by Thomas Maier
Though the Kennedys knew and grew to like Robert Burrell—the man who gave directions to Jack Kennedy—they were also well aware that Protestant families such as the Burrells had gained their choice farmland from the British. Mary’s husband, James Ryan, a man considerably older than herself, had refused to bend his will to the British overseers while growing up in Wexford. As a lad, according to the story his family tells, Ryan was reprimanded for not tipping his hat to some high-ranking Englishman as he passed by on a horse cart. He accepted the punishment as a badge of honor.
During the bloody era from 1916–1922, as Ireland convulsed and was split into two by treaty, the Kennedys in Wexford remained firmly in the Republican camp of De Valera, opposed to the treaty and the new government that would enforce it. Though the Catholic clergy condemned the violence and brutal tactics of the IRA, many young men such as James Ryan in Wexford were swept up by the group’s nationalist outlook and its determination to rid Eire of its imperialist neighbor. Without missing Mass on Sundays, these Catholic young men enlisted in the fight to unite Ireland once and for all. The family remains oblique about what exact role James Ryan performed as a volunteer for the IRA during the fight for independence and the civil war. But when James Ryan passed away two years after Jack Kennedy’s visit in 1947, he was given a military funeral in the custom of the IRA, and shots were fired over his grave, his daughter said. While speaking about her father, Mary Ann Ryan pulled out the medal with its green and gold ribbon that her father had earned with the IRA. Inscribed on its face were the words “Eire” and Cogadh na Saoirse, “The Fight for Freedom,” with a crest of the four provinces and a soldier standing at attention. On the back, her father’s name was etched along with his Wexford outfit:“J.Ryan, B.COY, SW Brigade, Old IRA.” She displayed it affectionately as she sat at the kitchen table with her cousin, Patrick Kennedy, his fiery red hair now flecked with gray.
John W. Pierce, a local historian who has known the Dunganstown Kennedys for years and wrote a small book about the family, said that JFK’s great-grandfather, Patrick Kennedy, had brothers and uncles actively involved in the Irish nationalism movement. “The sympathy of the family with the Republican cause was known and their house was open to provide safe haven for activists ‘on the run,’ and members of the family supported the nationalist side,” Pierce wrote, without elaboration. In an interview, Pierce told the story of how the Kennedys provided refuge to Dan Breen, a notorious gunman in the IRA who years later became a member of the Irish Parliament. During the war for independence in 1919, Breen and another IRA member shot two policemen while helping to free an imprisoned Irish volunteer. A wanted poster for Breen printed by the British police, offering a reward of a thousand pounds, described Breen as having “grey eyes, short cocked nose and stout build” and a “sulky bulldog appearance; looks rather like a blacksmith coming from work.” While on the lam during the Irish civil war, Breen made his way to Dunganstown with the aid of IRA underground members. Breen, like De Valera, opposed the treaty fashioned by Michael Collins, and his violent actions left him trying to evade the Irish Gardai, the police of the new Irish Republic. In his autobiography, Breen later recalled his guerilla fight for Irish freedom with “an army at one’s heels and a thousand pounds on one’s head.”As the story goes, the Kennedy farmhouse near the River Barrow, the same one visited by JFK in 1947, became a temporary hideout for Breen. When the Gardai came knocking unexpectedly one night, Breen supposedly hid under the covers in a large bed, nestling between two young female Kennedy cousins who acted as though they were asleep. A history of Breen’s colorful life makes mention of his flight into Wexford, but no specific documentation collaborates Pierce’s tale of local color.
Similar tales of wartime courage involving Mary Kennedy Ryan are shared by her surviving daughter, Mary Ann. In an interview, she said her mother proudly joined the IRA’s women’s group, Cumann na mBan, like many other young women in the surrounding community. The group said its mission was “freedom for our nation and a complete end to all forms of discrimination against our gender.”While resisting the British at every turn, the group’s published ideals called for proper housing, better education, a return to Gaelic customs and free health care for all who needed it.“We in Cumann na mBan are working for an Ireland in which not a few individuals— but ALL shall enjoy the maximum amount of happiness which God permits in this passage of suffering and sorrow,” it declared. Mary Kennedy Ryan stayed a committed member of the Cumann na mBan well into the 1930s, said her daughter. Though De Valera paternally instructed the group to act mainly as helpers with first aid and cooking for his male volunteers, Mary Kennedy Ryan, certainly no wilting flower, and other women got involved in the smuggling of armaments. “My mother would carry guns and money,” recalled Mary Ann, whose soft voice underscored the boldness of her mother’s actions. She carried the cash and materiel, either in carts or under her clothing, from a smuggling contact in New Ross to a secret hiding place not far from the farm of James Kennedy. Though some women were caught by the Gardai, Mary Kennedy Ryan had a knack for avoiding detection. “The women would be stopped and searched, but not my mother,” said Mary Ann.“She was never stopped once.”
DURING HIS two-hour visit, Jack Kennedy chatted amiably about the family’s past with Mrs. Ryan and his other Irish relations, though it’s not certain how much, if any, of their political activities were revealed to their third cousin from the United States. Mary Ann Ryan said that while her visiting American cousin may have gotten some inclination of her parents’ views, it’s unlikely the future president knew of his relatives’ involvement with the IRA.“I don’t think he knew,” she concluded. Pierce, however, said it would be difficult to recount the past of the Kennedys in Ireland without mentioning their Irish Republican participation. He stressed that the IRA of Mary Kennedy Ryan’s young adulthood, fairly commonplace among her contemporaries, was far different from the terrorist group of today. “I think the President was aware of his family’s history and I don’t think he would have held it against Mrs. Ryan,” Pierce said.“She’d not have been an outcast like the current-day IRA people.”
Whatever he learned, Jack Kennedy drove away that afternoon in 1947 enchanted by his visit with the Kennedys of Dunganstown. “Jack kept pressing on about his ancestors going to America and so on, trying to make the link,” recalled Pamela Churchill, who did not share Jack’s enthusiasm. After a long drive and a laborious afternoon listening to Irish stories, the former daughter-in-law of the famous British prime minister had heard quite enough. She waited patiently as Jack finished his tea and walked around the farm. In front of the barn, with the chickens milling around, Jack snapped a photograph of Mrs. Ryan, her children and their relatives, a copy of which he later sent to them. The faded black-and-white photo, still kept by the Ryans, shows the little girls in ponytails and the towheaded boys in dirty overalls; they had an austere, impoverished look reminiscent of American farm families during the Depression.
When they finally got into the car, Pamela Churchill issued a withering remark about Jack’s Irish relatives. “I spent about an hour there surrounded by chickens and pigs, and left in a flow of nostalgia and sentiment,”Kennedy recalled a decade afterward. “This was punctured by the English lady turning to me as we drove off and saying,‘That was just like Tobacco Road!’ She had not understood at all the magic of the afternoon.” In another, blunter assessment, Jack admitted,“I felt like kicking her out of the car.”
When he returned to Lismore Castle, Jack relayed enthusiastically to his sister all he had witnessed: the sights, the sounds and the stories of their family. In one afternoon, Jack Kennedy had discovered his Irish roots, a visit he’d remember for the rest of his life. But Kick couldn’t be more indifferent. Dinner had already been served at the castle and Jack and her friend Pamela were terribly late back from their excursion. In her best aristocratic tone, Kick listened to her brother and then quipped dismissively,“Well, did they have a bathroom?” As he dined insid
e the plush Irish castle of the Devonshires, Jack couldn’t help thinking of how much his own Irish- American family had accomplished in a century, and how things remained so different for his Kennedy relatives in Ireland. Reflecting on his own wealthy environs, Jack “thought about the cottage where my cousins lived, and I said to myself, ‘What a contrast.’”
BEFORE JACK LEFT for America, Kick confided in him about her affair with Peter Fitzwilliam, the Englishman she intended to marry as soon as he gained a divorce. Jack, often a libertine in his own actions, appeared sympathetic while listening to her, yet remained almost priggish in his advice, the same tone he’d adopted in the past for such matters. In March 1942, aware of Kick’s intent to return to London and marry Billy, Jack had cautioned: “I would advise strongly against any voyages to England to marry any Englishman.” Though neither as orthodox as Eunice nor as righteous as young Bobby, Jack nevertheless remained guarded as he listened to Kick talk about her newest affair. They both knew what their parents’ reaction would be. Though a loyal brother and a good listener, Jack knew when to keep quiet.
Near the end of his European trip, Jack became terribly sick, collapsing while in London and learning from doctors that he suffered from Addison’s disease, an incurable condition he would keep secret for the rest of his life. “That young American friend of yours, the brother of Lady Hartington, he hasn’t got a year to live,” his London doctor confided to Pamela Churchill. The specter of an early death—always a very real possibility during the war—continued to haunt Jack Kennedy, enduring private pain from a host of illnesses while projecting a public image of youthful vigor. In the gloomiest times, Jack and his sister were very much alike in their defiance of death, insistent on the passions of life, even though so many of their contemporaries and loved ones had died. If Kick could find true love with Fitzwilliam, a man she obviously adored, how could he condemn her?
During 1948, while Jack ran for reelection, Kick struggled with her feelings and finally resolved to tell her parents. When she came home and broke the news, the reaction was far more severe than even she had anticipated. Her father’s words were disappointing and disapproving, though he was nowhere nearly as emotional as her mother, Rose, who threatened to banish her from the family. Kathleen’s scandalous affair with a married man not only would ostracize her from the church once again—undermining all her halfhearted claims of reconciliation with her faith after Billy’s death—but have a deleterious impact on the political career of her brother. Kick’s adultery was not only seen as socially and politically mortifying but as a particularly selfish act, as if falling in love should be gauged for its impact on her family’s ambitions. To dissuade her, Eunice arranged a meeting for Kick with Bishop Fulton Sheen, a clergy member her older sister admired. At the last minute, though, Kick canceled her appointment. After her daughter left for England, Rose soon followed and confronted Kick at her London apartment, determined to win back her soul for the family and church. But they were too far apart for any resolution, and Kick could only shudder and cry. She hoped her father could somehow make things right for her.
Joe Kennedy, who at times believed he could bend the church to his will with enough money and persuasion, undoubtedly was alarmed by his daughter’s behavior, and even more by its impact on his son’s political ascension. Rose’s admonishments, though motivated by her own religious fervor, clearly had his blessings. Joe suggested a convoluted plan in which Fitzwilliam would claim that he’d never been baptized and then gain the church’s approval for his marriage by agreeing to certain stipulations. Kick knew that neither the church nor her proud future husband would ever go for such a ruse. Nevertheless, correspondences suggest that Joe Kennedy contacted his old friend in Rome, Count Enrico Galeazzi, to come up with some type of arrangement for his daughter that might be acceptable to the church. Kick convinced her father to meet Fitzwilliam and arranged for a meeting in France when her father visited in May 1948. At a Fitzwilliam family dinner where he announced his intention to marry Kick, Peter attempted a strained joke about the situation.“We’re going off to try and persuade old Kennedy to agree to our getting married,” he mentioned to a cousin. “If he objects, I’ll go to see the Pope and offer to build him a church.” After they married, he told Kick, they’d live in Ireland.
DESPITE WARNINGS of inclement weather, Fitzwilliam insisted the pilot of the small plane they rented in Paris fly them to Cannes for a meeting with Joe Kennedy. In the darkened skies, the plane flew fitfully through the wind and rain and smashed into the hills of the Rhone Valley, killing Kathleen Kennedy, Peter Fitzwilliam and all the others aboard. Rescue workers found her body crushed and in her luggage only a few possessions, including a photo album of her family and a string of rosary beads. Newspaper accounts of the crash in May 1948 identified the Earl of Fitzwilliam as a friend who had offered Kick a ride on the plane, but suggested nothing more. The rumors swirling around their affair were stilled.
In a hotel room, the elder Kennedy awoke to the news of his daughter’s death and performed the sad task of identifying her body. Over the next several hours, all the Kennedys learned of the death of Kathleen, the daughter whose verve and wit had filled their hearts even at her most maddening. Rose chose to stay in Hyannis Port and leave the funeral arrangements to her husband. Though only a few weeks earlier she had rushed to London to confront her daughter about her impending marriage, Rose could not bring herself back to England to bury her. The Mass card Rose sent out for her daughter asked for prayers that suggested her daughter’s soul might be in purgatory, an act that infuriated some of Kick’s British friends. Other friends of the Kennedys, among them Lem Billings, suggested that Rose viewed her daughter’s death “as a matter of God pointing his finger at Kathleen and saying No!” By today’s standards, Rose’s behavior can’t be seen as anything but cold and condemning, a rigidity of faith that virtually cast Kick out of the family for her cardinal sins. In the context of Rose’s Irish Catholic background in Boston, however, Kathleen’s embrace of the Cavendishes, a notoriously anti-Catholic family and a scourge of Ireland, and then her romance with Fitzwilliam, a married British lord,were unforgivable offenses. What Rose had been taught about the Protestant cruelties in Ireland, about the strictures of the church that forbade marriage outside the faith, about the shame surrounding divorce and sex outside of marriage, had hardened her heart to the love her daughter had found, perhaps even made her envious. Certainly, if her heart was broken, Rose found herself unable to express it.
After several days of discussions in Europe, Joe Kennedy decided to accept the offer of the Duchess of Devonshire and have Kick buried next to Billy in the Cavendish family plot in England. A funeral Mass at Kick’s favorite church, on Farm Street in London, was attended by dozens of her friends as well as top British officials and associates of the former U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James, now a forlorn old man who sat by himself in a front pew, the only Kennedy family member there to say goodbye. At this church, the same Jesuits who once counseled Kick—long but ultimately fruitless discussions about how she might stay within the constraints of her church—now sprinkled holy water and incense on her flower-filled casket and administered the church’s final rites of forgiveness.
BACK IN WASHINGTON, Jack learned of Kick’s accident through a call to his home in Georgetown. He had been listening to the haunting, Irish-inspired melodies of the musical Finian’s Rainbow. When a second call confirmed her death, Jack stared blankly at Billy Sutton, the tough Boston pol who became an aide. The brother and sister who were his contemporaries were now dead, like so many of his friends from the war. Kick’s death seemed particularly senseless and cruel, for he loved her more than anybody. On the record player, a particular favorite filled the room with its sad lament:
I hear a breeze, a River Shannon breeze,
It may well be it’s followed me across the seas.
Then tell me please:
How are things in Glocca Morra?
As the music p
layed on, he didn’t say anything about Kick’s death. Instead, Jack made a brief remark to Sutton about what a great voice the song’s singer, Ella Logan, possessed. Then he turned his head away.“When the news came that the fatal accident happened, he—you know, his eyes filled up with tears,” Sutton recalled years later.“You know, when they say that the Kennedys never cry, don’t believe that. They do. I saw them. He cried that morning for his sister, Kathleen.”
For the rest of his days, Jack seemed accepting, almost with an odd detachment, about the capriciousness of human existence. At times, he engaged in morose, fatalistic discussions about death, ruminated about his almost certain prospects of dying young and wondered what were the best ways to die. With Lem Billings and other close friends, he questioned how a loving God could be so cruel. “The thing about Kathleen and Joe was their tremendous vitality,”Kennedy explained years later.“Everything moving in their direction—that’s what made it unfortunate. . . . For someone who is living at the peak, then to get cut off—that’s the shock.” He resolved to live at the peak himself. As if to make up for the premature deaths of his two siblings, Jack adopted a carpe diem strategy, wringing every bit of fun and excitement and good times from the life granted him. Time became a precious commodity, a gift he wouldn’t squander.“Death was there—it had taken Joe and Kick and it was waiting for him,” his pal Chuck Spalding observed.“So whenever he was in a situation, he tried to burn bright. . . . He had something nobody else did. It was just a heightened sense of being; there’s no other way to describe it.”