The Patriarch

by David Nasaw

  Kennedy stage-managed Bobby’s trip as he had those of his brothers. Before his son had even arrived in Russia, his father had hired a publicity agent for him. “I am quite sure you agree with me that Bobby has been doing an outstanding job as Counsel for the Senate Sub-committee,” he wrote Edward Dunn, who had worked for Jack’s Senate campaign, “and I imagine you agree with me that because of Jack’s position in Massachusetts politics it will be very difficult for Bobby to enter into politics. Nevertheless, I think that when he returns from this trip through Russia’s provinces he will have a background that will need some building up, and if this kind of a job is the province of your present day work, I would like you to give some consideration to it and I am enclosing my check for $1000 as a retainer.”43

  “I think that the value of the trip,” he wrote Bobby, “besides adding stature to your background, is the articles and lectures you might give on it. . . . By all means I would extend the trip into Poland and any other places under Russian influence. That would give a new slant on your interview when you get to the States. In addition to all of this, if you are going to do any articles for ‘Life’ or the ‘Saturday Evening Post,’ I would do them jointly [with Douglas], if possible; at least as far as the one big article is concerned; after that each one on his own. Up to date the publicity has been fine for both of you, but as I have said a thousand times, things don’t happen, they are made to happen in the public relations field. As much as you and Ethel would love to be in Èze and take a seven-day trip home in a boat, I think it would be a mistake unless Douglas is going to stay somewhere out of America until you get back. From your point of view, the Americans must not think of this trip just in relationship to Justice Douglas. . . . These are just suggestions; there may be perfectly good reasons why they do not make sense. In any event, we would love to see you both if you can make it.”44

  Bobby tried to do as his father had suggested, but he took ill in Siberia with a high fever and was not able to extend his tour into Poland. Jean and Ethel met him in Moscow, then traveled with him to Leningrad and to the Kennedys’ villa in the South of France. On his return to the United States, Bobby gave speeches and wrote articles about his observations for U.S. News & World Report and the New York Times Magazine. He had become a rather strident Cold Warrior, though with a particular Kennedy twist. He did not, according to his biographer Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., like “more obdurate Cold Warriors . . . see western empire as a bulwark against communism nor suppose that anti-colonialism in Asia and Africa was organized in Moscow.” He remained as much an anticolonialist as an anti-Communist. “If we are going to win the present conflict with the Soviet Union,” he declared in one of the speeches he gave on his return, sounding very much like his father, “we can no longer support the exploitation of native people by Western nations. We supported the French in Indochina far too long.”45

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  Jack’s book, now titled Profiles in Courage, appeared officially on New Year’s Day 1956 to positive reviews and rather extraordinary sales. Kennedy had predicted as much in a letter to Sorensen he had written in August, after reading the draft and going over it with Jack. The following May, Kennedy was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Biography. Arthur Krock would later claim credit for pushing the jurors in Kennedy’s direction, but he was probably overstating his importance. The book was lucidly written, had received terrific reviews, and was selling well: all ingredients that were taken into account by the jurors who gave it the prize.

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  Ted returned to Harvard and football in the fall of 1955. For Kennedy, his success on the football field—he was the starting end—almost made up for his earlier academic lapses. For the final game of the 1955 season, Kennedy organized a trip of family and friends from Boston to New Haven. As John Droney, one of Jack’s campaign aides who was invited along, recalled in his oral history, Kennedy arranged for three or four cars to meet the group at the train station and, with police escort, drive them to the stadium. “He had them play the sirens all the way from the train to the game—not because he wanted to get there quicker, but he said it would embarrass Jack. He said, ‘Look behind and Jack will have his head down on the floor.’ We did and saw that nobody could see him. The father said, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Now, if I were a senator and I was going to a game, I’d have them using those sirens, and I’d let the people see me. Jack hates anything like that.’”46

  Harvard lost the game, but, as Ted remembered, “Dad . . . charged into the locker room with Jack and Bobby to noisily congratulate me. I knew they should tone it down, but with Dad and my brothers smiling so broadly over the TD catch and the earning of my letter, I can’t say that I was sorry for their enthusiasm.”47

  A unwanted by-product of the victory was a shoulder injury, the severity of which didn’t become apparent until later in the winter. Kennedy, unwilling to leave anything to chance, called together every top orthopedist in the Boston area to consult on Ted’s shoulder, put them in a room, and flew to Boston to listen to their recommendations. At the end of the session, he graciously thanked them all, then announced that he had to leave for the airport and that Ted would make the final decision on his treatment. He added that if it were his decision to make, which it was not, he would follow the advice of the one doctor in the room who had not advocated surgery.

  Ted decided not to have surgery. Bobby, to whom Ted later described the meeting, agreed with him that their father had been so traumatized by Jack’s botched operation (and probably, though he didn’t say so, by Rosemary’s as well) that he found it impossible to imagine another of his children going under the knife.48

  That fear would never leave him. In June 1964, in a wheelchair and unable to speak after his stroke, Kennedy was brought into the hospital room where Ted was recovering from the plane crash that had left him with a broken back and a collapsed lung. Kennedy listened as the doctors debated whether to perform back surgery or to leave Ted immobilized for months on a Stryker frame in the hope that his spine would fuse on its own. When the doctors were finished, Kennedy, unable to speak, made his opinion known as forcefully as he was able. “Whipping his head from side to side, he shouted out, ‘Naaa, naaa, naaa!’ I understood that Dad was recalling the back operation on Jack that had left him in permanent pain.” Ted followed his father’s recommendation and decided against surgery. It was the right choice this time, as it had been eight years earlier.49

  Thirty-six

  MAKING MONEY AND GIVING IT AWAY

  In the booming 1920s, Joseph P. Kennedy had made his money investing in stocks; in the 1930s, he made more by selling them short; in the 1940s and early 1950s, he invested in real estate and oil, and the money kept rolling in.

  Like every good businessman, he looked at the tax implications before investing in anything. He never paid a penny more than he had to or a penny less than he was required to. Leo Racine, one of the accountants in his New York office, recalled that Kennedy had worked out an arrangement with the IRS for a sort of pre-audit. Every year, the IRS sent a man to the Park Avenue offices to review the family’s tax returns. If he found a problem, it was discussed and remedied before the returns were filed.1

  As marginal tax rates for the wealthiest went up to 91 percent in 1950, where they would remain until his son’s administration lowered them, Kennedy adjusted his investments accordingly, moving large amounts of capital into oil and gas production to take advantage of generous depletion allowances and tax benefits. Tulsa businessman Raymond Kravis, the father of financier Henry Kravis, recalled getting a call from Kennedy in September 1945 while he was visiting New York. “He asked me to study oil investments he was considering and to make recommendations as to their desirability. . . . It wasn’t until five years later that something came along I felt he would be interested in.” Kravis called Kennedy’s attention to an oil company that was for sale and recommended he buy it. Kennedy interrupted him in the middle of
his pitch, claiming not to have understood “a damn thing you’re talking about.” Then he added, to Kravis’s surprise, “You’re the doctor in the oil business as far as I’m concerned. . . . You know more about it than I do. If you say this is a good deal for me, I’ll take it.”2

  In November 1957, Fortune magazine published its list of the richest Americans. Number one was J. Paul Getty with an estimated fortune of between $700 million and $1 billion; next came seven individuals worth between $400 million and $700 million; Kennedy was in the third group of eight with $200 million to $400 million. The source of his income, the magazine reported, was altogether “difficult . . . to catalogue; he says he does his best work floating around in his Florida pool.” Alone among Fortune’s sixteen wealthiest Americans, Kennedy owned no substantial portion of or stock in any one corporation, firm, or business enterprise, save the Merchandise Mart, which was held in partnership with Rose and the family trusts. He had owned a piece of Hialeah but had sold it in 1954 “because the political pulling and hauling in Florida” made the investment too risky for his tastes. He had been offered scores of investments in buildings, companies, businesses, and even baseball clubs and turned them all down. Most recently, in the spring of 1954, Jack had written his father from Washington to report that he had been approached by a congressman from Philadelphia who “at the suggestions of Roy Mack [the owner] talked to me about the sale of the Philadelphia Athletics. . . . I thought perhaps if you would send me a line on this I could then let them know how you felt about it.” Kennedy was not interested. “I feel as I do when Rickey offered me the Brooklyn club that one of the prime necessities for success in any ball club is local ownership.” He had no intention of spending any time in Philadelphia.3

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  Joseph P. Kennedy lived a very good life. He stayed in the best hotels, ate in the top restaurants, dressed in custom-made suits, shirts, and ties, was cared for by a small army of servants, traveled in style wherever he went. It was assumed that his children would live lives of wealth and luxury as he did. Occasionally, their father and their mother felt obliged to remind them to be more careful, to watch their spending. When, in late January 1952, Jean had $34,000 of jewelry stolen out of the car she had parked in front of Jack’s home in Washington, the newspapers reported the story with apparent glee. Rose wrote Jean, Eunice, and Pat at once, pointing out that each of them had recently lost an earring and admonishing them for their carelessness. “I think the best thing to do is wear pearls at night. You probably can buy those pearl and fake diamond earrings, which look quite well now. I am very sorry as I like you to have jewelry like everybody else.” Precisely whom she meant by “everybody else” we do not know.4

  Kennedy also commented on the incident, which he declared had brought the family “a lot of very bad publicity, not as bad as if somebody got drunk in a night club, but it shows a disregard for money on the part of people who are supposed to have it which irritates the masses beyond belief and it creates a very bad impression.” He suggested that Eunice, Pat, and Jean “put all the important jewelry you all have in a safety deposit box and let it stay there . . . and just wear ordinary stuff around to whatever parties you attend. It may be sad but it’s essential.” He wanted them as well to “stop traveling by air planes, and by trains, particularly air planes, unless the trip is essential. This commuting back and forth besides being expensive becomes a matter of danger. I think you all should just get used to settling down in one spot and not rush away weekends to a different place from where you are located. Let’s forget that for a while.” Having raised the subject of finances, which he so rarely did, he concluded by adding “that while all of you have incomes that sound substantially large, to all intents and purposes . . . all of you are spending more than your income, so you need to readjust your sights and cut down on the spending, because if anything happens to me this income is liable to be affected and you may have to live on lots less so you might just as well get used to it. Just a word of advice from Daddy on this Monday morning. Love and kisses.”5

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  The Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation, which was a 25 percent owner of the Merchandise Mart and whose income Kennedy may have supplemented with additional donations, continued through the middle 1950s to give away large sums of money, most of it to church-affiliated institutions in the Boston area and Massachusetts, with smaller grants to out-of-state Catholic organizations, including $250,000 to Notre Dame, where Kennedy was now a trustee; $400,000 to Manhattanville College in the Bronx, where the girls had gone to college; and $240,000 to St. Coletta in Jefferson, Wisconsin, where Rosemary lived.6

  “It was our original intention,” Kennedy explained to Father Denomy, who had asked for a donation for the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, “to spread this money amongst all religions, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews; but in practice, well over 95 per cent has been given to Catholic institutions.” When John Royal of NBC asked him to see Father Max Jordan, the radio broadcaster who had become a Benedictine monk, Kennedy replied that he would be “glad to meet the Father but you and I know that none of these fellows want to meet me unless it’s a touch, and I am so committed now to Catholic priests, hierarchy, and nuns that I will be paying off for the next three years. In addition to that, I don’t have much of a chance to do anything except for the Catholics, and I don’t think that’s right either. They all stand for very worthy causes but it’s just impossible to keep up with them. Every day requests come in from Trappists, Carthusians, Franciscans, etc., and I have to duck them because it’s time wasted for them.”7

  As the children relocated across the country—Bobby and Ethel to Washington, Eunice and Sarge to Chicago, Pat and Peter to Los Angeles—foundation gifts followed them. “We have felt that where the family or the Foundation received substantial parts of their income,” Kennedy explained to one petitioner, “that community deserved first consideration, after our native city of Boston and state of Massachusetts received their share.” The foundation in early 1952 gave a $1.25 million grant to the St. Coletta school for retarded boys in Palos Park, just outside Chicago; in 1958, it provided $500,000 to the Washington Archdiocese for a school for retarded children and a teachers center; in 1959, $800,000 was donated to the Los Angeles Archdiocese for a center for mentally retarded and emotionally disturbed children.

  For the first five or so years, the foundation had concentrated its giving on Catholic institutions that cared for “underprivileged” children, because that cause, the family believed, was closest to Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. By the middle 1950s, the focus was narrowed to “the cause of retarded children.” As Kennedy explained to one applicant in October 1957, he had “at times . . . thought that we should set aside some proportion of our funds for other causes but the need is so great in the case of retarded children that, for the present at least, I feel it important to confine my efforts to this cause.” Although he would never say so or even hint at it, the motivating factor behind the focus on the retarded was the memory of how impossible it had been to find schools, treatment centers, counseling programs, recreation facilities, or clinics for Rosemary. There was also the influence of Archbishop Cushing, who had taken up the cause of the retarded as his special mission.8

  As Kennedy quickly discovered, the need was much greater than his resources. “As you become acquainted with this subject,” he wrote Cardinal Spellman on June 21, 1958, “you also become aware that the surface is just being scratched and nothing short of the United States Government can maintain the services the mentally retarded children will require. . . . No matter how many of these institutions are built or started, we will only be ‘scratching the surface.’ Custodial care for mentally retarded children is too costly for any foundation or the Church. Specialized schools for the mildly retarded, or the children who are educable, seems to me to be the responsibility of the Government on every level. The religious instructions of the children is the responsibility of the Church a
uthorities.”9

  Eunice later recalled that “the problem with the schools” for the retarded that the foundation had funded “was that no sooner was one built than there was a waiting list of over 1,000 people waiting to get in. Also, we were not graduating many mentally retarded each year, so new mentally retarded children coming along wouldn’t be able to get into our institutions. Dad wanted new programs for the foundation.”10

  Sometime in 1958, frustrated by his inability to make much of an impact, Kennedy decided to shift foundation support from medical care and education of the retarded to research into the causes of mental retardation and preventive measures. He contacted Howard Rusk, the director of the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in New York and the nation’s primary authority on rehabilitative medicine. He also contacted Harvard dean McGeorge Bundy, who had been trying against very long odds to get Kennedy to contribute something to the university. “I am considering the idea of changing the policy of the Foundation and, possibly, of spending a million dollars a year on research in the field of mental health. Of course, I realize that it is a very broad field and that it will be difficult to set up a line of demarcation. . . . If you feel that Harvard might help me in the pursuit of this new idea of mine and, at the same time, help itself, we could get together again and talk. . . . I am interested in the problem of retarded children and I would like to do as much as I can for them.”11