JOE KENNEDY CONTINUED TO KEEP A LOW PUBLIC PROFILE during Jack’s first year as president, not wanting to provide ammunition to those who feared his influence. As former president Harry Truman had exclaimed about JFK during the campaign, “It’s not the pope I’m afraid of, it’s the pop!”1 Rose, however, “suffered no such strictures.” She would play “queen mother” in Camelot.2 Appropriately, when visiting the White House, she stayed in the Queens’ Bedroom. Five European monarchs had slept in the suite, including Britain’s queen mother and her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II.3 It featured an elegant four-poster bed and comfortable sitting room, yet Rose found the view of Pennsylvania Avenue “drab.” She preferred the Lincoln Bedroom’s spectacular panorama of the Washington Monument. Unfortunately, though historic, the room was drafty in winter and stuffy in summer. Rose wasn’t strong enough to lift the heavy window sashes for fresh air or tall enough to climb into the high Victorian bed without a stool. Furthermore—and not trivial to Rose—the dressing table lights were so dim that she couldn’t apply her makeup properly or choose which jewelry to wear.4
At age seventy, Rose carried an array of cosmetics and other items to maintain her polished and youthful appearance. Eyebrow pencils, eyelash liquid, eye shadow, false eyelashes, foundation, face powder, rouge, hair lacquer and spray, curlers, and a wig were her travel-kit staples. Before appearing in the spotlight, Rose reminded herself to put her “hair over her ears, darken eyebrows, make up hands” to hide age spots from years of swimming and golfing in the Cape Cod, Palm Beach, and Riviera sun.5
Very few presidential mothers live long enough to see their sons inaugurated or to participate in their presidencies. When the White House Protocol Office determined that Rose’s position at state functions was behind all government officials, military officers, diplomats, and their spouses, Rose felt rather disappointed. In April 1961 she happened to be at the White House when the Bay of Pigs invasion went terribly wrong. Joe, who once again remained at home, told Rose that he had been on the phone most of the day with Jack and Bobby in the aftermath of the disastrous attempt to overthrow Castro. Asking how Joe felt, Rose heard his one-word response: “Dying.” Even so, Joe tried to bolster Jack’s spirits, comprehending the disaster’s impact on the new chief executive. Two days after the invasion debacle began, Rose accompanied the president and first lady to a dinner at the Greek embassy, hosted by visiting Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis. Despite the week’s serious developments, Rose was pleased that she chose to wear “a pink chiffon dress made by Greek designer Dessess in Paris,” which “everyone seemed to like.” Impatient with the diplomatic small talk, President Kennedy left early and, accompanied by Jackie and Rose, returned to the White House, bid them a quick “good night,” and hurried to the West Wing, only to learn that Castro’s forces had captured more than a thousand Cuban exile–invaders trained by the United States. More than a hundred of them had been killed. “Jackie walked upstairs with me and said [Jack] was so upset all day and had practically been in tears—felt he had been misinformed by [the] CIA [about the invasion].…,” Rose reported in her diary. “[I] [f]elt so sorry for him—Jackie seemed so sympathetic and said she had stayed with him until he had lain down as she had never seen him so depressed except once at the time of his [back] operation.” Nevertheless, Rose had shopping to do in New York and left the next morning without seeing Jack. She browsed for furs, particularly “a Russian sable cape for wear in cool weather and fall and perhaps Austria and a white mink for festive occasions when Jack visits de Gaul [sic].”6
ROSE WAS ALREADY looking forward to accompanying Jack and Jackie on their first state visit beyond North America, starting on May 31 in Paris, where JFK had three days of talks scheduled with French president Charles de Gaulle. Then it was on to Vienna for the president’s momentous summit with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Rose went to Paris a few days before the official delegation to purchase an evening gown for the state event at Versailles. As a private citizen, she stayed at the Ritz. “[I]t was rather difficult to make plans as I did not want to impose my presence or insist on invitations for my friends. Not having a man with me or anyone in the family, I had to telephone a few times and gradually learn what protocol permitted.”7
Initially, Rose heard that she might not be included in the official welcoming party for Jack at Orly Airport, but, she said, “I wanted to go and just wait in the car somewhere near to see and hear the welcome and the reception of my son. Then, I was invited to go to the pavilion where the other guests had assembled.” There Rose met President de Gaulle and his wife. Rose sat for a few minutes with Mme de Gaulle and spoke in French about President Kennedy’s visit. She told France’s first lady how excited and pleased she was about her son’s arrival, and they discussed their children, “always a safe topic” on state occasions.8 Their conversation was too short and too public for these remarkable women, both married to powerful men, to discuss their most poignant commonality. Each had a retarded daughter. Anne de Gaulle, born in 1928, suffered from Down syndrome. Though her parents kept her with the family and gave her the best care available, she died of pneumonia at age twenty. General de Gaulle, who had demonstrated uncharacteristic warmth toward his disabled child, comforted his wife at Anne’s burial: “Maintenant, elle est comme les autres” (“Now, she is like the others”).9 On a later occasion, Rose had an opportunity to tell Mme de Gaulle “that we did work for retarded children, and she said they had one, as I told her we had one.” She liked Mme de Gaulle’s “charming, quiet manners” and her “unobtrusive, self-effacing” persona.10
After Air Force One landed, Rose received a place of honor with the American and French first ladies for the media photographs. A motorcade drove President and Mrs. Kennedy into Paris. Rose rode with the wives of the American and French ambassadors, a fitting assignment for the spouse of a former ambassador.11 The trip was going well, Rose reported to Joe—“All the shops and newspapers have been wild in praise of Jack [and] Jackie.…”12 Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors was replete with “splendors and beauty.” But in retrospect Rose questioned the need for such extravagant and prolonged occasions. Should heads of state, “who have such weighty questions on their minds,” have to devote “hours at state luncheons or banquets exchanging polite pleasantries with the wife of some state functionary or listening to long-winded speeches?”13 Perhaps her lifetime of serving as the daughter, wife, and mother of government officials was wearing thin. Or did her newest role, relegated to the bottom of the protocol list without the legitimizing presence of her ambassador-husband, offer so much less to Rose than that of her days in London two decades earlier?
Still, Vienna beckoned. She remembered going there with Honey Fitz and sister Agnes nearly a half century ago and the thrill “when I went on a small steamer one night down the Blue Danube and joyfully waltzed to the strains of the orchestra playing Strauss’s beautiful Blue Danube Waltz. I wonder to myself … if the young man [Hugh Nawn] with whom I danced has ever come back and if he too remembered the night in 1911 when, young and gay and carefree, we danced the hours away.” Rose seemed to long for her unencumbered youth and perhaps for a man who might have offered her fidelity, if not celebrity. From her convent days and Boston University courses, she could converse in German with her table partner, a government official, at the state dinner for JFK and Khrushchev at Schönbrunn Palace. She had hoped that Mrs. Khrushchev might speak German too, but the Russian knew rudimentary English. Their small talk centered on children and daughters-in-law. The Soviet first lady was interested in Rose’s “beauty secrets” and watched as Mrs. Kennedy reapplied her makeup. In truth, Mrs. Khrushchev needed a complete makeover in fashion, hairstyle, and cosmetics. Drab gray suits and a severe hairdo only accented Mrs. Khrushchev’s “strong, sturdy” figure, “capable of extreme physical exertion.”14
Even so, Rose liked the wife of America’s archenemy; she was a pleasant, kindly woman who had read a recent feature story on Rose in McCall’s. In fact, the May 1961 edition of the women’s magazine had pictured both wives on its cover. The article, an early profile of the Kennedy matriarch after Jack’s election, lauded her as the family’s scholar, musician, and linguist, noting that her husband and Jack were less than star students at Harvard. “When the children were little,” the magazine observed, “it was primarily Mrs. Kennedy who whetted their appetites for knowledge of current affairs and faraway places and great books, and who generally provided the emotional balance necessary in a clan of alert, lively, questioning youngsters.”15
On Sunday, while marching up the aisle for Mass at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in the heart of old Vienna, the Kennedys were greeted by Viennese worshippers waving white handkerchiefs to honor the young American president and his wife.16 Jackie had charmed Premier Khrushchev at the state dinner in Vienna, and Jack had hoped to do so in his summit with the Soviet leader. Unfortunately, Khrushchev’s bellicosity, especially his threats over Berlin, where American and Soviet tanks were poised barrel to barrel in the divided city, stunned JFK.
After President and Mrs. Kennedy left the Continent, Rose flew on to Florence and Rome, meeting at the Vatican with Pope John XXIII, who had replaced her friend, Pius XII, in 1958. Joe joined Rose for the remainder of the summer in their favorite Riviera hideaway, the Vista Bella at Cap d’Antibes, with its panoramic views of Garoupe Bay’s azure waters. Rose wrote to Bobby, “I think you should work hard and become president after Jack—It will be good for the country and for you.… Ever your affectionate and peripatetic Mother.”17
Summers in Hyannis Port now held little charm for Rose. “The scene had been noisy enough with the children and grandchildren without tourist traffic,” she wrote. With Jack president, Bobby attorney general, Ted running for Jack’s old Senate seat, Jackie a celebrity in her own right, Sarge Shriver directing the president’s Peace Corps, and Pat married to a Hollywood movie star, gawkers descended upon the tiny Cape Cod village. Tourist boats cruised by the Kennedy compound, and Rose could hear their guides’ amplified patter. “I had always needed times of peace and quiet and by then had reached a stage in life when I needed them more …,” Rose declared.18 Her niece, Mary Jo Clasby, saw the paradox in these opposing Fitzgerald traits. Honey Fitz, the ultimate ebullient extrovert, loved the spotlight and craved public attention, while Rose’s quiet mother had displayed a classic introvert’s behavior.19
Back in the States, Rose returned to her lifelong hobby of autograph collecting. She wanted a signed picture of Nikita Khrushchev. Gathering photos of Jack and the Soviet leader taken in Vienna, the president’s mother sent them to Khrushchev for his signature. In turn, she asked Jack to sign the photos so that she could send the president’s signature to his Soviet counterpart. What was a little cold war, not to mention Berlin and Cuba, between two world leaders? JFK was less than amused, writing to Rose just two weeks after the Cuban Missile Crisis:
Dear Mother:
I have signed today the pictures from Kruschev [sic].
Would you be sure to let me know in the future any contacts you have with heads of state, etc. concerning requests for pictures, signatures, etc. Requests of this nature are subject to interpretations and therefore I would like to have you clear them before they are sent.
Needless to say the picture is most interesting and will be highly regarded.
Love, Jack20
Although the president’s letter to his stickler mother included a misspelling, uncharacteristically, she didn’t point it out to him. But she did get his point. Her return letter expressed contrition and embodied the Catholic requirement to amend her life and sin no more.
Dear Jack,
I understand very well your letter, although I had not thought of it before. There were two menus which were autographed by Khrushchev at the dinner in Vienna, at the same time he signed one for Jackie. However, we did obtain the photographs from “Match” magazine, or a similar one, last winter, and afterwards sent them to be autographed. I can see that it was probably an error, and it will not happen again.
As you know, Chancellor Adenauer and President Eisenhower autographed books for you last Christmas, and I have asked General de Gaulle to do so for this Christmas. I guess this clarifies the situation.
Adding a humorous touch, Rose signaled that she hadn’t taken offense at her son’s chastisement: “When I ask for Castro’s autograph, I shall let you know in advance.”21
Throughout these days, Rose held tight to a remainder of parental authority, bolstered by knowledge of Jack’s mischievous boyhood: “In looking over my old diary, I found that you were urged on one occasion, when you were five years old, to wish for a happy death. But you turned down this suggestion and said that you would like to wish for two dogs instead. So do not blame the Bouviers if John [Jr.] has similar ideas. Much love, dear Jack.”22
During the 1961 fall social season, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited Washington after Jack and Jackie had entertained him and his daughter, Indira Gandhi, in Newport. Rose had met Nehru on her 1955 visit to India, and he now invited her to a dinner at the Indian embassy in honor of President and Mrs. Kennedy. Afterward, Rose extended her White House stay to attend Pablo Casals’s historic concert there. The renowned cellist had moved to Puerto Rico after the Spanish Civil War and vowed never to perform in a country that recognized Spain’s fascist Franco regime. Yet Casals, now eighty-four, so admired President Kennedy that he made an exception to his moratorium and came to Washington to play on the occasion of Puerto Rican governor Luis Muñoz Marín’s visit to the White House.23 Rose sat in the front row at the East Room concert, next to Marta Casals, the virtuoso’s wife, sixty years his junior. The president’s mother noted that Mrs. Casals “was one of his pupils … and was married after a short courtship.” Adjourning to the Blue Room for an intimate supper in the cellist’s honor, Rose appreciated Jackie’s remark that her mother-in-law “knew more about music and musicians than she did,” as well as the first lady’s observation that “Belle Mère” had “added immeasurable lustre” to the event.24
THE FIRST THANKSGIVING of JFK’s presidency brought the family to Hyannis Port. Jack’s vigor pleased Rose. “[He] [h]as good color (uses sun lamp if necessary) and, of course, has filled out considerably and looks in good form—Actually he has no exercise so his face looks almost chubby.” Ted’s bulky physique also caught her eye. “Jack gets a great kick out of seeing Ted dance as Ted has great sense of rhythm, but he is so big and has such a big derrière it is funny to see him throw himself around.” Rose was also amused as her children and their spouses tried the latest dance craze, the Twist. Rose described it as “Throw your hips around.” “No one knew much about [the Twist],” the prim Mrs. Kennedy admitted, “but Jackie … in a Schiaparelli pink slack suit gave a three-minute performance to the jungling-rumbling music of Joan [on the piano]. Jack sits with his cigar (small ones usually) just looking on and smiling.…”25
Jack’s ever-present friend, Lem Billings, arrived the day after Thanksgiving. “Jackie never has LeMoyne stay at [her] house.… Suppose she is sick of having someone always around, but I am surprised that she has nerve enough to say so. She looks well, and both she and Jack seem happy together,” Rose was undoubtedly relieved to observe. While at Hyannis, the president met with Khrushchev’s son-in-law, Aleksei Adzhubei, editor of the newspaper Izvestia. The interview later prompted a discussion among the Kennedys about bomb shelters. “[W]e have done nothing yet nor discussed it at home,” Rose wrote, but she seemed unworried about an atomic attack on the Cape. More interesting to her was domestic politics, especially Joe’s suggestion to Bobby that “he should move to Maryland and become governor—then president [in] 1968, but he hates to start in a new state, and Ethel hates to move [from Virginia].”26
Rose had just completed a speaking engagement at the Guild of the Infant Saviour, a Catholic organization supporting “the care of the unfortunate and destitute mothers and their infants.” The Guild announced, “Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy, Mother of President Kennedy,” above a painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus. “Rose Kennedy is far more than the wife of Joseph P. Kennedy, Washington veteran of many top-level appointments, or the mother of the youngest elected president of the United States,” noted the program. “She is the mother of nine, a renowned beauty, intrepid traveler, accomplished speech-maker, pianist, honor student and devotee of both political and fine arts.”27 Rose showed slides from the White House, including Khrushchev’s signature on the Vienna dinner menus, Jackie at Versailles, and the Oval Office, along with her standard lecture about England. She reported her “reactions to my first visit at the White House.” “I, out of millions of women in the United States of America, had been lucky enough to be the mother of the thirty-fifth president.” Now some months removed from her initial feelings about not being the center of attention, she decided that taking part in the festivities with none of the worries gratified her. It was much easier than when she had “been at the opposite end of the pole with the burdens and responsibilities” of an ambassador’s wife. “I was overwhelmed with the joy, the wonder, the glory of it all. The climax of my life as I approached my 71st birthday.”28
Describing her Infant Saviour Guild lecture as having gone “very successfully,” Rose began planning how she could present her experiences in Paris with Jack and Jackie to French-speaking audiences around Massachusetts. “This idea especially useful now with view to interesting people for Ted’s campaign who hopes to be candidate for Senate next fall 1962.” As Joe’s vigor ebbed, Rose seized the initiative in orchestrating a role for herself in Teddy’s run for Jack’s Senate seat. “For the first time—I have noticed [Joe] has grown old—Sargent noticed and said it was plain he was not himself. Doctor [Janet] Travell here with Jack and says cold wind and air bad for Joe but he keeps going out.” Rose worried about an “attack” that Joe had suffered, which she described as “not at all himself but quiet—complains about a lack of taste in his mouth and feels blah.…”29
Perhaps Florida sunshine would be just the tonic for the seventy-three-year-old ex-ambassador. Following family tradition, they headed to Palm Beach for Christmas. Jack and Jackie joined them on their way back from a triumphant trip to South America, but JFK had to return to Washington on December 19. Joe accompanied him to the airport, and they stood on the tarmac for a brief farewell chat. It would be their last conversation.
Joe returned to his beachfront estate and then left for the golf course with niece Ann Gargan. Ann had studied nursing and planned to become a nun. Before taking her vows in 1959, however, she had received a multiple-sclerosis diagnosis. Needing a place to live, she had moved in with Joe and Rose.30 With Rose away so often, Joe particularly liked her company. (His womanizing, most recently with his secretary for a decade up to the late 1950s, had come to an end.)31 Ann provided loyal companionship and basic medical care for her aging uncle.
On the golf course, Joe suddenly felt faint and had trouble walking. Ann called for a golf cart to transport him to the car; back home, she thought he seemed better. He even wanted to take a swim with Jackie and Caroline. In light of the golf-course episode, Ann encouraged him to take a nap instead. Rose soon returned from daily Mass and shopping. Not terribly alarmed by Ann’s report of Joe’s indisposition, she went about her usual routine, but when Ann discovered that Joe had awakened coughing and unable to speak, they called a physician. One look at Joe and the doctor rushed him to the nearest hospital. He had suffered a massive stroke. The blood clot had struck the left side of Joe’s brain, paralyzed the right side of his body, and robbed him of speech. President Kennedy flew back to Palm Beach on Air Force One with Bobby and Eunice. Pat, Jean, and Teddy followed soon after. Jackie joined them all at the hospital for a vigil at the patriarch’s bedside. Rose remembered “praying, praying” at the hospital chapel. Immobilized, Joe developed pneumonia and received the last rites. Miraculously, he rallied, and, after several weeks, returned home. But the stalwart head of the Kennedy clan could not walk or speak intelligibly.32 Nurse Luella Hennessey arrived to assist, and the family also hired Nurse Rita Dallas to help Ann look after her debilitated uncle.33
With matters well in hand at Palm Beach, Rose went ahead with her speaking engagements in Boston, New Bedford, and Fall River, raising money for scholarships and hospital charities and redoubling her efforts to add new material to her lectures. Just three weeks after Joe’s stroke, Rose asked the French consulate’s press secretary in New York to answer eight questions resulting from her June 1961 trip to France during President Kennedy’s state visit. She wanted a primer on French politics and government, especially women’s roles. Rose also requested information on Mme de Gaulle’s political activities and her personal interests. Finally, she queried, “Does President de Gaulle speak English?”34 She then prepared her speech in English, hired a translator to produce the French version, and asked her to provide a language lesson and practice session.35
She sent similar queries to the Austrian embassy in Washington. What percentage of Austrians were Roman Catholics? Was there “an organized Communist Party in the country and what is the percentage of the people belonging to it?” The Austrian embassy’s secretary responded that 90 percent of Austrians were Roman Catholics and that only 3 percent of the populace belonged to the Communist Party: after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, so brutally crushed by the Soviet Union, the party “lost its last seat in the [Austrian] Parliament.”36 For the first time in her life, Rose was performing substantive research, asking meaningful questions, and not simply focusing on superficial aspects of the countries she visited. With her husband now speechless, Rose’s voice strengthened. Dining in Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors might be wasted time, but its impact needn’t be. A new day was dawning in her lifelong effort at self-improvement and public outreach. Rose was “a great success” in New Bedford and Fall River, according to her friend Charles Lewin, editor of the Standard-Times newspaper. She raised nearly $2,000 at each benefit, as well as earning local headlines and photos.37
Teddy’s campaign for the Senate was going well and, as an aide reported, “A great many notices have come to us from all over the state; they all joined in saying how effective you were on TV, radio and in particular in securing the French vote in the Commonwealth. At least fifty French leaders in the state have called me up to assure me of this—you were tremendous!” “As you so well know,” he continued, “the French people are a sentimental and nationalistic group, and your speaking in their native tongue and the graciousness that you showed clinched this vote for Ted. I have made a very careful check of reporters, newspapermen, and top French leaders throughout the state, and each one has assured me that you have been one of the most outstanding personalities ever to appear before them, and there is no question that you were helpful to Ted.”38
In March 1962 Rose had to attend to her own health. Secretly entering Boston’s St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for hernia surgery, she took great delight in keeping the paparazzi at bay. She didn’t want to alarm Joe with media reports. “Because I got into the hospital without any of them knowing about it,… they [journalists] told Teddy [that] when he wanted to have publicity about something else …, he might find it difficult. So when I was leaving the hospital, they were all there!”39 Feeling invigorated after returning to Palm Beach, she threatened to jump off the diving board.
Later that spring, Joe had improved enough to be placed on a stretcher and flown with Rose and Ann to New York’s Institute of Rehabilitation for intense speech and physical therapy. Dr. Henry Betts, a young physician specializing in physical disabilities, became his attending doctor. The responsibilities, medical and nonmedical, that the Kennedys imposed on him meant that he could attend no other patients but Mr. Kennedy. According to Betts, the family had to determine who would interpret Joe’s desires and needs, an especially difficult task because he could only articulate the word “no.”40 “I’m sure he would have given up every arm and every leg to be able to talk,” reported Dr. Betts. Of course, as Joe’s spouse, Rose had the final say; her forty-seven-year marriage to him should have enabled her to determine even his unspoken thoughts.41
“My impression was that she adored him,” Dr. Betts asserted. When Rose visited with Joe at the rehab center, usually in the evening, they would watch TV “just like any elderly couple you might see.” In Betts’s view, Joe “was very content” with his wife and “liked having her around.” But he also knew that their children claimed Rose made Joe nervous “before his stroke” because “she was always upset about something.…” Betts begged to differ: “[S]he didn’t make him nervous when I knew him. [H]e loved having her.…” Simply sitting quietly with Rose seemed to make Joe happy. It couldn’t have been easy for her, always on the move and often alone, suddenly to spend more time with her invalid husband. Yet Betts observed not only Rose’s sense of obligation but her genuine love for her spouse.42
Because of her active lifestyle, however, Rose wasn’t always with Joe. She also didn’t want to make all of his health-care decisions. As noted previously, Rose eschewed decisions about serious medical matters regarding her adult children. Neither did she want to manage all the household problems in later years. The White House would fly Dr. Betts to the Cape because the pool needed fixing. “It’s funny. I would explain it that she wanted somebody else to do what she didn’t want to do—whatever it was.… [S]he would always just say, ‘Get the doctor.’ And I’d be called up then,” Betts recalled.43
Once Rose phoned him to ask if she should stay in New York with Joe or go to the Cape and let Ann return from Michigan to care for her uncle. The doctor refused to get involved in a family power struggle. He simply replied each of the three times that Rose called him, “I think your husband is most happy when you’re there [with him].” Nevertheless, Rose went to Hyannis Port, and Ann came back from Detroit to be with Joe. Dr. Betts believed that Joe eventually accepted his dependent role. “I personally think that he would have been much happier to just settle down and be content with his wife for all those years.” But his children and Ann tried to make him feel as though nothing had changed. Joe’s doctor thought this typical Kennedy approach to misfortune counterproductive: “You cannot always just repress everything, but with their sense of destiny and feeling that they are different—they made a stronger effort at repression than anybody I’ve ever seen.”44 The habit of repression, acquired in Rose’s Victorian childhood, so antithetical to modern therapeutic culture, had placed its stamp on her children. Others saw compassion, rather than repression, in how the Kennedys dealt with their latest tragedy. When family friend Ben Bradlee observed them, especially Jackie, gathering around Joe at a White House dinner, Bradlee believed they were bolstering the former ambassador with their respect, good humor, and dignity.45
Rose’s desire and preference for solitude struck Dr. Betts as quite remarkable, especially when he reflected on it in 1972: “[S]he can select the things she wants to do and be alone. That’s the time she can be very happy. She has no fears of being alone, and I’m not sure [that is] true of anyone else in the family—I don’t think any of the rest like to be alone—but she’s perfectly willing to be alone and read and think and rest, play golf alone, sleep alone, swim alone—and that, if you are able to live with solitude and like it (and I think she does) and be able to select anybody else in the world—those other times you do want someone around—that’s a pretty good deal, and she’s got probably the deal she’s most happy with.”46
Rose’s quest for isolation actually seemed compulsive to Dr. Betts:
[S]he demanded her solitude—she had to have a rest—she had to have her walk—she had to have her golf—she was very organized and those things were sacred. But it was all alone—she was alone all of the time—in Hyannis Port, in Palm Beach—all of the time. She met with her secretary in the morning and that was about it. I think her contact with the servants was very casual. She would go in and out of Mr. Kennedy’s room occasionally, and she would sit with him in the evening briefly when he was in Hyannis Port, but she was essentially alone all of the time. She talked to him—and, I thought, very quietly and nicely and unnervously. It’s my guess that prior to this stroke, she was so [like a] butterfly in her conversation (and maybe brought up things that upset him) that it got on his nerves. She didn’t do that when he was sick. They watched television and she talked very placidly—not even as nervously as she talks to most people.… And she amused him. She’s terribly amusing—I adore her and her company—she’s very good company to me, particularly now [1972].47
Dr. Betts explained why he thought Rose’s children found her difficult: “I think she made them all very nervous.” His own interactions with Rose explain why: “In the days when I lived in the house, when I’d run into her, she would usually bring up some problem, in a quick, rather irritated way, so that you got so that you were trying to avoid her. She’d say things like, ‘Why did you take the white towels on the boat—you know you’re supposed to take the yellow ones’; or ‘You’re eating too many cookies’; or ‘That pool cost too much.’…”48
A sure sign of controlling personalities is their attempt to dictate life’s minutiae, especially if they have no control over its major components. And Rose rarely experienced such autonomy during the first three-quarters of her life. Honey Fitz dominated Rose’s youth, particularly concerning her education, though Rose did defy him to marry the love of her life. Then she largely ceded control to Joe and couldn’t always manage, to her high standards, her nine growing children. She was unable to make young Jack obey her rules or to solve his health crises, despite her index-card system. Nor could she mold her marriage as she and the Church had envisioned it. As a Catholic, she couldn’t completely control her childbearing until after Teddy’s birth, and only then by absence and abstinence, apparently. Retreating to solitude gave her command over her own world, but too often world events overwhelmed her. First, they took her beloved Joe Jr. Next, unable to govern the love life, or religion, of her most beautiful and charismatic daughter, she watched Kathleen’s unwise decisions lead to her tragic death. Failure to superintend Rosemary’s diminished destiny, after trying desperately to make her appear “normal,” made Rose a helpless bystander. Ultimately, the doctor’s swipe of a scalpel through Rosemary’s brain, ordered by Joe, destroyed all of Rose’s work. And now, forty-seven years into a difficult marriage, Rose watched her spouse slip from patriarch to infantilism.
And yet, Joe’s disappearance allowed Rose to blossom more fully than ever. Working for Teddy’s first election in 1962, she could make her own decisions. Teddy, the child she tried to make happy by vowing to be joyous about his birth, in turn accepted her love. Over time he had come to appreciate her religious faith and strengthen his own Catholic beliefs. He had also learned not to be annoyed by her controlling nature. Equally important, he knew just how much to tease “Mother” about her obsessions without raising her ire.49
As the summer of 1962 wore on and Joe failed to regain either mobility or speech, Rose’s letters to her children and in-laws reflected frustration, although directed toward other matters. To the attorney general, with carbon copies to Eunice, Jean, and Teddy (only the president was spared), she wrote a lengthy description of how all of the cars at the Hyannis Port compound were to be used and by whom. Joe’s car would now be for Rose’s occasional trips to Boston; Ann’s auto would be reserved for her and Joe; Rose’s would be for her local trips; and the station wagon she assigned for staff errands. Two weeks before her seventy-second birthday, Rose concluded, “I think that completes the story of the cars. This is the way they are to be used. I do not want to be bothered this way at my age, and I do not think it is fair. Please give this to Ethel to read, so every one will understand.”50
Ethel received a separate missive, signed by Rose’s secretary, about linens at the Hyannis Port homes. “Mrs. Kennedy is very anxious that you have your linen at the Cape marked this year. A lot of her linen seems to be missing, and, as Mrs. Kennedy will be there herself this year [not in the south of France because of Joe’s condition], she would like to keep track of her own. The fact that hers [sic] and Bobby’s initials are the same make it more difficult.” Then came the inventory: “Mrs. Kennedy had six blue wash cloths initialed RFK, none of which can be found, and so with your permission, she is going to have Evelyn look through your linen.” Lest Ethel think her mother-in-law unreasonable, the secretary concluded, “She asked me to tell you that she knows it is difficult to keep things straight among the houses, and she is not complaining.”51
That fall Rose sent tips to Jackie at the White House and Ethel at Hickory Hill: “I would suggest that after your houses [at the Hyannis Port compound] are cleaned, a note be posted to the effect that the curtains be drawn.” Otherwise, the sun would fade their furniture, Rose reasoned, and she might not think to inform the cleaners. “I am trying to rest my brain,” she told her daughters-in-law. Before she did, however, she reminded them to distribute their perishable food to the maids “as it is a shame to waste it. Love, G.Ma.”52 Undoubtedly, having to superintend two large estates, visited by hordes of children and grandchildren, grew more burdensome as Rose aged. Yet the desire to control all of the details in order to perfect each home’s maintenance added to the toll on her tired brain.
For the president, Rose broached more important issues of Joe’s medical care. In the same letter where she tepidly apologized for nearly causing an international incident with her request for Khrushchev’s autographs, Rose asked Jack for assistance in arranging Joe’s nursing staff. She and Ann thought that a Dr. Wapman understood Joe’s situation better than any of the other physicians who had examined him. Perhaps recognizing the contest between Nurses Hennessey and Dallas for power over her husband, Rose told JFK: “I sometimes think we could find a good man for your father, instead of two female nurses. From the doctor’s letter, it appears as though it will be a long convalescence, and I really think your father would be happy with a man, as this doctor also speaks of the merit of having some male companion. However, I suppose we shall not make any change until we get to Palm Beach. You might keep this in mind, though, as it seems to be difficult to find a man.”53
As Rose grew more impatient with life’s details, her two absent daughters, Kathleen and Rosemary, returned to her thoughts. After attending a three-day religious retreat at Noroton, the Sacred Heart boarding school where she had sent teenaged Kick to remove her from social temptations, Rose, who rarely commented on unhappy memories, wrote a heartfelt diary passage. It “was sad for me in a way” to visit Noroton after so many years, she admitted. “I heard the grandfather clock chime in the hall—the clock which we had given to the convent when we moved to Bronxville probably. The two grandparents had given us the clock for the hall at 131 Naples Road when we moved there.”54 Perhaps its chimes took her back to Brookline, where she had borne the first seven of her children. Did she hear their laughter, their crying? Did she see them racing through the house on a rainy day or playing in the sunny yard?
When Rose spied Noroton’s tennis court, donated by her and Joe to the school, it “brought back memories of Kathleen who had gone to Noroton perhaps for the longest period. I had sent her early because she was exceedingly popular with girls and boys as a youngster and spent hours at night on the phone. Eunice did not have that problem so I never felt it expedient to ship Eunice off. So Kathleen went about age 12–13. She was happy there, I know.” Kathleen had been dead for fourteen years, but now her life played over again in Rose’s mind: “[L]ife presented so many problems to her later. Falling in love with Billie [sic]. Both young people knew it would be difficult if not impossible to marry—both were young—deeply in love—admirably suited to one another with age, education, interests, family antecedents quite different so romance was extraordinary in a way.…” These were far different thoughts from the angry diary entry she had composed at The Homestead on learning that Kick and Billy, in defiance of her and Joe, would marry outside the Catholic Church.
Also around this time, Rose began to visit Rosemary at St. Coletta’s in Wisconsin, and both she and Eunice lobbied JFK to make mental retardation a signature policy program. On October 11, 1961, they succeeded, when President Kennedy announced “a national plan in mental retardation.” The program was to feature a national commission on how to treat and prevent intellectual disabilities.55 A year later Eunice published her pathbreaking article, “Hope for Retarded Children,” in the Saturday Evening Post. She began by telling how her mother “took Rosemary to psychologists and to dozens of doctors” when she deteriorated after the family returned from England. “All of them said her condition would not get better and that she would be far happier in an institution.… It fills me with sadness to think this change might not have been necessary if we [had] known then what we know today.”56 She didn’t define “this change” as the lobotomy that had made institutionalization necessary. Now it was Joe whose name disappeared from part of the family narrative.
With Rosemary now publicly resurrected, both Eunice and Rose began talking about her frequently in interviews. By 1963, when asked how she became interested in retarded children, Rose could finally give a truthful response. “Well, you see the answer to that question is a very simple one. We had a retarded child, born about a year and a half after the birth of our second son, Jack.…” She described the family’s construction of “seventeen or eighteen” homes for disabled children in cities where her offspring lived, and how the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation changed its mission to support research for preventing mental retardation. “Sometimes it is a question of drugs, sometimes the expectant mother is taking the wrong kind of drugs, sometimes she needs drugs.…” Could Rose have been thinking about paregoric, the opiate-based medicine so common in American households during the era of her pregnancies? Might she innocently have ingested it for her “nervous tummy” while pregnant? Could it have caused Rosemary’s developmental disabilities, as opium can do? In her interview, Rose spoke of voters approaching her during the 1960 campaign, asking for help to get their children into special homes for the disabled. “One woman said to me one day, ‘I feel that my child and I are like the Infant Jesus and His mother. No one will take us in. There is no place for him to lay his head.’” This comment must have jarred Rose and triggered her religious sympathies. She was thrilled with the president’s commission and its successful lobbying of Congress. Rose was equally proud that Eunice had started a summer camp for retarded children at her Maryland estate.57 It would become the forerunner of Special Olympics, established with Eunice’s inspiration in 1968 to promote physical fitness and healthy competition among the mentally retarded.58
WITH TEDDY’S SENATE campaign to fill his brother’s seat in full swing by the fall of 1962, Rose took to the airwaves, as she had for Jack. Her fifteen-minute segment, “Coffee with the Kennedys,” opened with a narrated drive through quaint Hyannis, arriving at the Kennedy compound, where, the voice-over explained, Rose and Joe had lived for more than three decades, raising their nine children. (Their homes in New York and Florida went unmentioned.) Rose, in coat and scarf to protect her hairdo, waved from the front porch—a “warm Kennedy welcome,” declared the narrator. Then she quickly entered the house to greet the viewing audience. Wearing a dark dress and three-strand pearls, with three diamond pins at her beltline, Rose looked twenty years younger than her seventy-two years. The television production and her performance were more polished than “At Home with the Kennedys,” aired for Jack’s Senate campaign four years earlier. Still, Rose appeared a bit nervous as she mentioned that her living-room sofa was the same one on which four-year-old Teddy had sat with Pope Pius XII (then Cardinal Pacelli) in 1936, when he visited the Kennedys in Bronxville. Yet the anecdote offered an opportunity to display photos of other famous people involved with the Kennedys over the years. She showcased the picture of her family at the Vatican, where Teddy received his First Communion from the new pope in 1938, “the first American child so honored,” Rose emphasized. She seemed particularly proud of an FDR photo that he had inscribed to her. In her excitement, she forgot to point out the desk used by her father as a US congressman, but she turned back to explain its history. Returning to the living room, she realized that she had left her reading glasses near Honey Fitz’s desk, and called out in an unscripted moment, “Will someone bring me my glaaaaasses!” But no one did. So she simply circled back to the topic of her late father and his theme song, “Sweet Adeline,” sitting at the piano to play a few bars. She used her father’s memory as a segue to implore women to go to the polls. Only once had a Lodge defeated the family (John F. Fitzgerald in the 1916 Senate race), Rose announced, and that was before women could vote. Suddenly, Teddy’s wife Joan appeared with their two adorable children, Kara and Teddy Jr. The visit was meant to be informal, but the children were dressed perfectly and on their best behavior. Rose asked two-year-old Kara, “Are you going to read with Grandma?” The beguiling blonde toddler reached for the microphone, but Rose turned Kara’s attention back to Peter Rabbit. When little Teddy, seated on his mother’s lap, clapping to “patty-cake” on cue, began to fidget, Joan ended the visit but promised to return later in the day to “see Grandpa.” With that, Rose drew “Coffee with the Kennedys” to a close.59
Teddy handily defeated Republican George Lodge and took a US Senate seat in January 1963, having barely attained the constitutionally mandated age of thirty. Rose proudly attended Teddy’s swearing-in ceremony, and now, as the mother of the president, the attorney general, and a senator, went to a dinner at the French embassy honoring the Mona Lisa, which had just arrived from Paris for display at the National Gallery of Art. From the White House she sent notes to nieces and nephews telling them that “Bob is going to make a speech before the members of the Supreme Court on Thursday so that is the special reason for my arrival here.” She probably meant that the attorney general would argue as counsel in a case before the justices. Traditionally, attorneys general make a token appearance before the US Supreme Court. Robert Kennedy chose a voting-rights case to make his court debut. “I am sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom, and occasionally I walk down the hall to see the president in his bedroom, so it is very thrilling,” his mother related.60
Rose was equally thrilled to receive a laudatory letter about Bobby from Manhattanville College’s president, Eleanor O’Byrne. Attorney General Kennedy had delivered a lecture on Southeast Asia to an audience of more than seven hundred students. His mother underlined O’Byrne’s praise for his “intelligence, humor and directness and honesty.” “Bob was excellent, also in the question and answer period …,” wrote O’Byrne. “It is one thing to know a great deal, which he does. It enhances discussion, too, when the speaker is forthright and when he is also able to laugh.” Rose scribbled across the top, “Thrilled to read this letter, dear Bob—Please return as I wish to keep—Love to all, G.Ma.”61
Bobby couldn’t resist tweaking his proud mother. On his “Attorney General” letterhead, his secretary typed, “Dear Mother: I’m sure you had no doubt your favorite child would turn out this way. Love, Bobby.” In his adolescent penmanship, he scrawled an additional tease: “I called to wish you a happy Easter—I hope you brought me home some presents from Paris—I love you now but if you brought me home something huge and expensive I shall love you even more. Waiting expectantly, I am your favorite.”62
Rose now had a new reason to escape. She had gone to Paris “for a short rest, as I had never been so tired and nervous due to my preoccupation with Joe, not that he was in greater danger of death, but it was so sad and nerve-wracking to see him try to tell me something which I could not understand, or complain about something which I could not fathom. He is still very vital and vigorous about expressing his wishes and gets cross and impatient if we cannot understand him and if he is not handled properly. He uses his arm or leg to push or whack the nurses.” One evening a nurse accidentally lodged his wheelchair in the elevator, and, according to Rose, “Joe sat there for five or six minutes frothing with rage at her [the nurse’s] stupidity. Naturally, all these times fill me with annoyance and sadness for his sake, and frustrations because I can do so little about them.” How different he was from her mother. Approaching the century mark in Boston, Josie Fitzgerald, her health diminished, sat “always in the same chair and weeping a little when she sees me, but Joe wants and tries to do things like he did in the past. I keep thinking what a pity that a superior mind dedicated to goodness and efficiency should be so destroyed, and rendered useless—incompetent through no fault of his own.”63 It must have been difficult for Rose to watch her mother and husband slipping away from her.
Once back in the States, Rose wrote a long letter to Bobby, seeking to fill the image-making void left after Joe’s stroke. “This is just to review a few of the ideas we discussed over the weekend. I think Ethel’s interest in charity could be stressed, because every one seems to be motivated by a charitable impulse these days.… And her interest in the Kennedy home, of course, could be mentioned.” Bobby and Ethel now had seven children. Why not have them tout their large family, as Rose had done her own? “I do not think it is necessary to emphasize the fact that you are both tone deaf or that cultural things do not play such a large part in your life,” she advised, “but rather the fact that you are both interested in history and that for years you have both collected autographs and letters of men famous in American history.” Stress that the children play current-events games, she urged. “You can even say that this interest in history stemmed from your early years and that Ethel shared this with you, and even bring in the books that I have given you at Christmas time.” As for the family’s famous touch-football games, they were old news, and mention of them could “be eliminated for awhile.” Ditto the repetition of animal anecdotes. Hickory Hill high jinks, as when Arthur Schlesinger Jr. landed in the pool fully clothed, should be nixed. That story “went to Paris and London,” Rose noted with disapproval, “and I feel we should get away from this kind of publicity. I know you agree. It sounds harmless when you are talking about it, but repercussions are not always favorable.” To soften her critique, she wrote, “It was wonderful to see you for the weekend. Ann and I, as well as your father, got a tremendous lift out of your visit.” Yet she couldn’t resist making a jocular reference to Bobby’s undisciplined kids. “I can hardly wait to see you and the little darlings at the Cape—although I am afraid I shall have to take a trip to Europe!”64
Just as Rose had to escape her own offspring, she now found some of her grandchildren much too boisterous. Better to relate her child-rearing suggestions to Ethel from long distance. “Just heard on the radio that fruit juice not strained has lots more vitamins than strained,” she advised her daughter-in-law.65 Bobby’s irrepressible wife took Rose’s edicts in stride and, like her husband, with good humor. Ethel always threw in a soupçon of flattery when dealing with her mother-in-law. “You looked great at the benefit, and I have heard lots of men talk about that lovely figure and face. G-r-r-r-h,” wrote Mrs. Robert Kennedy with feigned envy. “Love and kisses and I’m ordering my parchment gloves so at least my hands will be fashionable. Bearhugs from Ethel.”66
Twice during JFK’s presidency Rose substituted as White House hostess. In July 1962 Jackie decided to stay in Hyannis Port, vacationing with her children, so Jack asked his mother to pinch-hit for the first lady during the visit of Ecuador’s president Carlos Arosemena. “I was thrilled but a little tired, as I have so much to do this summer with the added chores due to Joe’s illness,” Rose complained. The grief and pity she felt for him sometimes overwhelmed her, but “I’m glad I came,” she recorded on White House stationery.67
The next summer, in August 1963, Jackie gave birth prematurely to a son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, at the Cape. Suffering from hyaline membrane disease, the infant survived only two days. As the president and first lady grieved the loss of their much-anticipated baby, Jackie slipped into a depression so severe that Jack suggested she go abroad for a Mediterranean cruise with her sister Lee, aboard Aristotle Onassis’s yacht. Before she left, Jackie accompanied JFK to Washington’s Union Station for the arrival of Ethiopia’s imperial majesty Haile Selassie. Then she flew to Greece, leaving Rose to substitute for her at the White House state dinner that night.68 “I was more important as the president’s mother and wife of an ambassador than any of Jack’s sisters,” explained Rose.69
A few weeks later, President Kennedy began taping his thoughts about the American-backed coup that had toppled Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem. As their father recorded his abhorrence over Diem’s bloody assassination, five-year-old Caroline and two-year-old John Jr. burst into the room, giggling and bantering with their father, completely oblivious to his burdens. The president prompted his youngsters to speak into the microphone by asking them a series of questions about the four seasons. Clearly, this was a game they had played before: “When do the leaves fall?” queried the president. “Because it’s winter,” ventured John Jr. “No, autumn,” his father gently corrected. The little boy repeated, “Autumn.” “And why does the snow come on the ground?” “Because it’s winter.” This time the toddler, who would turn three in a few weeks, answered correctly. His dad moved to the next clue: “And why do the leaves turn green?” John ventured again, “Because it’s winter.” “Spring. Spring,” JFK repeated for emphasis. “Spring,” his son repeated. And for the fourth season, “When do we go to the Cape? Hyannis Port?” the president asked, using a familiar location as his hint. His confused son volunteered, “Oh, because it’s winter.” With delight in his voice, the bemused father sweetly explained, “It’s summer!” Little John parroted, “It’s summer.”70 Just like Rose, presiding over his childhood dinner table, JFK enjoyed instructing his own youngsters through playful quizzes. Four weeks later they were scheduled to gather around the family table again, at Hyannis Port, for the Kennedys’ annual Thanksgiving celebration. But first, the president had to make a political trip to Texas, the unofficial kickoff of his 1964 reelection campaign.
Rose would always remember the crystalline autumn dawn as she left for daily Mass on Friday, November 22, 1963. Returning home, she had breakfast with Joe, and then they drove through the golden Cape Cod countryside. Rose played her usual nine holes of golf, lunched with her husband, and then lay down for a nap. Ann’s blaring television interrupted her slumber, and Rose headed toward her niece’s room to ask her to lower the volume. Mrs. Kennedy couldn’t believe the televised bulletin: the president had been shot while riding in a motorcade through Dallas.71 Ann saw her usually resilient aunt begin to tremble and sink into a chair. Bobby phoned. “It looks bad,” the attorney general told his mother. “As far as I know, Jack can’t pull through.”72 She returned to her room and paced the floor. Maybe he could survive, miraculously, like all of the other times he had stared death in the face, from his scarlet fever as a toddler to his Addisonian episodes to the ramming of PT 109 to his back surgeries. But soon Bobby phoned to confirm that Jack had succumbed to his wounds. In all of those previous instances, Joe had insulated her from worry over Jack’s well-being. In her shock and grief, Rose now insisted that Joe not be told that day about their son’s death. He should be allowed to have one final night of peaceful sleep, she reasoned. Then Rose went to the beach and walked along the water’s edge, praying and asking herself over and over, “Why?”73 As usual, she was alone.
Despite her anguish, Rose accepted a phone call from Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson as they flew back to Washington from Dallas on Air Force One, bearing the body of her son. In a strong voice, she almost said, “Thanks a million,” to LBJ for calling, but caught herself halfway through the last word, thinking it inappropriate, and substituted, “Thanks very much.” Without missing a beat, however, she referred to the caller as “Mr. President,” though he had taken the oath only thirty minutes earlier. “I wish to God there was something I could do, and I wanted you to know that we’re grieving with you,” Johnson told her, to which Rose replied, “I know you loved Jack, and he loved you.” Those in shock often utter kind, if not truthful, words simply to get through an excruciating moment. “Here’s Bird,” the new president responded. Her voice breaking, Lady Bird managed to tell her former 1960 campaign partner, “Mrs. Kennedy … we are glad the nation had your son as long as we did.” “Yes. Well, thank you, Lady Bird. Thank you very much. Good-bye.” The new first lady concluded, “Love and prayers to all of you.” “Yes. Thank you very much. Good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye,” Rose said firmly before hanging up the phone.74
Early the next morning Rose took refuge at St. Francis Xavier Church, where she attended daily Mass near the altar dedicated to Joe Jr. Two uniformed police officers escorted the tiny woman, suddenly looking very frail and elderly, past journalists and onlookers. The black net veil over her face couldn’t mask dark circles under her eyes. Joe still knew nothing. Teddy and Eunice had arrived the previous evening. Joe’s youngest had always been elected to tell his father about his brothers’ antics, in hope that “Dad” would go easy on Teddy. Now he took on the heaviest responsibility of his life, volunteering to tell his father that another of his sons had died a violent death. Rose couldn’t muster the strength to be present, “for I couldn’t stand it.”75 Until the day he died, more than four decades later, Teddy’s eyes would fill with tears whenever he recalled that November 23, 1963, conversation with his stroke-ridden father.76
On Sunday, two days after the horror in Dallas, Rose, Teddy, and Eunice flew to Washington for Jack’s funeral. Joe stayed behind with Father John Cavanaugh, Notre Dame’s former president. Understandably, Rose’s lifelong malady, a “nervous stomach,” flared in the midst of this unbearable tragedy. “I felt queasy, quite unwell” on Monday morning, she said, as the state funeral began.77 The trauma had undoubtedly caused an attack of her irritable bowel condition. She couldn’t find the strength to march six blocks from the White House to St. Matthew’s Basilica with Jackie, Bobby, Teddy, and world dignitaries. “So I am not in many pictures, except at the grave,” she later noted. Rose had attended Mass that morning, where she received Communion. She wanted that fact on record, so history would know why she didn’t take part in the sacrament again at the funeral Mass, offered by Richard Cardinal Cushing.78 (Church rules allow only one daily reception of Communion.)
After the service, the family clustered on the cathedral steps as military pallbearers placed Jack’s flag-draped coffin on the caisson for its final trip to Arlington National Cemetery. Rose’s grandson John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., turning three that day, honored his father with a perfect salute. Just behind Jackie, Rose appeared utterly desolate, her eyes nearly closed, her lips parted, as if she had to gasp for air. But, like most of the Kennedys that day, she never broke down in public. At Jack’s final resting place, Rose watched her two surviving sons and Jackie light the eternal flame. Cardinal Cushing intoned the final blessing and committed Jack’s remains to the hallowed earth. Pale and weak, Rose then returned to the White House and met with Charles de Gaulle, West German chancellor Ludwig Erhard, British prime minister Harold Macmillan, and Britain’s Prince Philip, as well as Kick’s in-laws, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. At the end of the most agonizing day of her life, a government jet flew Rose back to Cape Cod and the Kennedy compound’s embrace.79