The Legacy Lives Long

Teddy Kennedy was 17 when I was born.

I was 11 years old when his brother John was elected president. I was 14 when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

I was 11 days short of 19 when Robert F. Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles.

Joseph Kennedy, Jr., died August 12 , 1944, in a wartime plane explosion, a bit less than five years before I was born. His body was never found.

Four brothers, a quartet who gave their lives for this nation. Only one died of natural causes. What other family can truly say it has given so much to this country? Over 65 years the contribution the Kennedy family made to the USA has been overwhelming.

Joseph Patrick Kennedy, their father, was born in 1888, the son of a saloon keeper in Boston. As a boy he was ambitious, hard working. He delivered newspapers and did chores for neighbors.

He was a Roman Catholic and was educated by the church. He was accepted at Harvard where he excelled, but was shut out of some of the prestigious clubs because of his Irish heritage. At graduation he had two burning desires, to become a millionaire by 30 and show up the Protestants who snubbed him.

He married Rose Fitzgerald in 1914. They had nine children. Joe, Jr., and Kathleen, the eldest son and second daughter died during the war, both in aircraft incidents. Kathleen, though, had been estranged from the family because she had married a Protestant.

Their first daughter, Rose Mary, was born in 1918 with some sort of mental dysfunction and was subjected to a surgery of the era, a pre-frontal lobotomy. She became infantile and was relegated to a nursing home in Wisconsin. She died four years ago.

Eunice Mary Kennedy Shriver, the third daughter, was born in 1921 and died recently.

Patricia Kennedy Lawford, born in 1924, married actor Peter Lawford. She died in 2006.

Jean Ann Kennedy Smith was born in 1928, married Steven Edward Smith and was widowed in 1990. She served for a while as the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland.

In the meantime Joe Kennedy was building an empire of money. He got into banking, stocks and real estate. In the 1930s it is said he ran liquor from Europe to the U.S. During prohibition.

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt named him as first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934.

In 1937 he was made chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission and in 1938 was named Ambassador to Great Britain. He was the first Irish-Catholic to hold the position. And he thought he was on his way to the White House.

Problems developed. He was a staunch isolationist and argued for appeasement of Hitler and wanted the country to stay out of any war that might happen between Britain and Germany. His attitude was not a big hit with the English or conservative leaders such as eventual Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Joe Kennedy resigned in 1940 as war became inevitable.

December 8, 1941, his dreams of becoming President went the way of the wind. After the war he set sights for son John to occupy the the White House.

It is thought that Joe's money put JFK over the top in his 1960 presidential campaign against Richard Nixon.

Joe, shortly after the election, suffered a series of strokes. He was told of the assassinations of John and Robert and Teddy's Chappaquidick incident and died shortly thereafter, Nov. 8, 1969. Rose died Jan. 25, 1995.

Joe and Rose Kennedy leave now a single child, Jean Ann. They and their children, each in its particular way, have contributed to the people of this nation.

Certainly other families have contributed in many ways to this country, but the Kennedy legacy, children who have served as soldiers and sailors, children who have served as ambassadors, and given to causes for good and even simply served as examples.

The legacy lives on.