The Kennedys Read online

  The Kennedys

  Also by Thomas Maier

  DR. SPOCK: AN AMERICAN LIFE

  NEWHOUSE:

  ALL THE GLITTER, POWER AND GLORY

  OF AMERICA’S RICHEST MEDIA EMPIRE

  AND THE SECRETIVE MAN BEHIND IT

  The Kennedys

  America’s Emerald Kings

  THOMAS MAIER

  Copyright © 2003 by Thomas Maier

  Published by Basic Books,

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810.

  Designed by Lovedog Studio

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Maier,Thomas, 1956-

  The Kennedys :America’s emerald kings / Thomas Maier.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 0-465-04317-8 (hardcover)

  eBook ISBN: 9780786740161

  1. Kennedy family. 2. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963. 3. Politicians—United States—Biography. 4. Irish Americans—Biography. 5. Irish American families. 6. Catholics— United States—Biography. I.Title.

  E843.M35 2003

  973.922'092'2—dc21

  2003010426

  DHSB 03 04 05 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  Photo credits: page xxii, 232, and 464: courtesy of The John F. Kennedy Library; frontispiece and page 358: courtesy of Timepix; page 92: courtesy of Kennedy family private collection.

  To my sons—

  Drew, Taylor and Reade

  “All of us of Irish descent are bound together by the ties that come from a common experience; experience which may exist only in memories and in legend but which is real enough to those who possess it. The special contribution of the Irish, I believe—the emerald thread that runs throughout the tapestry of their past—has been the constancy, the endurance, the faith that they displayed through endless centuries of foreign oppression—centuries in which even the most rudimentary religious and civil rights were denied to them—centuries in which their mass destruction by poverty, disease and starvation were ignored by their conquerors.”

  —SEATOR JOHN F. KENNEDY, 1957

  “Be more Irish than Harvard.”

  —ROBERT FROST,

  INSCRIBED IN A BOOK OF POEMS

  GIVEN TO JFK AT THE 1961

  PRESIDENTIAL INAGURATION

  Preface

  “Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that immigrants were America.”

  —HISTORIAN OSCAR HANDLIN,

  AS QUOTED BY JOHN F. KENEDY

  IN A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS

  WHEN MY CHILDREN ARE ASKED IN SCHOOL to draw a family tree, listing where their ancestors were born, the limbs cleave evenly between Ireland and Brooklyn.

  My wife’s family are all from Ireland, her father from the north and her mother from the south;my side of the family tree is rooted in several generations from Brooklyn, a mix of Irish Catholics, English and German Lutherans converted by marriage. Out there on one of the limbs is my maternal great-grandmother, née Mary Kelly, of whom an apocryphal tale about being Irish Catholic in America was passed along to her children.

  As the story goes, Mary Kelly, not far from the boat herself, was one of many Irish-Americans who admired New York Governor Al Smith, known for his progressive programs aimed at helping the city’s immigrants ascend into the middle class. When Smith ran for president in 1928, Mary hoped the old bigotry would be set aside, allowing a well-qualified Catholic to be elected to the highest office in the land. Instead, Smith became mired in a Ku Klux Klan–incited effort to scare self-respecting Americans from voting for a “papist,” a candidate who supposedly owed his allegiance to “the anti-Christ in Rome” and not his native land. The sheer hate faced by Smith’s doomed candidacy shocked and saddened an entire generation of Irish Catholics. According to family lore, my great-grandmother, embittered by the experience, never voted again.

  While researching this book, I was reminded of these hard feelings, once common among Irish Catholics, when I read the Kennedy letters and recollections about Smith’s 1928 campaign. Both Joseph and Rose Kennedy were taken aback by the anti-Catholicism exhibited deep in the American heartland, and what Smith’s crushing defeat meant for their family’s future ambitions. They were still very mindful of Smith when their son, John F. Kennedy, announced his presidential candidacy in 1960.

  Despite all their money and influence, the Kennedys, like thousands of other less powerful Irish Catholics, realized how far they had to go to become fully accepted in American society. Some well-regarded histories of the Kennedys don’t even mention Al Smith’s name. Yet only with Smith in mind—placed in the broader context of the American immigrant experience—can their achievement be appreciated fully. For even now, John Kennedy remains the first and only person from a minority group ever elected president of the United States.

  SINCE THEIR ARRIVAL IN THIS LAND, the Kennedys have been exemplars of the Irish Catholic immigrant experience in America—from Patrick and Bridget Kennedy of County Wexford fleeing famine-stricken Ireland among the great wave of emigrants in the 1840s, to JFK’s barrier-breaking 1960 election to the American presidency, to efforts by Senator Edward Kennedy and U.S. Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to bring peace in the 1990s to their ancestral homeland. Their sense of being Irish, of being Catholic, and of being members of a family coming from an often oppressed immigrant minority—indeed the very Irish notion of a Kennedy clan, as they often referred to themselves—carried through from one generation to the next.

  Most early histories and biographies of the Kennedys mirrored the storybook image that the family projected to achieve power. The popular notion of JFK as a Harvard-educated Anglophile, an almost perfect creation of America’s melting pot, fit neatly with prevailing theories of assimilation. None of the old stereotypes about Irish politicians seemed to apply here. As a result, dozens of Kennedy books routinely ignored, or gave only a passing nod, to the underlying forces of ethnicity and religion that so often affected the Kennedy family’s actions and outlook. Only with the passage of time, and the recent availability of many personal documents at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, does a more complete and accurate portrait emerge. Rather than presenting another Camelot fable, this book reexamines the Kennedy saga by exploring the subtle nuances of these cultural factors on their lives. In doing so,we gain a fresh understanding into the Kennedy’s sense of their own Irish immigrant heritage, their historic encounters with religious bigotry and how the complex dynamics of their family life reflected the Irish Catholic experience in America. Many new insights, unexamined events and previously unknown but influential people come to light for the first time in the familiar story.

  As the documents quoted in this book show, the Kennedy relationship with the Roman Catholic Church was far more extensive than the public perceived of the 1960 presidential candidate, elected as he was by vowing a strict separation between church and state. Private letters illustrate the family’s deep political and financial ties to the church, both in America and with the Pope’s right-hand man at the Vatican. These documents detail Joe Kennedy’s secret dealings between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the future Pope Pius XII, why he felt that FDR harbored a bias against Catholics like himself and how the Kennedys battled behind the scenes with the church’s hierarchy during JFK’s historic presidential campaign. Joe Kennedy’s decades-long friendship with the suave, discreet Vatican administrator, Count Enrico
Galeazzi (GALL-a-zee, as Jean Kennedy Smith pronounces it), offers a fascinating venue into the Kennedy family’s influence in Rome. Their correspondence during the 1960 presidential campaign provides a running commentary on the family’s frustration with anti-Catholic bigotry and anger with the conservative bishops in their own church—something the Kennedys dared not show to the American public.

  From this perspective, we also gain new understanding into the personal side of the Kennedys, the often profound and pervasive impact of their cultural background beyond the sheer exercise of power and money. Volumes of family documents—from typed formal correspondences to the handwritten comments on funeral Mass cards, or scribbled St. Patrick’s Day greetings—reveal their struggles with faith after so many tragedies, their difficulties in overcoming anti-Semitism and race and reconciling matters of marriage and sex within the church’s teachings. We learn of figures such as Jesuit priest Richard McSorley, who spoke for the first time about Jacqueline Kennedy’s depression and thoughts of committing suicide in the wake of her husband’s 1963 assassination. In a typical Kennedyesque setting (while playing tennis in Bobby and Ethel’s Hickory Hill backyard), Father McSorley advised and comforted Jackie as she wondered aloud about a God who would claim the lives of her husband and their infant son, Patrick, within a few tragic months. We get a much more realistic picture of the traumatic impact of these events on the widowed first lady, who appeared silent and stoic to the American public from behind her black veil. McSorley, a retired theology professor at Georgetown University, generously made available his private papers in the school’s archives, which included his diary and letters back and forth with Jackie Kennedy. At age eighty-eight, McSorley died in October 2002, nearly two years after being interviewed for this book.

  From its very beginning, this book focuses on the “emerald thread” between two nations—for so much about the Kennedys in America can be understood and appreciated only by first studying what happened to them in Ireland. Interviews and documents detail the Kennedys’ long involvement in the quest for Ireland’s independence, including how some family members in Ireland were tied to the Irish Republican Army. It recounts JFK’s celebrated 1963 visit to the home of his elderly Irish cousin who, unknown to the unwitting White House, had once been a local gunrunner for the IRA’s women’s branch. It also explores the Kennedy family’s long and sympathetic relationship with Irish leader Eamon De Valera, whose studied neutrality in World War II led him to pay condolences to the Germans upon the death of Adolf Hitler. Later in this story, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams describes the Kennedys’ determined efforts to bring peace to Northern Ireland in the 1990s. Ireland remained a constant thread in this family’s history. As former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend explains, the Kennedys’ sense of being Irish Catholics—both as outcasts in Ireland and as “outsiders” in the Brahmin world of Boston—would affect their politics for decades to come.

  Though some call them “America’s royalty,” a more apt analogy may be the Irish chieftains of old, the kings of an emerald isle who, according to legend, inspired and led large groups of followers. This book’s title alludes to the “chieftain” notion mentioned by several people who were interviewed, and occasionally by the Kennedys themselves. These qualities emerged first among the Kennedy men who achieved fame and power, but also, tellingly, in recent years with the family’s prominent women, such as Townsend and Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith. In considering John F. Kennedy’s life, the subtle nuances of cultural identity can provide great insight into what some scholars call “presidential character,” certainly more than we might have realized at first. Though this book is not intended as a policy analysis, it is nevertheless striking how much of the Kennedy family’s ethnic and religious background played a role in such issues as civil rights, Vietnam, poverty, immigration, terrorism and the fight against communism.

  From the broadest vantage, the Kennedy story can be viewed emblematically, as part of the history of a people—the Irish—on both sides of the Atlantic. In hindsight, it reminds us of the glories and the limits of America’s melting pot and those histories that paint people from minority groups in familiar “just like us” tones. We gain a better grasp of the Kennedys’ transcendent appeal beyond Irish Catholics—to African- Americans, Jews, Hispanics and countless other immigrant groups based on a shared dream of ascendancy in America. It recalls how far we’ve progressed as a country since the 1960 election, and yet how many barriers still remain. For in this context, our understanding of the Kennedys becomes richer, more complex and of greater historical significance to what John Kennedy once called a nation of immigrants.

  Several Kennedy family members deserve thanks for their cooperation, particularly Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who shared insights in interviews, and Senator Edward Kennedy, who personally responded in writing to my questions. The reader should also know that Jean Kennedy Smith provided additional information to several questions during a brief telephone conversation. I’m indebted to Eunice Shriver and Paul Kirk Jr., who granted untethered access to the personal papers of Joseph P. Kennedy, the family patriarch. In these letters, telegrams, diaries and personal correspondence, made available in its entirety only since August 2000 at the John F.Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, the Irish Catholic cultural influences on the Kennedys become abundantly clear. The Kennedys also graciously granted full access to their private photo collection, which captures their intimate family images from Holy Communions to swims along the Cape to kissing the Blarney Stone in County Cork.

  Most of the Kennedys mentioned in this book are now long gone, though several people in the United States, such as JFK’s top aide Theodore C. Sorensen, former Senator Harris Wofford and former Senator Eugene McCarthy, who ran against Bobby Kennedy in the 1968 Democratic primaries, kindly shared their memories. More contemporary observers also helped, such as Niall O’Dowd, a founder of the Irish Voice and Irish America, who played a significant role with the Kennedys during the 1990s peace talks, and Amanda Smith, whose edited collection of the papers of her adoptive grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, stands as one of the best books about the family. Several other experts in Irish-American history generously shared their perspectives, including Ruth-Ann Harris, professor of history and Irish studies at Boston College, whose multi-volume work details the odyssey of Irish into Boston during Patrick and Bridget Kennedy’s time. James M. O’Toole, a Boston College professor and former archivist of the Boston archdiocese, offered guidance about the interconnection of politics and the church from his biography of Cardinal William O’Connell and his knowledge of the city’s Irish Catholics. The Reverend Andrew M. Greeley shared his considerable wisdom about the Irish Catholic experience in America, about which he’s written eloquently for years, and the Kennedys’ role in that long historical journey. I’d like to thank the Reverend Raymond A. Schroth, S.J., an old friend and superb teacher, for his suggestions, particularly in hinting that fellow Jesuit, Father Richard McSorley, might be worth contacting.

  In Ireland, several Kennedy cousins, particularly Mary Ann Ryan and Patrick Grennan, who run the Kennedy Homestead in Dunganstown, were exceedingly gracious and candid with their comments, providing an unknown glimpse into the family’s long-time Irish Republican sympathies. Local historians such as John W. Pierce and Thomas Grennan showed me the farms, the churches, even the gravestones of the Irish Kennedys who stayed. The County Wexford Library provided local newspaper accounts and other documentation about the effect of the Famine on tenant farmers like the Kennedys. The National Archives of Ireland provided access to once confidential documents relating to President Kennedy’s 1963 visit to Ireland, which reflected the persistent dream of Eamon De Valera someday to reunite the two parts of Ireland. In County Donegal, the Brennans (amply represented on my wife’s side of the family tree) were lovely hosts during an extended stay and introduced me to the local Sinn Fein leaders who helped arrange my interview with Gerry Adams.

  In preparing
this work, many people are to be thanked. Basic Books publisher Elizabeth Maguire and her staff at Basic Books—including Jennifer Blakebrough-Raeburn, Megan Hustad, Joanna Pinsker, Jamie Brickhouse, Ian Gross, Felicity Tucker, John Hughes and Rick Pracher— who provided both encouragement and their many considerable skills to produce this project. My agent, Faith Hamlin of Sanford J. Greenburger Associates Inc., has been a bedrock of support, finding the right venues for three successive, sometimes controversial, books about American life in the twentieth century. She’s been a great friend. Bill Maier, my brother, was generous with his technical advice and encouraging spirit. My colleagues in the journalism world deserve gratitude for their help, particularly Lawrence C. Levy for his wise and careful reading of the first draft. Others to be thanked are Richard Galant, Jim Dwyer, Kathleen Kerr,Noel Rubinton, Rita Ciolli, Howard Schneider, Tony Marro, and my long-time mentor, Robert W. Greene, whose recollections of working on the 1950s Senate Rackets Committee with Bobby Kennedy was one of this project’s most delightful moments.

  Writing is a solitary endeavor, but I relied continually on my family for help along the way. My wife, Joyce McGurrin, provided constant encouragement with her knowledgeable insights, thoughtful ear and nightly cups of tea. In Ireland, Joyce’s family and her own intuitive awareness of the Irish sensibilities proved invaluable for this New York fellow. This book is dedicated to the joy of our lives—our three sons, Drew, Taylor and Reade—whom we love very much. The boys spent two weeks in Ireland with their parents during the early stages of research, alternately learning how to play hurling at the Kennedy Homestead and how to look up material in the National Library in Dublin. Mostly, they gained a sense of their own history. Because they are teenagers with an abundance of intelligence, charm and Irish wit, Drew and Taylor, known as the “redheads,” likely learned the most from this experience. They spent hours with their father pulling books and sifting through archives. But Reade, a bit younger with the same gifts, had probably the most personally affecting experience.