Barbara Gibson was with Rose Kennedy when Ted called to give her the news of the divorce. “Yes, dear,” Rose said, according to Barbara’s recollection of her side of the conversation. She was very calm. “I see, dear,” she said. “So, is there somebody else?” she asked.
“I’m so sorry,” Jackie told Joan when she called to see how Joan was faring, according to what Joan would later recall, “because now I feel that I should have told you to do this fifteen years ago. I just didn’t know back then what we know today.” The two were talking on the telephone shortly after the divorce announcement was made. Jackie went on to say that she felt “terrible” because, she reasoned, if she had encouraged Joan out of the marriage sooner, “maybe you wouldn’t have gotten so sick,” she said, referring to Joan’s alcoholism. “But I couldn’t have done it anyway,” Joan responded. “Times were so different. We did the best we could back then, though, didn’t we?” Jackie had to agree. “We sure did,” she concurred, “with what we had to work with, anyway.”
The conversation brings to mind a letter Jackie wrote Joan in the summer of 1979. Reading it, one has to wonder if Jackie’s views hadn’t sprung from personal experience. She wrote that she suspected Ted had arranged to have his long-distance phone calls billed to their mutual friend the architect John Carl Warnecke, so that Joan would be unable to monitor them. (This had to have hurt Jackie. She liked Warnecke a great deal and had even dated him several times after JFK was killed and before she married Aristotle.) Thus, Jackie wrote, “he is able to talk to Mootsie or Pootsie every night—right in the house with his wife & children—and then bring them there when you’re away. What kind of woman, but a sap or a slave, can stand that & still be a loving wife—& care about him & work like a dog for him campaigning?” She continued, “This is the 20th Century—not the 19th—where the little woman stayed home on a pedestal with the kids and her rosary. Your life matters—as much as his—you love him but you can’t destroy yourself. You are the mother of three children and they’re your children and you want to be around to bring them up as you feel they should be brought up. A mother is more important to children than a father,” Jackie posited. “That is the parent it hurts children most to lose, and you are not going to let that happen.”
Joan later said that Jackie’s letter so touched her, she cried upon receiving it.
Despite everything she had been through with Ted, though, Joan Kennedy was still unsure if she’d made the right decision to let him go. Perhaps that’s why, on the very afternoon that the Kennedys made public that they were ending their marriage, Ted received a huge basket of colorful tulips and poppies delivered to his office. They were from Joan.
PART THIRTEEN
David’s Story
“The Kennedys’ Biggest Shame”
She had a new pair of white shoes on,” twenty-seven-year-old David Anthony Kennedy told authors Peter Collier and David Horowitz for their book about the Kennedys in 1983. He was talking about a photo he had seen of his aunt Rosemary, the Kennedy sister who had been lobotomized at Joseph Kennedy’s behest. “The thought crossed my mind that if my grandfather was alive the same thing could have happened to me that happened to her,” he said. “She was an embarrassment; I am an embarrassment. She was a hindrance; I am a hindrance. As I looked at this picture, I began to hate my grandfather and all of them for having done the thing they had done to her and for doing the thing they were doing to me.”
Unfortunately, David Kennedy’s downward slide had continued with the passing of the years. In the ten-year period between 1974 and 1984, things had gone progressively from bad to much worse, and there seemed no reaching him.
“Oh, my David. My sweet little David,” Ethel’s personal assistant, Noelle Bombardier, said when asked to remember the young Kennedy who had often been put in her charge. “He really liked me and I liked him so much,” she recalled. “Though he was so charming, he often acted strangely. For instance, he would use the bathroom without closing the door and I would walk by and holler at him and say, ‘David! Please!’ But nothing bothered him. Yet at the same time, everything bothered him. At first, I didn’t know what was wrong with him. I thought, well, maybe he’s just depressed. But it all came out from Mrs. Kennedy one day.”
On the day in question, Ethel asked Noelle to pick up a skirt especially made for her by Oscar de la Renta, her designer at the time. “Okay, Mrs. Kennedy,” Noelle said, “but I’ll have to wait until a little later because I don’t have my car.”
“Oh, is something wrong with your car?” Ethel asked.
“Well, actually, I let David use it to run an errand.”
“What!” Ethel exclaimed, suddenly very alarmed.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Kennedy,” Noelle said. “He told me he would be back within a half hour.”
“You should never have done that!” Ethel exclaimed. “Don’t you know that the boy is on drugs?”
Noelle was completely shocked. She said she had no idea. She had figured that something was wrong with him, she said, but she certainly didn’t know it was a drug addiction. Ethel then explained that when David was twelve, he had seen his father murdered while watching television. “We were in Los Angeles, as you know,” Ethel said, “and Bobby had just won the primary in California and had just given a speech to thank his supporters. I had some of the kids in Los Angeles with me—Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Chris, Max, and David. I remember, I said, ‘This is family history. The kids should see this.’ And David was at the hotel staying up late, watching the TV, while I was with Bobby at the Ambassador Hotel. Then, as we were going through the kitchen, Bobby was shot. I was standing right there, Noelle,” Ethel said, “and this… this… person… killed my husband,” she concluded, her voice cracking with emotion. “And my son saw the whole thing on TV.”
Noelle was so horrified by Ethel’s story, she had to sit down.
“David and Bobby were so close,” Ethel continued, now taking a place next to Noelle. “They were inseparable. David was small, a runt like Bobby had been. And Bobby just took to him, you know?” Ethel then explained to Noelle that David had always been a very sensitive youngster, very introverted, “not like the other boys. He and I would go and pick flowers while his brothers were killing each other with their crazy games,” Ethel recalled with a smile. “If he ever got in trouble, he didn’t really care what I thought about it. He cared what Bobby thought. If Bobby was unhappy with him, it was the end of his world.” On the very morning of Bobby’s death, David had gone into the ocean in Santa Monica with some of his siblings to play and was pulled under by a dangerous undertow. “Bobby just jumped right in and saved him,” Ethel said. “He saved David’s life the very same day he lost his own, and David never really could understand any of it. It was as if he thought God had traded his life in for his dad’s,” she concluded sadly.
Young David Kennedy was never quite the same after that awful day in June 1968, according to his mother. He became sullen, depressed, his behavior so erratic that “we took him to a doctor and the doctor put him on some medication. One thing led to another,” Ethel continued, “and I think that’s how he got addicted. But we were so worried about him, we just did what the doctors said. I think that’s how it happened,” Ethel reasoned, according to Noelle’s memory of the conversation. “Or maybe it was the treatment he had after the Jeep accident he and his brother were in… I just don’t know…” Ethel stopped talking and just stared off into the distance. “I know there were sleeping pills,” she said, seeming now to rack her memory, “because he couldn’t sleep… I know that much.”
Almost at a loss for words, Noelle apologized profusely for allowing David to use her car.
“Well, you didn’t know,” Ethel said, taking her off the hook. “It’s not like we tell everyone! But now that you know, never let him drive, Noelle. You must promise me!”
Noelle promised.
Just as the two women were finishing their discussion, they heard the loud screeching of brakes outsi
de. David had returned. Moments later, he ran into the house, out of breath and sweating profusely. Immediately, Ethel jumped up from her chair to confront him. “David Kennedy, don’t you dare ever ask Noelle for the keys to her car again,” she scolded him. “She didn’t know that I don’t want you driving, but you know it and you took advantage of her!” David seemed unfazed. “Oh, okay, cool, Mom,” he said. Then he glanced at Noelle, said, “Sorry,” flashed her a big smile, and ran up to his room. “Oh my God,” Ethel said, sitting down again. “Well, at least he didn’t hurt himself, or anyone else.”
In the spring of 1978, David suffered an overdose; Stephen Smith told the press that he had pneumonia. When he got out of the hospital, Ted and Ethel sat down with him to try to reason with him once again. “What do we have to do, David?” Ted asked him, as Ethel looked on, according to what Ethel later recalled to a friend of some years. “What is it that you need from us? Because we don’t know what to do. You tell me. And I’ll do it, David. Just tell me.” David thought it over. “I want you to bring back my dad, how about that?” he said, suddenly very angry. “How about that, Uncle Teddy. Can you do that?” It was such an upsetting moment, Ted didn’t know how to respond to it. He just hung his head and shook it sadly. Ethel, as she would recall it, stared at her son and wondered how things had gotten so ugly. “Didn’t think so,” David said as he jumped up from his chair and bolted from the room.
Several months later, in 1979, the family got word that David had been beaten and robbed in Harlem while trying to score drugs in the same location where, four years later, his brother Bobby would also be known to buy drugs. Then, a week later, he was hospitalized with an overdose and suffering from endocarditis, an inflammation of the heart often associated with intravenous drug use. He nearly died. Apparently scrambling to cover up his illness lest it affect Ted’s presidential bid at that time, Stephen Smith issued a statement saying that David was “suffering from an ailment similar to drug addiction.” The word was out about him, though, and no one was fooled by Smith’s unusual way with words.
“I toss and turn all night thinking, what would Bobby do?” Ted Kennedy said one day to an administrative assistant. The two were in the study at Hickory Hill, virtually surrounded by framed pictures of Bobby on all of the walls. “I rack my brain thinking, what would he do?” he said while motioning to one of the last photographs of Bobby ever taken, at the Ambassador Hotel right before he was shot. “What would Bobby do?” Ted asked. “And, I swear to Christ, I don’t have a clue what Bobby would do. And I think, Jesus Christ, if Bobby were alive, none of this would be happening.”
“Look, you can’t beat yourself up over this thing,” the assistant told Ted. “You’re doing what you can.”
“But I promised I would be there for these kids,” Ted said, now looking down at the floor. “I promised Ethie. I feel like I’m letting her down.”
The assistant would later recall that he had rarely seen Ted so upset. Apparently Ethel had been listening to the conversation from another room, because she suddenly walked into the study and stood right before Ted. Looking down at him with her hands on her hips, she said, “I never want to hear you say that, Ted Kennedy. I never want to hear you say you are letting me or Bobby down. Because it’s not the truth. It’s not the truth, Teddy. It’s not the truth.”
Ted looked up at Ethel and nodded. The moment hung. “You’re all I have,” Ethel said, now almost in tears. “I don’t have anyone else, Teddy. Just you. Please, just never say that again!” Ted looked stunned. It now felt as if the two should embrace or offer some other demonstration of affection. But then, as was often typical of the Kennedys at the unfolding of an emotionally powerful moment, one of them quickly short-circuited it; Ethel suddenly turned around and walked out of the room. After she was gone, Ted and his assistant just sat looking at one another, not knowing what to say.
“Of course, Mrs. Kennedy was very, very worried about him,” recalled Noelle Bombardier, “but she was also embarrassed. I recall one afternoon when Princess Grace Kelly was coming to visit Hickory Hill with her brother Jack and sister Lizanne. Mrs. Kennedy had planned a wonderful luncheon for them. Meanwhile, David was walking around high or drunk or… really, I didn’t know what was going on with him, but he definitely wasn’t right, stumbling about and bumping into the furniture. Mrs. Kennedy was frantic about it and finally said, ‘Okay, look, Noelle, first things first. We have to get him out of here. We don’t have time to do anything else!’ I called the senator and he said, ‘Okay, bring him over here to my house.’ He lived just down the street on Cambridge Road. So I got David into the car, drove over there, and dropped him off. ‘Tell Ethie I’ll take it from here,’ the senator told me as he took David. Then I raced back to Hickory Hill just as Princess Grace and her siblings were arriving. We had our lovely afternoon, though it was quite disconcerting knowing what was secretly going on behind the scenes. Mrs. Kennedy was practically jumping out of her skin the entire time. Finally, Princess Grace and her family members left. Within seconds of their walking out the door, Mrs. Kennedy said, ‘Okay, go get David and bring him back.’ So I raced back to the senator’s house, he handed David back to me, and I brought him home.’ ”
Soon after David’s treatment for endocarditis, another very troubling incident at Hickory Hill occurred. Noelle Bombardier arrived for work one morning to find Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas pacing the floor in the drawing room with a woman named Gertrude Ball who handled business affairs for the Kennedys. Ethel was at the Kennedy compound at the time.
“What’s going on here?” Noelle asked.
“Oh, my, it’s just terrible!” Gertrude Ball exclaimed. She then explained that earlier that morning David had called her to say that a burglar had broken into his bedroom, that there had been a bloody fight, and that the room had in the process been completely ransacked. She didn’t explain why Douglas was present, and Bombardier didn’t ask.
“Well, has anyone been up there to see if David’s okay?” Noelle asked. The answer was, “No. We’re both too afraid to go up there.” Noelle then asked if they had called the police. They were just about to do so, Ball said. “No, wait, let me go check it out,” Noelle decided.
Noelle would later recall thinking that the story seemed suspect, primarily because David’s room was on the third floor and she couldn’t imagine how an intruder would be able to get a ladder to that level of the house. After running upstairs, she gently knocked on David’s bedroom door. No answer. She then slowly opened the door while bracing herself for fear of what she might find. She peeked in and saw David passed out on the bed with a young woman at his side. Taking a quick look around, she noticed that a window had indeed been broken. There was also furniture scattered about, as if a fight had occurred. Worse, there was blood on the floor. She went over to David and shook him by the shoulder. He looked up at her with a groggy expression, said he was fine, and then passed out again. Noelle decided that whatever had occurred in that room had involved drugs, and that it would be best to not call the police. She raced back down and told Douglas and Ball of her theory. “Whatever shall we do?” Ball asked. “Well, I think you should call Mrs. Kennedy,” Noelle said. “Heck, no, I’m not calling her. You call her,” was Ball’s response. “Oh, good Lord,” Noelle said. She ran into the kitchen and got on the phone with Ethel at the Kennedy compound to tell her what was going on. “I don’t think it was break-in, though,” she reported to Ethel. “I think David was on drugs and just trashed the room himself. Or maybe he had some friends over and they had a party that got out of hand, I don’t know…”
“But David is supposed to be at Teddy’s house!” Ethel exclaimed.
Before she left for the Cape, Ethel had asked Ted if he wouldn’t mind watching over David for a couple of weeks while he finished school and before he joined his mother at the Cape. Ted had said he would do it. However, David only stayed with his uncle for two days before he announced that he was returning to Hickory Hill. He pro
mised that he would not misbehave, and that was the end of it, as far as he was concerned. Ted did what he could to make David stay at his house, but what could he do, really? David was a grown man, not a child. He returned to Hickory Hill, saying, “My uncle is no better than I am. He needs a babysitter more than I do!” When Noelle explained all of this to Ethel Kennedy, suffice it to say, she was not pleased. “Well, then, fine,” she said. “You march right back up there and you tell David to clean up his room.” It was an odd response, to say the least, considering the circumstances.
“Mrs. Kennedy, I can’t do that, Noelle protested. “That doesn’t seem reasonable. This is more than just an untidy bedroom…”
“I don’t care,” Ethel said, according to Noelle’s recollection of the conversation. “You tell David to clean up that mess!”
“But Justice Douglas is here with Mrs. Ball and they want to call the police.”
“What in the world are they doing there?” Ethel wanted to know. “What the heck is going on there? Don’t you dare call the police,” she warned. “You just do what I am telling you to do. You go up to David’s room and you tell him that his mother said to straighten out that mess. Now!” With that, she hung up the phone. Obviously, Ethel hadn’t fully connected with the gravity of what was going on, or she just didn’t want to do so.
Noelle agreed with Ethel that the police should not be called. She got the two visitors out of the house and off the property as quickly as she could, telling them that she would handle the matter. After they left, she called Ted Kennedy and told him what had happened. “Holy Christ!” was Ted’s response. “You know, I tried to get him to stay here,” he added, his tone a little defensive. “But he wouldn’t do it. But I told Ethie he needs to be in a hospital, not here at my house. What do you think we should we do?” Ted Kennedy asked. “What should we do now?” That this is what it had come to—Senator Ted Kennedy asking Ethel Kennedy’s personal assistant for advice—suggests a hard truth: No one knew what to do about David Kennedy.
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