the base runners—even most of the fans. (The center fielder, who has a similar view from the other direction, can only see the backs of most of the other players.) With his panoramic view of the action, the catcher is the field general. He sees when the second baseman should move closer to first, or when the shortstop should move closer to third. He tells the outfield when to move in or out. He gets the signal from the manager and then conveys to the pitcher what pitch to throw. More than any other player, save perhaps the pitcher, the catcher determines what happens on the field. He’s got more responsibility than any other player on the field. Sarge craved that.
Finally, being a good catcher requires knowing about players’ strengths and weaknesses and then minimizing them or maximizing them as the situation dictates. On every pitch, for instance, the catcher needs to balance the strengths and weaknesses of his pitcher against the strengths and weaknesses of the batter he’s facing. Shriver found he had a knack for intuiting strengths and weaknesses. Seeing the whole field, being in the thick of every play, knowing how to manage people’s strengths and weaknesses: Shriver would later say that he directly translated his experience as a catcher into his style as an organization leader.
2 On September 24, 1930: Tabard, September 1930, courtesy of Canterbury School.
3 “the domain of American”: Mack, The Way It Was at Canterbury, courtesy of Canterbury School, 3.
4 “This was a stalemate”: Ibid., 4.
5 Shriver’s parents visited him: Records of Canterbury School, New Milford, CT.
6 Shriver quickly established himself: Issues of Tabard, 1934, courtesy of Canterbury School.
7 “little Jack Kennedy”: Mack, The Way It Was at Canterbury, 121.
8 “the atmosphere of secularism”: Ibid., 17.
9 In the 1930s, Eleanor’s parents: Accounts of the Hoguets from Sargent Shriver interviews August 24, 1997; March 12, 1999. Eleanor Hoguet DeGive, interview August 11, 2000. Hoguet, Robert Louis Hoguet (1878–1961).
10 his presence was so large: Eleanor Hoguet DeGive, interview August 11, 2000.
11 “That’s enough, Ellie!”: Ibid.
12 “Sargent did such a good job”: Nelson Hume to Robert Shriver, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
13 “I was at the SSSIC the other week”: Sargent Shriver, interview August 24, 1997.
14 “peace on earth, goodwill toward men”: Peters, Passport to Friendship, 9.
15 The first groups of students: Ibid., 60.
16 Shriver set sail from New York: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
Chapter 3: A Yale Man
1 “It seems as though I have been here a long time”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, n.d. [September 1934], Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
2 “If by chance you all are worried about these bills”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, April 29, 1936, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
3 “Money means so awfully, awfully little to me”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, October 6, 1937, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
4 “I must tell you”: George Day to Sargent Shriver, August 1, 1935, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
5 “Tap Day was the outstanding event”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, May 9, 1936, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
6 “We begin work on the twentieth”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, January 1, 1936, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
7 “If your real interest is in peace”: Peters, Passport to Friendship, 116.
8 Shriver would listen to the soldiers goose-stepping: Ibid., 125–26; Sargent Shriver, interview August 24, 1997.
9 “Thank you for coming to Mass this morning”: Sargent Shriver, interview March 22, 2000.
10 “That is Buchenwald”: Peters, Passport to Friendship, 127–28.
11 “There were two worlds in Germany”: Ibid., 128.
12 “armed to every last inch”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, n.d. [July 1937], Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
13 “I’m afraid I’ll have to have some money in Rome”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, July 31, 1937, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
14 “Gregory is doing all in his power”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, August 13, 1937, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
15 Eleanor Hoguet had also gotten free passage: Hoguet, Robert Louis Hoguet (1878–1961), 146.
16 “number one beau”: Eleanor Hoguet DeGive, interview August 11, 2000.
17 Sarge felt as though he had been punched in the stomach: Sargent Shriver, interviews August 16, 1997; March 22, 2000. Eleanor Hoguet DeGive, interview August 11, 2000.
18 “I seem to have recouped some of my lost ability to pray”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, August 22, 1937, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
19 “Are you interested in marrying her?”: Sargent Shriver, interviews August 17, 1997; April 22, 2000.
20 Eleanor announced her engagement: Hoguet, Robert Louis Hoguet (1878–1961), 154; Eleanor Hoguet DeGive, interview August 11, 2000.
21 “You will never know till you’re in Heaven”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, October 6, 1937, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
22 “That ends little Sarge’s undergraduate days”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, July 3, 1938, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
23 “If you could pay for law school”: Sargent Shriver, interview March 22, 2000.
24 Sarge and his friend Bob Stuart: Bob Stuart, interview September 5, 2001.
25 Stewart grew frustrated: Ibid.
26 “I’ve been riding so high for so long”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, n.d. [fall 1938], Shriver Papers, JFK Library. 46 “I do feel I should do better”: Ibid.
27 “I am doing Legal Aid work”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, n.d. [spring 1939], Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
28 “the mail planes”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, July 19, 1939, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
29 “shares the universal fear of German aggrandizement”: Ibid.
30 “Haven’t you heard?”: Sargent Shriver, interview August 24, 1997.
31 “Open the door”: Ibid.
32 “The pier was crowded”: Peters, Passport to Friendship, 139–40.
33 “The news from Europe is most depressing”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, December 12, 1939, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
34 “The news from Europe this evening is so appalling”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, May 15, 1940, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
35 “I have only one week”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, May 26, 1940, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
36 “There is nothing lower than I was that summer”: Liston, Sargent Shriver, 38.
37 “just skimming through”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, n.d. [September 194
0], Shriver Papers, JFK Library. 54 “Well tomorrow begins”: Ibid.
38 Wood had grown increasingly concerned: Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh, 115–16. 56 “a most attractive guy”: Ibid., 107–8.
39 Shriver crowded into a packed auditorium: Sargent Shriver to Hilda and Robert Shriver, n.d., Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
40 As late as August 1941: Fleming, The New Dealers’ War.
41 “Yes, I did belong to AMERICA FIRST”: Sargent Shriver, n.d., Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
42 “I wanted to spare American lives”: Look, June 16, 1964.
Chapter 4: War
1 One Sunday morning: Account of this day based on interviews with Sargent Shriver August 2, 1997; April 4, 2000; plus additional conversations. 60 Just after 2:22 p.m.: New York Times, December 8, 1941.
2 “I just got Herbert’s telegram”: Sargent Shriver to Hilda Shriver, June 16, 1942, Shriver Papers, JFK Library.
3 “No ship more eager to fight”: Morison, The Two-Ocean War, 193.
4 “Gatch may not have had much passion for clean fingernails”: Leckie, Challenge for the Pacific, 286.
5 “The ship was like your wife and your girlfriend both”: USS South Dakota Reunion Video (Norfolk, VA, May 15–17, 1998).
6 “the best time of my life”: Ibid.
7 A buzzing noise: Sargent Shriver, interviews August 2, 1997; April 4, 2000.
8 “Attack,” commanded Gatch: Leckie, Challenge for the Pacific, 290.
9 “her flaming nose in the battleship’s high foaming wake”: Ibid., 291.
10 “for a single confused minute”: Ibid., 292.
11 “magnificent shooting by the ‘wild men’ ”: Morison, The Two-Ocean War, 195.