The Nine of Us

by Jean Kennedy Smith

  Because of Mother, I developed a love for the arts that I might have never discovered. I am forever grateful to her for that. She knew the importance of the arts in one’s life and that everyone should start early enjoying painting, music, and literature. She knew what I needed, and who I might become, before I knew it myself.

  12

  The Dinner Discussion

  We were serious about serious things, but we liked laughing at things that weren’t, including, sometimes, some of our own foibles. Humor is a necessary part of wisdom; it gives perspective; it frees the spirit.

  —ROSE FITZGERALD KENNEDY

  If you were president, what would you do?”

  So began the game we played at night over dinner. Seen in retrospect, it seems prophetic. But at the time, it was just sport, spurred on by the turbulent and exciting times in which we lived. There might be an interesting tidbit in the newspaper or a congressional race that prompted the question. Dad was deeply connected to the Roosevelt administration leading up to World War II, speaking with and traveling to Washington often, and he would bring home news from the political front.

  Unemployment was down. “If you were president, what would you do?”

  A hurricane had killed hundreds. “If you were president, what would you do?”

  Hitler was advancing. “If you were president, what would you do?”

  The 1930s laid out a dizzying number of decisions for the president of the United States, and for almost the entire length of the decade, that president was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He inherited the Depression, he created the New Deal, he confronted conflict in Europe and looming war. His actions—along with the actions of mayors, governors, prime ministers, and dictators the world over—were served up at our dinner table along with the potatoes and gravy.

  Joe and Jack devoured each morsel. They dove in with theories, solutions, remedies, and platforms. We all listened, in awe. Dad was ever alert to their opinions, encouraging them to pursue a thought, or bantering with them when he felt they were off base. As we grew older, the rest of us joined in on the conversation, with our own observations and ideas.

  Joe, Dad, and Jack (1938)

  The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

  Looking back, I see that the dinner table was our family hub. It was the scene of our most memorable conversations and many of our most hilarious moments. Maybe it was because dinner was the rare time when we were all sitting still, together.

  It should come as little surprise that much of the planning in a house with nine children revolved around meals. We never had dinner parties. In my entire childhood, I cannot remember Mother and Dad inviting a group of friends to the Cape for a sit-down meal. Instead, they reserved meals for their children and any friends we might happen to invite along. And, with all of us at the table, with any friends, and with our three Gargan cousins in the summertime, we outnumbered a good-size dinner party nearly every night.

  We were all hearty eaters, especially the boys. Mother had the job of figuring out daily what to serve, when to serve it, and where to seat everybody. She expressed enormous gratitude throughout her life for the wonderful and talented cooks who helped her through those decisions and duties, managing to keep us all healthfully fed and, at least in my case, happily plump. The cooks were so good at their art, preparing delicious meals that always seemed to match up with the seasons. Summer was everyone’s favorite—the season of corn on the cob, fresh tomatoes, and, on the Fourth of July, Boston cream pie. On Fridays throughout the year, we had fish in accordance with the rules of the Catholic Church. And no matter what we ate, always to the right of each plate was the obligatory glass of milk.

  Dinner was our meeting place, the place where anyone who was home migrated each day to touch base with everyone else. Our meals were full of chatter, the size of our group making anything else unlikely. But they were never noisy or out of control, since Dad could not abide a racket. Conversations could range from very serious matters to the hysterically absurd. People were always telling jokes or poking fun at one another. When I brought a school friend home for the weekend, it was a test of her fortitude if she could stand up to the kidding at dinner—and better yet, if she could give it back.

  “She was a lot of laughs!” a brother might pronounce once my friend had left for home. No higher compliment could be paid in our house, and it made me so proud if one of my friends received it.

  All the fun did not mean there were no rules to follow. To the contrary, Mother and Dad were very firm about our dinnertime rituals and procedures. We all knew to arrive in the living room at 6:30 p.m., having changed out of our swimsuits and sandy clothes, bathed, donned a fresh outfit, and combed our hair. Once assembled there, Mother would play the piano while we sang or chatted. If we had invited a new friend over for dinner, we would introduce him or her around to the others. Then, as the clock rounded 7:00 p.m., Mother would stop her playing and announce that dinner was served, and we would file into the dining room for the meal.

  Per Dad’s instructions, our meals started promptly at 7:15 each evening. We were never allowed to be late. Our cousin Joey Gargan later surmised that Dad’s insistence on timely meals had less to do with discipline than with not angering his adored cook. “If that cook leaves,” Dad pronounced one evening when Joey screeched into the dining room at 7:20, “I’m going with her.”

  In our younger years, the smallest of us—Bobby, Teddy, and I—ate dinner earlier in the evening, at the little table with Mother, so that she could spend time speaking with just us, hearing our childhood questions and instructing us on proper table manners.

  As we grew older, she decided that we were prepared to have our meals at the same time as everyone else. However, there was still no room for us at the big table. So we sat together at a table off to the side, unless one of our older siblings was away at school or visiting friends. If that was the case, Bobby would proudly leave our table and take his seat with the others, delighted finally to be part of the grown-up discussion.

  Before touching a utensil, we would all make the sign of the cross and say grace: “Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord Amen.”

  I cannot remember the moment I was taught how to hold a fork or knife. I cannot remember being taught where the bread plate or the water glass went. We learned these lessons so early in life that it seems as if we were born knowing them. We all placed our napkins in our laps. We did not reach or grab for a platter but passed it, always to the left. A few special foods could be eaten with our hands, such as corn on the cob, but we understood that everything else on the table required utensils. Except for asparagus—this vegetable sparked a lively dinnertime discussion every time we had it: could we pick up the spears, or was that rude? Mother felt that, at all costs, we should err on the side of proper manners, so she insisted we eat asparagus with our forks.

  Healthy debate and disagreement were regular guests at the table. Any subject was up for grabs. Someone might report a simple happening in his day: “I saw Jimmy Fisher swimming this morning.” Then the chorus would begin:

  “By himself? But isn’t he only seven?”

  “I think so, but what’s wrong with that?”

  “Do you think it’s safe for a child to swim alone at seven?”

  “Well, I’m sure I was swimming at seven.”

  “If the lifeguard is there, what does it matter?”

  “Maybe . . . but it doesn’t seem like a wise thing to do.”

  “Well, not everyone would agree with you.”

  “How else will the boy ever learn to swim?”

  “But he could drown.”

  “Well, when do you think someone should start swimming by himself?”

  “Why don’t we ask the Fishers!”

  And on and on and on.

  Dad might casually mention that he was surprised that Joe and Jack had been out very late with friends the night before. Shoc
k would sweep over our brothers’ faces, though they would try not to let it show. How in the world had Dad known about that? They had crept so quietly into their downstairs bedrooms, and Dad had been upstairs, asleep. Only many years later did we realize that while sitting on his second-floor balcony, reviewing his papers or placing calls to Chicago, Dad could overhear our endless conversations on the porch below. So as we shared a piece of gossip or filled the others in on our antics the night before, he was all ears. Dad got no small delight in occasionally slipping a tidbit into the dinnertime talk—“Was the party fun last night?”—and watching our eyes dart back and forth at one another in alarm.

  No matter how the dinner started, it inevitably ended in politics, from a Boston ward to the British parliament. The events of those years heavy with tension overseas led to heavy considerations at tables across America. The highest goal that a boy of that time could aspire to was to become president of the United States, and my brothers were no exception. We talked about who among us would be good at the job. Joe, as the oldest, seemed the natural candidate, and as he entered college and was more and more exposed to the world around him, his interest in the idea began to grow.

  “If you were president, what would you do?”

  It was a lighthearted game that we never conceived might come in handy someday.

  13

  Teddy

  I hope when you grow up you will dedicate your life to trying to make people happy instead of making them miserable, as war does today.

  —JOSEPH P. KENNEDY, IN LETTER TO SON TEDDY, AGE 8

  Teddy more than lived up to the hopes that my father expressed for him in a letter he posted from England, on the brink of the Second World War. Teddy was just a boy of eight then, awakening to both the kindness and the sadness that this world had in store. “Make people happy,” Dad wrote to him from across the sea. It was as if Dad, recognizing a singular gift in Teddy at that early age, set him on a course. The happiness, security, and freedom of others were always Teddy’s prevailing winds.

  Right from the start, Teddy captured our attention and that of everyone around him. It was not lost on me as a little girl that he drew the majority of cheers when we faced off against one another in the boxing ring. Later, in London, throngs of adoring newspaper photographers trailed him as he met every animal in the zoo. And later still, in the Senate chamber, chatter instantly stopped whenever Teddy rose to his feet to speak out for the poor, the disabled, the laborers, and the disenfranchised.

  Like all the boys, Teddy was influenced by Grandpa Fitzgerald and got a big kick out of him. He loved to tell the story about when Grandpa would come to visit us in Palm Beach, Florida, where we would go on vacation. Teddy would drive him over to the Breakers Hotel, where he liked to spend the morning. “He would tip the hotel desk clerk to ring the bell when guests checked in—once if they were from Massachusetts; twice if they were from Boston,” Teddy recalled in his book, True Compass. “When the bell rang twice, up would go Grandpa, introducing himself to the strangers. ‘I’m John Fitzgerald. You’re from Boston, aren’t you?’ By the end of the day, he would have gotten himself invited to lunch and dinner and would have had the time of his life.”

  Teddy would roar with laughter no matter how many times he told the story.

  Like Grandpa, Teddy never missed an opportunity to make someone’s day brighter and bring people together. He preferred loving to hating and laughing to crying. And if the opportunity presented itself, he was always ready to sing.

  I remember one evening, much later in life, when we were walking down the corridors of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Seeing Placido Domingo walking toward him in the hallway backstage, Teddy threw open his arms and began to sing: “O sole mio sta ’nfronte a te!” The great tenor joyfully spread out his arms as well and folded in with my brother in song.

  It is no wonder that Teddy made friends easily with nearly everyone he encountered. He was at home with presidents, prime ministers, and titans of industry, as well as musicians, taxi drivers, factory workers, doormen, farmers, and artists. They each influenced him. Even after the briefest conversation, he would come away with a fascinating lesson for life.

  “Jean, I want you to meet this gentleman,” he might say, leading me over to his newest friend. “He has an incredible story.”

  As a young adult, Teddy forged a friendship that would mark the rest of his life. Headed to Maine one summer to visit a college roommate, Teddy stopped at the home of the acclaimed and much loved American painter, Andrew Wyeth. Andrew was the son of the artist and illustrator, N. C. Wyeth, and his own son, Jamie, was just emerging as an artist himself when Teddy came to visit. This was an extraordinary family with a legacy of talent unlike any other in America. Teddy was smitten. Jamie, and his wonderful wife, Phyllis, became our lifelong friend and inspiration.

  Each summer from that point forward, Teddy would return to visit the Wyeths, first to the home in the small town of Cushing, Maine, and for years later to their homes on Southern Island, and then on Monhegan Island. My sister Pat and I often made the trip with Teddy. We would arrive early enough to go out for a sail, breezing along the rocky coast and among the small, pine-scented islands. The idea of a swim was forbidding. Even on the hottest summer days, the waters of the Atlantic Ocean were like ice. But dared on by Teddy and determined never to be called a coward, I would dive in, going into minor shock as I sank deeper into the cold. Challenge met, I would scramble back onto the deck into a sun-warmed towel, and our party would head back to shore and to a long lunch.

  There at the table of our country’s great artists, we listened and learned—how the masters of Europe honed their skills, how the light in Maine is perfect for painting, how the things we love around us make the best subjects, and how the arts can restore you in times of despair.

  Jamie Wyeth painting of Teddy on his sailboat, the Mya.

  © Jamie Wyeth. David Mager Photography.

  Though he was flattered by Andrew Wyeth’s attention, the lasting influence on Teddy’s artistic life was Jamie, his great friend and inspiration. We all grew to love Jamie not only for his tremendous artistic gift, but for his very warm friendship throughout the years. He went on to paint several members of our family, including what I believe is the most poignant portrait of Jack. He captured him as I remember him, casual yet engaged, leaning to his right, hand to chin, as if he were listening intently and forming an opinion about a point someone was making off canvas.

  Jamie was always encouraging Teddy to give painting a serious try, however campaigns and rallies and Senate hearings always seemed to get in the way. Then, in 1964, fate played its hand when Teddy was gravely injured in a plane crash. He broke his back, and for the next six months he was confined to a specialized hospital apparatus, called a Stryker frame, while he healed. The Stryker frame is a large, imposing, metal device. It clamped down on both sides of Teddy like a toaster and held him straight as a board and entirely motionless in the center. So that his back would heal properly, the nurse rotated the frame every few hours, back and forth—upside down, where he would hang facing the floor; or right side up, where he would lie staring at the ceiling.

  The Stryker frame was effective, yet painful and undoubtedly boring. But that did not vanquish Teddy. He was constantly upbeat throughout his recovery. “Mother always wants the best for her youngest!” he wrote on a photograph he sent to me of him being turned over in the Stryker frame by a burly male nurse.

  Turning adversity into opportunity, Teddy realized he now had the time to pursue his dream of being an artist, so he asked us to purchase him a set of paints. While hanging upside down, facing the floor, he painted for hours on canvases positioned beneath him.

  Teddy remembered what Jamie had told him, and he painted what he loved: the house at the Cape, sailboats, the inviting sea. Painting became a passion for Teddy, one he pursued long after he was released from the Stryker frame and resumed his regular life. Over
time, he became very good. Teddy loved nothing more than to share his latest works with us at Christmastime each year.

  “Always gentle seas and warm suns at the Cape,” he wrote under the lovely painting of the house at Hyannis Port that he gave to Steve and me. It hangs on my wall still, a daily reminder of the generous, positive, and happy spirit who created it.

  14

  Daily Walks

  Young children need fresh air, exercise, and activities that stimulate their interests, some of which I could supply by taking them for a daily walk.

  —ROSE FITZGERALD KENNEDY

  Mother was a great one for a walk. It was tremendous exercise. That she knew. But it was also a way to spend time—with her thoughts, with the person beside her, with the world around her. And it was definitely more fun than sitting around on the couch.

  In the evenings, she and Dad often took walks around the neighborhood in Bronxville. My brothers, sisters, and I would run down the driveway to catch up with them, but inevitably we would fall behind, lose interest, and go off to play. And that was how it should have been. Because it was clear that this was Mother and Dad’s time to be with each other.

  Mother and Dad headed out for a walk (Bronxville, 1938)

  John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. Kennedy Family Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

  On summer days, Mother would invite us to join her for a walk along the shore or on the golf course. Nearly every afternoon at 3:30 or 4:00 in the summer, after her nap upstairs, she would come downstairs and head out for her daily game of golf. My sisters and I knew we were welcome, and often went along, grabbing a set of clubs that we shared from the closet. Off we went with Mother on the drive to the local course.