Ethel Kennedy: “Rah-Rah Girl” becomes political matriarch | Opinion

As a college intern on Capitol Hill during the country's Bicentennial, every day I worked for my senator and contracted a contagious case of Potomac Fever felt historic. One day I met Elizabeth Taylor as she left the Senate chamber on the arm of her then-husband, Senator John Warner of Virginia. another time I met former Vice President Hubert Humphrey on the Capitol subway; and later that summer I spotted Ben Bradlee (former). Newsweek Office manager and later played by Jason Robards in the role of editor-in-chief The Washington Post In All the president's men) and Carl Bernstein when I visited post's newsroom.

But my most lasting memory of that magical summer of 1976 was undoubtedly meeting Ethel Kennedy while attending a picnic she hosted at her famous Hickory Hill estate in McLean, Virginia. When I heard of her death this week, I remembered that memorable day almost 50 years ago.

Ethel, the widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was a bundle of energy at age 48, even after giving birth to 11 children. I watched her use the iconic Kennedy challenge on her tennis court, chat with columnist Art Buchwald and her husband's press secretary Frank Mankiewicz on the patio, and let her youngest children run around in the pool and yard, following from a pack of pet dogs. I had visions of Camelot's apotheosis, with touch football games on the lawn and parties where JFK adviser Arthur Schlesinger ended up in the pool fully clothed.

Ethel greeted me warmly as I expressed my admiration for her and her family. A decade later, when I was a student at the University of Virginia, I spotted Ethel and her brother-in-law, Senator Edward Kennedy (surrogate father to their family), on campus as they watched their sons Robert Jr. and Michael graduate from law school, which was theirs Father and Uncle Teddy had visited.

When the 50th anniversary of her husband's death was celebrated in 2018, Ethel was in a wheelchair, but I found her talking animatedly to guests at the Irish ambassador's house.

In the intervening years I had worked with her eldest child, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former lieutenant governor of Maryland; Robert Jr., a controversial presidential candidate; and her sister Kerry, director of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, a center founded by her mother. It was a pleasure working with Kathleen and Kerry. RFK Jr. less so. He had taken too seriously a saying he said he had learned from his mother: “If you follow all the rules, you'll miss out on all the fun!” No wonder sister-in-law Jacqueline Kennedy Bobby's sisters and Ethel, who are so different from hers demanding personality, called “the rah-rah girl”.

Their cheerful zest for life was a clear plus when they ran for the Senate with Robert Kennedy in 1964 and for president four years later. But like Jackie, joy turned to tragedy. Who could forget Ethel, pregnant with her eleventh child, leaning over RFK as he lay dying from an assassin's bullet on the pantry floor of LA's Ambassador Hotel, or shouting at the crowd to stand back and give him some air ? Or she echoed her sister-in-law's stoicism, which Jackie had displayed after the assassination of President Kennedy. As mother-in-law Rose Kennedy grimly observed, “It seemed impossible that our family could be struck by the same disaster twice in five years. Who would have thought something like this could happen to the same family. If I had read it.” Fiction, I would have said it was incredible.

Coincidentally, in 2023, I returned to Hickory Hill, which Ethel had sold and moved to the family compound on Cape Cod, to attend a dinner hosted by its current owner, who had taken over the house and property after years of revelry Kennedy's had completely redesigned.

Ethel, a devout Catholic who received communion daily, firmly believed that the dead would be reunited with their loved ones in heaven. We hope she organizes a lively game of touch football with Bobby and her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, whose untimely losses Ethel endured as the last and perhaps toughest matriarch of the Kennedys' Camelot generation.

Dr. Barbara A. Perry, a Kennedy biographer, is the J. Wilson Newman Professor and co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at UVA's Miller Center.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own.