The Nine of Us

by Jean Kennedy Smith

  We turned and stood to face the crowd below. Mr. and Mrs. LeMass looked up at us from the base of the stairs. The guard announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the president of the United States.”

  We slowly began to descend. When we reached the bottom, on the last step, Jack paused and smiled at me.

  “It’s a long way from Bronxville,” he said.

  I turned my head up to him, very carefully, and replied, “It sure is.”

  EPILOGUE

  And the Beat Goes On

  It has been said, “time heals all wounds.” I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.

  —ROSE FITZGERALD KENNEDY

  It is sometimes difficult to comprehend that I am the only member of our original family still living. Anyone who has lost someone they love understands the feeling. The spirit and laughter and intellect of the people you loved were so alive and so present that it is impossible to realize that they will not grace the earth and your life again.

  My parents and brothers and sisters had the earliest and most profound influence on my life, and I remain so proud of what they accomplished in the years that followed those special, yet too-short days that we all spent together. Joe’s legacy as a war hero is forever etched in history. Mother and Dad always cautioned against our imagining what he would have become if he had lived, yet I have no doubt his impact would have been profound.

  The same is true of Kathleen. Kick returned home with us, but she wanted to stay in England. She had become very fond of a young British soldier, William “Billy” Cavendish, the Marquess of Hartington, and she was anxious to see him again, as well as her many friends. Mother and Dad eventually agreed to allow Kick to return to London, at the height of the war, to work in the Red Cross Club.

  The romance between Kick and Billy was the source of tremendous chatter among the English social set. Kick was a Catholic and Billy was in line to be the next Duke of Devonshire, a critical position in the Church of England. At that time in history, the prospect of such a pairing raised eyebrows and attention.

  “Everyone in London is buzzing with rumors, and no matter what happens we’ve given them something to talk about,” Kick reported in a letter to Jack.

  Mother recalled how concerned she and Dad were about the situation, as were Billy’s parents, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. They called and wrote and sent cables to each other over the matter. They were good friends and they wanted the best for their children. “The point of it all was simply … to find a way through innumerable complications to make possible a marriage” for two young people who were “much in love,” Mother recalled.

  Kick in her Red Cross uniform (1944)

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

  Rosemary and Dad (London, 1938)

  © Bettmann/CORBIS.

  I was studying at the Sacred Heart Convent in Noroton, Connecticut, at the time and, of course, caught wind of the concern over Kick. Dad telephoned the school and asked if he could come see me during visitors’ day on Sunday. I was thrilled as always to have him to myself and, after lunch, he asked if I would walk down with him across the lawn toward Long Island Sound. There, as we strolled along the rocky shore, Dad told me that Kick and Billy had decided to get married. They would not marry in the Catholic Church but rather would have a civil ceremony in London.

  I did not know how to take the news. The Church’s teaching to marry someone of our own faith was engrained in all of us, yet I adored my older sister. Did this mean I would have to let her go? Could she still go to heaven?

  Dad immediately put me at ease:

  “God loves Kick and she’s a great girl,” he said. “Say a prayer for her and be happy for her.

  “It will all be okay.”

  My brother Joe, a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, was posted in London and gave Kick away at her wedding. He called us before the ceremony for advice on what to wear. Then immediately afterward he called again to report on the day’s events. We gathered around as Mother, ear pressed to the phone, repeated Joe’s account of the ceremony:

  “Joe says Kick looked absolutely lovely and carried a bouquet of pink camellias. She was floating on air!”

  We were all thrilled for her.

  In the end, Kick and Billy’s time together was painfully short. They spent only one month as newlyweds before Billy had to return to combat in Europe. He was killed in action, just one month after we lost Joe.

  Kick was destroyed to lose her beloved husband, as well as her brother. She came to stay with our family in Hyannis Port for a short time, but soon decided to go back to London, where she felt closest to Billy.

  Kick made a life for herself there among Billy’s family and her many friends. She wrote to us often and various members of the family had a chance to visit her over the three years that followed. It is so hard to fathom that we then lost her too. Kick was on her way to meet Dad in France when her plane went down. It was the ultimate heartbreak. Learning of her death, our shattered dad wrote of his sparkling daughter: “We know so little about the next world that we must think that they wanted just such a wonderful girl for themselves.”

  Little could we understand as well the sadness that befell our beloved Rosemary. She had been doing so well in her school in England, and we had such hope for her continued improvement. However, even after she returned home, her anxieties continued to increase. It greatly worried Dad and Mother, who both loved her so. Dad began an intense period of research, seeking out the best doctors to help Rosemary.

  Dad read about a new procedure called a lobotomy and, after speaking with multiple professionals about it, became confident it would help ease his daughter’s growing agitation. To minimize risk, Dad went straight to the acclaimed expert, Dr. James Watts, to perform the surgery. It went tragically wrong. It is still not clear what happened. Rather than finding relief through the procedure, Rosemary lost most of her ability to walk and communicate. We had been so hopeful, and were devastated.*

  It is easy from this vantage point to second-guess decisions, but in that time and place our parents made theirs with advice from the leading medical professionals of the day. As a family, we could only do one thing in the aftermath: move forward by finding the best care available for Rosemary—the wonderful sisters of St. Coletta at the School for Exceptional Children in Wisconsin—and by finding ways to help other people with disabilities. Dad and Mother founded the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation in memory of Joe, and dedicated it to providing leadership and encouraging research in the field of disability. All of us siblings and our children visited Rosemary at her home in Wisconsin, and she would come east to visit us on holidays, spending Eastertime at our house with my family. As always, Dad was at the forefront of our unified work for and in the name of Rosemary, but he remained heartbroken over the outcome of her surgery for the rest of his life.

  These early tragedies were devastating for all of us. Yet encouraged by our parents’ faith and example, we continued on. As it does, time eventually brought other, happier moments, as well as fun and accomplishments. Jack rose to the highest office in the land when he was elected president in 1960. He reinvigorated a tired nation and ignited it to service.

  But we could all be reasonably steady because of the faith, hope, and love we shared. And because we knew quite well what Jack would want from us: He would want courage, he would want as many smiles as we could manage, and he would want his death to be an affirmation of life. He would want us to think of him with love, but to live for the living, and to cherish such happiness as we could find and give, and any bit of light and hope and example of fortitude that might help us and others. We all realized this, and it needed no discussion, and we all did our best.

  Bobby, the one everyone turned to for support, was Jack’s right-hand man and confidant. At Jack’s request, Bobby stepped up to serve as attorney general after his election. Followin
g Jack’s death, and a particularly penetrating period of grief, Bobby decided to run for office himself. In 1965 he was elected U.S. senator for the state of New York, and three years later, in the throes of a nation in strife and at war, he launched a bid for the presidency.

  Painting by Teddy of his sailboat, the Mya

  Painting by Ted Kennedy. David Mager Photography.

  Bobby’s love of his fellow man was formed in his youth. His was a courageous voice on civil rights and for the underprivileged of this country. His was also a life taken too, too soon.

  His friend and adviser Richard Neustadt wrote of riding on Bobby’s funeral train from New York to Washington, DC, and seeing the thousands of people along the tracks paying their respects, “silent, serious, absorbed and concerned people.”

  They were, “by all appearances, by every sign of face and dress, primarily the urban poor, predominately the ghetto poor. Surely more than half—by some proportion I don’t know—more than half those faces were black.

  “He lived by the belief that individuals can make a difference, that individual will can be imposed on situations, that a man can matter if he mobilizes all his effort, focuses his mind and stamina and influence, holds nothing back,” Neustadt wrote. “Bob had no naïve confidence that effort on his part could guarantee success, but I think he had enormous confidence that effort, focused effort, could impose upon the world some share of the conditions making for success—and thus could move us forward—and those crowds along the railroad vindicate his confidence.

  “No man has lived his life in vain if he can leave that testimony for the rest of us.”

  We grieved again in private, but also with a nation. Then, in Bobby’s spirit, we again carried on.

  Eunice, that indomitable force, inspired by our sister Rosemary, devoted her life to helping people with intellectual challenges fully integrate into society. She was very active with the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation and started holding sports camps at her home in Maryland that quickly became a model for others throughout the nation. Just one month after Bobby’s death in 1968, Eunice announced the formation of the Special Olympics, the celebrated organization that now gives millions of people with disabilities in 170 nations around the world the opportunity to participate in sports. Today, it and the Foundation are led by Eunice’s son Tim, who, with the support of his brothers, sister, and cousins, does a fantastic job ensuring access and respect for all people with disabilities.

  Pat, my protector, cohort, and friend, whose infectious wit and grace matched her natural glamour, turned her early love for the arts into a vocation, helping support struggling playwrights and founding the National Committee for the Literary Arts to provide lectures and scholarships.

  And Teddy. Our little brother with heart, energy, and intellect to spare, joined his brothers in the U.S. Senate, where he remained for nearly forty-seven years, representing the poor, disadvantaged, and forgotten both in his home state of Massachusetts and across the nation and world.* Rather than crumbling under the loss of Jack and Bobby, he found the strength to support all of us who were left behind.

  Our family (1939)

  Photographer Unknown. Kennedy Family Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston. David Mager Photography.

  Teddy was a devoted father to his own three children, and to Jack’s and Bobby’s as well. He felt acutely the hole that was left in their lives by the deaths of their fathers. From his tremendous well of compassion, Teddy took on the responsibility of watching out for them and bringing us together for companionship and fun.

  Each year, Teddy organized elaborately involved trips for all of us to America’s historic sites, renting several buses and arranging all the meals, accommodations, and tours. At the time, we simply thought this was Teddy doing what Teddy does, leading the way and making sure all the children felt the connection to their family. But in retrospect, I find it incredible how he managed to do all this in the midst of the many critical issues of national importance he was dealing with daily at the Senate. He not only always found time for us, he made us feel as if there was nothing else he would rather be doing.

  With Teddy at the lead, dozens of us, grown-ups and children, spent summers tromping around Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, through the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, across the battlefields at Appomattox and Gettysburg, over the Brooklyn Bridge, and to the George Bush Presidential Library in Texas, where President George and First Lady Barbara Bush welcomed us so graciously. Teddy even took us on a hysterical canoeing and camping trip that had no end of mishaps.

  Following in Mother’s footsteps, Teddy would read up on all the historical facts of each site prior to striking out on a new adventure. Sometimes he would invite a historian along to guide us, but at other times, Teddy would narrate the stories himself. Young nieces and nephews hung on his words, carried afloat by his broad knowledge, enthusiasm, and wit.

  “And along these streets, in the dark of night, Paul Revere mounted his horse,” Teddy would whisper. Then he burst into a roar that made all of them jump: “The British are coming! The British are coming! The British are coming!”

  The story passed down to another generation.

  Joe, Jack, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Pat, Bobby, and Teddy—all are now gone, some taken in the prime of their lives, others in quiet peace in later years. We lost Dad, our giant and our leader, in 1969, following a series of strokes. Mother, ever forceful and determined, remained with us many years longer, until the age of 104, when she died peacefully during a rest at her beloved Hyannis Port home.

  For some time now, when I travel to Washington, DC, I stop on my way to and from the airport at Arlington National Cemetery to pay my respects to my four brothers. All of them—Joe, Jack, Bobby, and Teddy—are memorialized together at Arlington, their markers a testament to the tremendous gifts they gave to their country. The generations that come after them are called to do the same.

  Mother and Dad had twenty-eight grandchildren in all. These grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren, live very different lives from their forebears, who rode to school on horses, pinched pennies for phone calls, and traveled hours by train. Yet the problems that they and the world face today are no different. These problems carry the same burden and offer the same opportunity. They require the same determination, focus, and drive that they required of my grandparents, parents, brothers, and sisters, and all the young people of generations before.

  More than seventy-five years ago, my father, far away in England, wrote to my brother Bobby, a young boy of fourteen, at the height of World War II:

  “It is boys of your age who are going to find themselves in a very changed world, and the only way you can hold up your end is to prepare your mind so that you will be able to accept each situation as it comes along. So don’t, I beg of you, waste any time. Do all the things necessary to get yourself in good physical condition—and work hard.”

  Amen.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book was born of an idea to capture on paper a period of time that was so important to my life and to the life of my family. It was inspired by the example of my parents who loved each other dearly and guided the nine of us through life’s joys and sorrows with forbearance, wisdom, and faith. Mother and Dad taught us to be thankful to those who came before us and to give back to our fellow man and country. They taught us to never take anyone or anything for granted. I wanted to remember them, and my brothers and sisters, as they really were, and I am grateful to all those who helped make that possible.

  First and foremost, I want to thank my friend and partner in this adventure, Amy Seigenthaler, who helped me shape these stories into the collection they became. Our laughs kept us going, even on those days when we were close to hanging it all up. What fun we had.

  And to my agent, Laurie Abkemeier, my editor, Gail Winston, and everyone at Harper, especially Sofia Groopman—I am extremely grateful for the confidence they showed in the m
aterial and the care they took shepherding the book to completion.

  Thank you also to the librarians and archivists who helped source images for the book, especially Connor Anderson, Laurie Austin, and Maryrose Grossman at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum; Jennifer Quan at the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation; and Kirsten Carter at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum—a job well done.

  Proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to the restoration of the USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the ship I christened in 1945 in memory of my oldest brother and godfather, Joe. The ship is now in need of repair and, on behalf of my entire family, I would like to contribute to that effort. I know this would make our parents, and all the brave men who served on her, very happy.

  While writing this book, it has been enlightening for me to look back at my childhood and realize how much has changed in my lifetime. I am grateful to my mother for urging us to keep diaries and write letters when we were young, and I encourage parents today to do the same with their children. Suggest that they write about their adventures, their feelings, and the sights around them. It will be remarkable for them to look back in twenty, thirty, or fifty years and see how different the world is. I also encourage grandparents to share their stories of growing up. Years from now, their grandchildren will still hold fast to those stories as reminders of the people and the past that helped make them who they became.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JEAN KENNEDY SMITH is the former United States Ambassador to Ireland and founder of VSA, an international organization that provides arts and education opportunities for people with disabilities and increases access to the arts for all. Smith was named an honorary citizen of Ireland by Irish President Mary McAleese for her contribution to the Irish peace process, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in recognition of her service to people with disabilities. The eighth of nine children born to Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy and Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., Smith is a mother of four and the widow of the late Stephen Smith. She lives in New York.