From the Cradle
Josie Fitzgerald was afraid her baby might not last the week.
The summer of 1890 was brutally hot, and in the week following Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald’s birth, 284 Bostonians would die—almost half under the age of one. But Rose was as hearty a girl as a mother could hope for. She not only survived that first week—she would live until 1995.
She would marry a man named Joe Kennedy, who would become one of the richest men in the nation. She would have nine children between 1915 and 1932, and she’d raise them in homes in Boston, in New York, in Florida, and on Cape Cod. Traveling to Paris for shopping would become routine, just one of the many coping mechanisms she’d use as she learned to look the other way; her husband cheated on her with hundreds of women. She’d see politically ambitious Joe named ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1938 and live in England on the brink of World War II.She’d pray the rosary and attend mass with great devotion. She’d return to the United States, the family name in tatters, after her husband’s outspoken support of appeasement cost him the ambassadorship and seemingly any hope of a political future.
She’d write thank-you notes with scrupulous fidelity. She’d tragically lose two children to aviation disasters in the 1940s and see a third child institutionalized for life after a botched lobotomy. She’d hobnob with popes and drink tea with royalty. She’d see her remaining children marry, one by one, and watch as her three sons became a mid-twentieth-century political powerhouse. She’d see her Jack elected president of the United States, her Bobby named the country’s attorney general, her boy Teddy elected to the Senate. She’d advise world leaders and play hostess at the White House. She’d attend funerals for two sons, killed less than five years apart by assassins’ bullets, and a funeral for her husband, who died more than seven years after being immobilized by a stroke. She’d walk three miles a day and take bracing ocean swims. She’d stand by Teddy after a car accident off a bridge in Chappaquiddick left a young woman dead and his name splashed across the front of every tabloid in the world.
She’d write letters to her adult children about points of grammar. She’d watch one daughter marry a movie star and struggle with alcoholism. She’d watch another, inspired by the experience of having a special needs sister, found the Special Olympics. She’d watch her dozens of grandchildren struggle and achieve in politics, business, media, and philanthropy. She’d watch Teddy reach for the presidential nomination (and be relieved when he didn’t get it). She would bow her head and accept God’s will. She would become a writer, a media personality, a symbol throughout the world of grace and fortitude in the face of tragedy, an example of service to country and humanity. She would see her name become an indelible part of American history.
In that stifling bedroom in North Boston, shy, pretty, sweet-natured Josie could not know it, but her daughter would see wonders.