After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family--1968 to the Present

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  “David would start with the drinking and drugs early in the afternoon, usually vodka,” said Terrence Murphy, a friend of David’s who was summoned by the young Kennedy and asked to join him in Palm Beach. “I flew down and met him at a bar called Doherty’s, just around the corner from the hotel. It was about one in the afternoon. I walked in looking for David and saw what looked like an old guy nursing a drink, sitting at the bar with his back to me. When I approached him and he turned around, I couldn’t believe it was David.”

  After the two greeted one another, Terrence took a seat next to David and asked him how he had fared at rehab. “Oh yeah, it was well worth the money my uncle Teddy spent on it,” he said. Then, raising his double vodka on the rocks, he added, “Cheers, buddy!” Terrence observed that David’s drinking at such an early hour wasn’t a good idea, saying that it was making him look like an old man, at least according to his recollection of the conversation. “I am an old man,” David remarked as he lit a Marlboro. “How’s your mom?” Terrence asked. “Same as always,” David said. “Have you heard about this book I’m in?” David then asked, changing the subject. He added that he had “spilled my guts to some punk writer,” and he was afraid of how his family would react when the book was finally published. “I really did it this time,” he said.

  Terrence smiled and put his hand on David’s shoulder. “Well, there’s always tomorrow,” he offered.

  David stared ahead blankly. “Not always,” he said.

  Room 107

  It was Thursday, April 26, 1984, and Ethel Kennedy was pacing nervously back and forth between her kitchen and the study at her home in Hickory Hill. “Has he called yet?” she asked her new assistant, Leah Mason, who had that very week replaced Noelle Bombardier. “No, Mrs. Kennedy,” came her response. “Well, where is he?” Ethel asked urgently, not really expecting an answer. She had been upset all morning, saying she had a feeling, a premonition, that something was wrong with David. “A mother just knows,” she told Mason. “I have a terrible feeling.”

  Two days earlier, on Tuesday night, David was supposed to attend a dinner at Rose Kennedy’s. He didn’t show up. The next day—Wednesday—he was supposed to take a flight from Palm Beach back to Boston where he shared an apartment with Paula Sculley. The last Paula had heard from him was earlier that day when he called to tell her he was on his way. The two had planned a vacation to the Bahamas, and they chatted about it for a few moments. David also mentioned looking forward to an AA meeting he planned to attend once he got back to Boston. That was the last anyone had heard from him.

  On Wednesday night, when Paula called Ethel to ask if David had shown up there, Ethel immediately knew that something was wrong. She called the hotel in Palm Beach and asked for David’s room, 107. He had not checked out, yet there was no answer.

  She called again, and again, and again. No answer.

  “Room 107,” she requested at midnight. Still no answer.

  Finally, Ethel went to bed, though she would not sleep a wink. A curious unease had taken hold of her.

  At three in the morning, Ethel called again. “Room 107.” No answer.

  By the next morning, she was completely frantic. She called again. “Room 107, please.” Still no answer.

  And again an hour later. “Room 107.” The phone just rang.

  Ethel then called all of David’s siblings. No one had heard from him.

  Her son Douglas, seventeen, was still at the same hotel. So Ethel called his room. No answer.

  She then called her sister-in-law Jean Smith, who she knew was still in Palm Beach. No answer there either. It was maddening.

  Finally, at 9:45, Ethel called Caroline Kennedy—who was still in Palm Beach at Rose’s house—and asked that she go to the hotel and check on David. Fifteen minutes later, Caroline and her cousin Sydney Lawford went to the hotel and called from the lobby, but got no answer. They went to David’s door and knocked repeatedly. Again, no answer. Finally, they left, went back to Rose’s, and called Ethel to tell her that they thought David was simply not in the room. “Well, then where in the world is he?” Ethel asked Leah Mason in exasperation.

  At 10:30, Ethel called David’s room again, then again at 11:00. Still no answer.

  At 11:15, Ethel’s phone rang. She jumped to answer it, thinking it was David. It was Jackie. Caroline had called her mother to tell her that David was missing. The two cousins had grown very close in recent years and Caroline was frightened. It’s not known what Jackie said to Ethel, but from Ethel’s side of the conversation it seemed that Jackie was offering to send a private investigator down to Florida to find out what was going on there. Ethel thanked Jackie and said she would get back to her soon if David didn’t show up.

  After Ethel hung up with Jackie, Ted Kennedy called. Again, Ted’s side of the conversation is unknown. However, Ethel was heard telling him, “I’m just not as strong as you are, Teddy. I’m falling apart here. I don’t know what to do!” Apparently he asked if he should come to her side. He must have been out of town, though, because Ethel’s response was, “No, I can’t have you come all that way just for me. I have my boys. I’m okay.” She thanked Ted for his call and promised to get back to him as soon as David was located.

  After hanging up with Ted, Ethel crumpled into the leather chair behind her mahogany desk in the study and stared into a cup of cold black coffee as she said the rosary. When she finished, she began waxing nostalgic about her son to Leah Mason. “I remember when David got the idea to collect sand in little plastic baggies and sell them to tourists as ‘Kennedy Sand’ for a dollar a bag,” she said with a smile. “Oh, I was so mad at him for that,” Ethel said. Then, after a beat, she added, “I wish now I had not been so mad.” She sighed deeply. “Why was I always so… mad?” Taking a deep breath, she then reached for the phone on the desk and dialed the number to the hotel once again. In Palm Beach, Josephine Dampier—secretary to the hotel’s manager—picked up the phone.

  “This is Mrs. Kennedy again,” Ethel said. “I’m sorry to keep bothering you, but no one has heard from my son David. I’ve called his room repeatedly! My niece was just at your hotel and said there was no answer at his door. So I need someone to get into room 107 and make sure my boy is not in there.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Kennedy,” Dampier said. “Would you like me to call you back?”

  “No,” Ethel said. “I’ll stay on the line. Could you do it now?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I put her on hold and took a deep breath,” Josephine Dampier would recall many years later. “Call it a mother’s instinct, because I have my own kids, but I knew. For some reason, I just knew.

  “I sent a desk clerk and a porter up to the room. Five minutes later, the desk clerk called me from the room, nearly hysterical. She had found him lying on the floor between twin beds that appeared to not have been slept in. He was wearing cutoff denim shorts and a pink long-sleeved preppy-looking shirt and white sneakers. His packed green duffel bag was nearby on the floor. A red light on his telephone was flashing—he had messages. From his body position on the floor, David looked as if he had been trying to get to the phone. The desk clerk knelt next to him and touched his face. It was cold. She felt for his pulse in his neck, and then at his wrist. There was none. ‘He’s gone, he’s gone,’ she told me, very upset. ‘He’s dead!’ ‘Oh my God,’ I thought. ‘How am I ever going to tell this to Mrs. Kennedy?’ I said a quick prayer and got back on the line.”

  “Mrs. Kennedy,” Josephine Dampier said into the receiver, “we have to call you right back because we have to call the paramedics now.”

  “Oh no,” Ethel exclaimed. “Oh my God, no! What happened? Is he okay?”

  “I promise you we will call you back.” With that Josephine quickly hung up the phone before she could be asked any more questions. Meanwhile, at Hickory Hill, Ethel Kennedy and Leah Mason sat in the study staring at each other with fear in their eyes.

  Ten minutes later, the phone rang.
Ethel grabbed for it. It was Gerald Beebe, an executive from the hotel.

  “Mrs. Kennedy,” he began, according to his memory. “We found your son. The paramedics have arrived and—”

  Ethel interrupted him. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked. Her voice wasn’t small and fearful, rather it was demanding and forceful. She wanted to know the truth, and she wanted to know it now.

  “Yes, Mrs. Kennedy,” came back the answer. “I’m afraid so, ma’am. Your son is dead.”

  At that, Ethel Kennedy let out a sickening wail. “Oh dear Jesus,” she exclaimed. “No! No! No!”

  “Without Faith and Family, We Have Nothing”

  A couple of days after his death, about forty of David Kennedy’s family members and friends gathered at Hickory Hill to view his emaciated-looking body in one of the mansion’s many elaborately appointed drawing rooms. Almost everyone seemed to be present—Ted and Joan; Jackie; Pat; Eunice and Jean and their husbands, Sargent and Stephen; as well as all of David’s siblings and many people closely connected to the Kennedy family. His brothers and sisters looked stricken. “If only David had known how much we loved him,” a saddened Joe later said. “But I don’t understand how he didn’t know it. That’s just who we are, especially the brothers. I mean, who is closer than the Kennedy brothers? The thing we have, only we brothers understand it, and we just always know it’s there. I just don’t understand how he didn’t know it. I just don’t…”

  Because she was so ill, Rose Kennedy stayed behind in Florida. David, who would have been twenty-nine in less than a month, would soon be buried next to his grandfather Joseph in the family plot at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts.

  In two days, there would be a funeral Mass for David. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. would later recall of it, “It was held on the terrace at Hickory Hill—a lovely day, fragrant with spring, the deep green grass rolling away toward the swimming pool and tennis court. I thought of all the happy times I have had through the years at Hickory Hill and the sad times, too. The younger brothers read prayers, Kathleen spoke charmingly about David, as did Ted Kennedy, choking back tears. I looked at Ted and Sargent Shriver, once so young and slim, now both gray and portly. Ethel was composed, pale, rather beautiful. It was a profoundly sad occasion. The cover of the program was a letter that David—then twelve years old—had sent his mother after Bobby’s death—the John Donne quotation: ‘Death be not proud…’ carefully written and decorated—heartbreaking.”

  Before the funeral Mass, though, there was a wake at the house. “David is with his father and uncles now,” Sargent Shriver was heard to have said as he approached Ethel at the wake. “We have to believe that God had a plan for David and that he is happy and at peace now. It’s all we have, isn’t it? Our faith and our family,” Sargent observed, his rosary beads in his hand.

  Ethel nodded. “Without that, what do we have?” she asked her brother-in-law. “Without faith and family, we have nothing.” The two then embraced and held each other close, speaking softly to one another. Ethel tried to be her uplifting self, but on this day she seemed as if maybe she was on some sort of medication. She looked vacant-eyed and extremely distant. “He never got over his father’s death, did he?” another mourner, not a family member, later asked her. Ethel shook her head vehemently. “His father didn’t just die,” she said, her tone crisp. “His father was murdered,” she added bitterly. “And, no, to answer your question, none of us have ever gotten over his father’s murder.”

  During the wake, the Kennedys did what they usually did in such circumstances—they tried to be strong for each other. However, it was obviously difficult. Many of them felt they had let David down.

  In most accounts of David Kennedy’s life and death over the years, the suggestion has been that the Kennedy family abandoned him, making him feel alone and isolated and thus contributing to his death. However, anyone who has ever dealt with a family member in the throes of addiction understands that the story is rarely so black-and-white. In fact, David did what many addicts often do; he pushed away those in his family who didn’t support his addiction. Could Ethel have done more for him? Could his siblings, or other relatives? Ted? Of course, that is a question only they would be equipped to answer, but what is certain is that David Kennedy would also have needed to take care of himself—and he didn’t. Or maybe he couldn’t. After all, addiction is a disease. Oftentimes people who are addicted have a difficult time being decisive on their own. An addiction affects the brain in many ways, and one of those ways has to do with the decision-making process. Addicts usually don’t make the most reasonable or responsible or accountable decisions for themselves. The most important thing a recovering addict can do is surround himself with responsible people who can help him make better decisions, and from all appearances, it does seem that David at least did that much for himself. Still, the fact remains that in the years between 1976 and his death in 1984, he had four overdoses, was arrested four times, had six stints in rehab and five hospitalizations. Every time David’s loved ones sent him into rehab, it was to help him in the only way they could think of, and each time they hoped and prayed he would recover. Sadly, he never did.

  “I wish now we had handled all of it differently,” one of his brothers would say, “but I don’t know what else we could have done.”

  Needless to say, there were a lot of mixed emotions at the wake. Some relatives were quite angry at David because they felt he had let them down, and himself too. Others were angry at themselves, feeling they could have done more for him. Ted seemed to understand these sorts of conflicting emotions, going to many of his relatives and patting them on the shoulder while telling them, “You did what you could.” However, for the senator to hold up the rest of the family on this day was not an easy task. He too felt tremendous guilt and sadness about his nephew. He and Ethel were seen commiserating quite often, embracing one another. At one point, Ethel was seen wiping a tear from Ted’s cheek. Trying to shake it off, Ted eventually did what he often did at weddings and funerals: He led the crowd in a rendition of the family’s favorite, “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” It was halfhearted at best.

  At the end of the family wake, Ethel asked that she be allowed to spend a few final moments alone with the dead son she often seemed unable to reach in life. There were some who felt she could take no more grief that day, because she looked as if she had never been more overwrought or inconsolable. “Let Ethie do what she wants to do,” Ted Kennedy said when asked by Bobby if he thought it was wise. “That’s her boy in there. Let her do what she wants.”

  As Ethel Kennedy walked very slowly toward the open casket with her head bowed, all that she would have been able to see, at least at first, would have been the top of David’s wavy blond hair. It must have been a shock, because she stopped for a moment to steel herself. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then, as she continued toward the coffin, her son Joe quietly closed the door to the drawing room.

  PART FOURTEEN

  Kennedy Upheaval

  Disagreements About the Kennedy Foundation

  By the spring of 1984, the four surviving children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy—Eunice, Pat, Jean, and Ted—were concerned, and some might say with very good reason, that the next generation of Kennedys—their children, the third generation—would never be able to live up to the standards set not only by the adults but also by history. Most of the members of that third generation simply weren’t interested in any of the Kennedy charities, most notably the Kennedy Foundation, which under Eunice’s leadership had taken on the cause of mental retardation. Eunice and Sargent’s four children were heavily invested—but it’s not as if they had much choice. “These are important times,” Eunice wrote in one of her many missives to her son Bobby in 1984. “We cannot, must not, squander these opportunities for growth and for a fuller and deeper understanding of MR and all that it involves. I implore you as I do your brothers and sister to be involved. It is part of our mandate as Kennedys and
Shrivers that we do all we can, give all of our time. Please plan your vacation this summer with my wishes in mind, and those of your father. Love, Mother.”

  One would have been hard pressed to find other Kennedys as involved with the Kennedy Foundation as Eunice and Sargent’s offspring were. Certainly Jackie’s children, John Jr. and Caroline, had little to do with the foundation, just like most, if not all, of Ethel’s children. Even Ted’s children seemed uninterested.

  “I have recently decided that this must change,” Eunice said at a meeting at Ted’s home on April 9, 1984, according to the minutes of that meeting. Besides her and Sarge, attending were her son Bobby; Pat Kennedy; Jean and Stephen Smith; Ted Kennedy; Ted’s son Ted Jr.; Ethel; Ethel’s sons Joe and Bobby; and a half-dozen Kennedy Foundation employees and financial advisers such as Bob Cooke and Joe Hakim. “I think we have to recognize that it can’t just be me and Sarge forever running this foundation,” Eunice told the others. “The next generation must come forth. This is a family matter. And I am now of the opinion that they must come forth now.”

  “Well, I don’t see how,” Ethel said, “when, let’s be honest, Eunice, you won’t let anyone near the foundation—and certainly not the kids.”

  “That is not true,” Eunice shot back quickly. “And in fact, that is a complete mischaracterization of my role here and you know it, Ethel!”

  Others at the meeting recall the two women staring at each other for a tense moment. Then Eunice started angrily riffling through a gigantic leather portfolio of memos and correspondence and other material relating to the foundation. “I have right here…” she began, referring to one document in particular that she may have thought would prove something important. Ted cut his sister off in order to restore peace. “It is true,” he said, according to the minutes, “that the next generation has not stepped forward in a timely fashion. I am not convinced, though, that the reasons for their lack of interest are as Ethie here has suggested. However, it would help, I think, if there was perhaps more transparency as to how the foundation is run.”