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It seems almost inconceivable, the sheer weight of misfortune, sadness, loss, even murderous violence that has over time been visited upon a single American family. And yet this is no ordinary family. It is among the most powerful, most influential, and most famous in the nation. Known, respected, even loved the world over. Which makes what has happened to them all the more unsettling, because a pattern to it all seems hard to dismiss. Across generations, through triumph and prosperity, an eerie gloom seems to fall again and again, as if there is some dark design woven amidst the branches of this remarkable family tree. They are the Kennedys of Massachusetts. And this design, this pattern, has a name. The Kennedy Curse. Hey folks, welcome. This is American History hit. I'm Don Wildman. Extraordinary family, the Kennedys. No matter your politics or point of view, they are a dynasty, an undeniable presence looming large to this day. Yet with the Kennedys for all the time, in the dazzling sun, a dark shadow never seems far away. Calling it a curse may be magical thinking, but tracing the events as we'll do today certainly gives one pause. Joining us for this conversation is Barbara A. Perry, professor of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia Miller center, an institution I heartily endorse. Consulted their website many times in our presidential series. Professor Perry has authored major works on the Kennedy family, including Rose Kennedy, the Life and Times of a Political Matriarch, and Jacqueline Kennedy, first lady of the New Frontier. Professor Perry, Barbara, welcome to the show.
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Great to be with you, Don.
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First of all, brief disclaimer for all. So many American families, past and present, have endured profound loss and heartbreak. We do not diminish that. But we also won't be talking, talking about them today. We talk about the Kennedys because of their fame, their power and glamour. Nonetheless, when you step back in and take it all in, the list of tragedies and misfortunes that has happened to this poor family is astonishing. It's called the Kennedy Curse. Where did this idea come from and when was it first named?
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B
It goes back to, I think, short, really shortly after President Kennedy's assassination, which has to be deemed the worst of the curse, if I may coin a phrase. And the fact that not at that very moment, it was a curse upon the country that an assassination like that would happen. The first of the modern presidential era, the television era, I'll call it the Zapruder era, that is, with a video of it. So prior to that point, the most recent assassination up until 1963 had happened in 1901 of William McKinley and so long before video. So the fact that this was brought into people's homes in such a horrific manner that if you then layer upon that his brother, Robert Kennedy Sr. I now always point out Robert Kennedy Sr's assassination five years later, and then the Chappaquiddick incident with their brother Edward Kennedy, in which a woman in a car he was driving went into a pond in near Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. The woman was killed. Somehow, Edward Kennedy survived. But if he actually uses the term in his speech to the voters of Massachusetts and he says, you know, some say that there's a curse that has descended upon the Kennedys. So I think you can probably start it there. From his own Lips in 1969.
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A
Interesting. It's a list. Boy, oh boy, I'd forgotten half of what we're going to talk about today, you know, over time. It's remarkable. Of course, the, the headline events, no one ever forgets those, but there's a lot in between. I had a friend that once, you know, when the subject would come up, she'd always say, it's a Greek tragedy, you know, tragic because it's power alongside grief, the stuff of, of fate. You know, Sophocles and, and Euripides stuff
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and, and maybe even Icarus.
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A
Yeah, exactly.
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You know, you mentioned the glow and the sun and. And yet they sometimes fly too close to the sun. And we know what happened in that Greek to add to the British history. It's Shakespearean. Because they rise to the heights and then they experience the depths.
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A
Exactly. There are so many angles to this which we won't necessarily go into. But it all begins, of course, with Joseph Kennedy, who is JFK and RK's father in terms of there being some sort of source to all of this. And he is a man of great accomplishment. Again, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole on Joe Kennedy, but it starts off big, this family in the early 20th century, and the sons are riding that wave. Just important to keep in mind.
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B
And Don, could I just pause there for a moment and think about even before that. So Joseph Kennedy Sr. Is just really one generation removed from the great famine in Ireland. And so as I was contemplating our topic today, it made me think about the fact that all eight of John F. Kennedy's great grandparents came from Ireland during the famine. Most of them escaped from the terrible hunger and the poverty. And I would say that the fact that they survived the so called coffin ships that brought that massive numbers of them from Ireland to particularly Boston, sometimes New York, and then spread throughout the country. But isn't it an irony that all eight of them survived to come to the United States and yet to see these future generations who had risen to the heights that they could not even imagine then to have such ill fortune,
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it's such a small span of time between those arrivals and the greatness, so called greatness of a Joe Kennedy in that time period. But there's also the mayor of Boston who was a relative of jfk. Was he his uncle? I forget, honey.
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His grandfather, his maternal grandfather. He was, in fact, it was his namesake, that fellow was called John F. John Francis Fitzgerald. And so the second son then of Joseph Kennedy Sr. After Joe Jr. Was born, the second child of Joe and Rose Kennedy was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. So they, they all had politics in their blood, really in their DNA.
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Right. And the determination to leave all that prejudice and bigotry behind that the Irish had to deal with in the 19th century. No Irish allowed that kind of those signs are what everybody grew up hearing the stories of. And they turned that on their head and were inspiring to millions for that reason. I mean, let's be Clear. And we will talk about Joe, but we also must, before this conversation is, visit Rose. You know, these, this was a pair these parents. Amazing forces of nature that these children were raised by. All right, let's dive into these events as we go. It's a, it's a long list, so we'll move gradually through in, in sort of chapters. There are political assassinations, of course, but any number of aviation disasters. And let's start with the first one, August 12, 1944. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. The scion of the family, the apple of Joe's eye. A handsome kid, my God, dies in the aircraft he was piloting when it accidentally exploded in England. This is late in the war. They're converting B24 Liberators. I didn't know this until I read about it. For this, they were converting these Liberators into remote controlled drones. Explain this plane and what was the idea behind this?
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Well, it was to be remote controlled except for the takeoff and the aiming of it. So drones, we know that they can just be sent off from the ground and remotely controlled to any target that the controller wishes. In these cases, they packed these Liberator bombers and Joe had, by the way, this is again the sadness and tragedy of it all. He had completed the number of missions as a Navy pilot that he needed, and he was about to be sent back to the States. But he volunteered for this very, very difficult mission. So he climbs in, along with his co pilot and navigator into this Liberator bomber. The trick of it was that they were to get up above the English Channel, then set a fuse and bail out after pointing this plane towards those super cannons that Hitler had placed along the French coast that were raining bombs down on England. And we think what happened is that when he set the fuse and before he and his co pilot navigator could exit the plane, it exploded into smithereens and there was never any sign of him found.
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Wow. The results of this death are what changes the story so profoundly because Joe Jr. Was going on that track that later JFK becomes. He was the choice of Joe Kennedy to run for office and do all the things, then went to jfk, who wasn't really the astonishing man he becomes as a youth, was he?
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I always point to the fact that in my Rose Kennedy biography that she, because Joe Jr. The apple, as you say, of his dad's eye and her eye. And when she would be asked, even after her son had been elected President of the United States, what would you put the most memorable experience of your life? She would say, the birth of my first child. Well, that was Joe Jr. And she always said he was smarter than Jack. Actually, when people go back and look at the IQ records, Jack had a higher IQ than Joe, but yes, he wasn't the apple of his parents eye. So he wasn't being groomed to be the one to become, in their minds, the first Irish Catholic President of the United States. Joe Sr. Wanted that role, but he ruined that by ruining his reputation as being a very poor diplomat in England, as the US Ambassador to the Court of St James leading up to the war. And he made some comments that were very un. Diplomatic. And so he became a toxic figure on the public stage. But behind the scenes, once Joe Jr. Died, he was sort of pulling those strings. The strategy, the tactics, pouring in the money. Now for Jack, the mantle went to Jack to become the first Irish Catholic president.
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A
The second event on this is kind of related in that way as you're discussing because of the anglo American connection. September 9, 1944, we're a month away from Joe's death. Am I right about this?
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Joe goes first in August of 1944. And one month later his sister's husband, Billy Hartington Cavendish, the heir, he would be the heir to the Dukedom of the Cavendish's Devonshire, that would be. And he was killed by a sniper in Belgium. A Nazi sniper shot him through the heart. And so he and Kathleen, the sister of Jack and Joe, lost her husband of only four months. And that in of itself had been a trauma for the family because Billy was an Anglican nobleman and the Catholic Church would not allow Kathleen to marry in the Catholic Church unless Billy agreed to raise their children Catholic. And he couldn't do that as a very prominent Anglican. And so they were married in a registry office in London in May of 44, sending Rose to the hospital in Massachusetts with a nervous breakdown. She was so upset because in those days the Catholic Church didn't recognize a civil marriage. And so for Joanne Rose, but particularly for Rose, it meant that her daughter wasn't married in the eyes of the Catholic Church and she was therefore excommunicated from the church. And Rose was so devout that this put her into a real nervous tailspin.
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How much does the public know about that issue as far as the marriage goes of the daughter and Catholicism? Because it becomes such a huge issue when John F. Kennedy runs for President, of course, yes.
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I had a colleague some years ago as I was writing my book on Rose Kennedy and he was reading parts of it and he said, I just don't understand why Rose would be so mean spirited like that. And I said, are you Roman Catholic? And he said, no. And I said, ah, you don't understand. Even in the 1970s, I have two older brothers and they married. They had gone all the way through Catholic education from kindergarten to through university. And yeah, it so happened that they married non Catholic women. And I'll never forget hearing my mother, in a very kind of sweet voice say to my dad, did we do something wrong? They didn't marry Catholics. And I don't think my mother, you know, thought that it was improper as such, but she was wondered if she had failed and she was the next generation after Roe, she would have been the generation, the greatest generation of Jack Kennedy. So it shows you what an impact that Catholic dogma had on believers. So I don't think that the Kennedys wanted to publicize that very much that, you know, Kathleen had gone down this road. But in fact, prior to the marriage, because they were so prominent, they had gone to Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Cardinal of New York City, and had him go to the Pope to see if they could get some kind of dispensation and the church would not be moved on that. And Kathleen was just desperately in love and vice versa. Billy really loved her and they were not going to be dissuaded. So they were married. And then it only lasted four months. And then Rose wrote to Kathleen saying, now that I look back, you know, Billy was really a lovely person and I think that, you know, he probably is in the great beyond. In other words, that he probably went to heaven and then Kathleen could come back into the church because now she was a widow.
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A
Boy, the 20th century had its impact, didn't it, on so many aspects of
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our lives for sure.
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And the Kennedys had a lot to do with it. Kathleen was named Kathleen Kick Kennedy. That was her nickname, Kick. She was formerly known at that time as Kathleen Cavendish, as we've mentioned. Married to William. Five years later, May 13, 1948, she dies in a plane crash in France, four years from being widowed and was again involved with a non Catholic opposed by parents. I mean, it gets hairy for Catholics.
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And even worse than Billy, a divorced man, oh my gosh, and non Catholic on top of it.
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A
She was a rebel, I imagine. Was she?
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B
Well, yes, she certainly was. And maybe a bit rebellious against her own mother because Rose was so devoutly Catholic and had sent the girls primarily to Catholic boarding schools and convents. And she worried about Kathleen because she was such a lively character, thus the nickname Kick. People got a real kick out of her. And she was so effervescent, and she was very beautiful. And Rose saw that she was very attractive to boys. And so off to the convent she went, much as Rose's father, Honey Fitz, the mayor of Boston, had sent Rose and her sister to a Prussian convent because Rose had fallen in love with Joseph Kennedy, and Honey Fitz didn't approve of him. So Rose never seemed to realize that history was repeating itself. But Kik, yes, again, upsetting. Particularly her mother reported that she was going to marry this divorced, non Catholic man. Joe was over in Paris for business, and Kathleen and this fellow were going to be meeting with him. Kathleen hoped to get her dad's approval. But in the meantime, they decided to take a quick trip from Paris down to the Riviera for a weekend. And they flew right into a storm and crashed into a mountain between Paris and the coast. And this is part of the story of the curse the pilot had said to the intended of Kathleen, bad weather. We shouldn't take off. No, no, go ahead, take off. And this is part of the curse is that they often tempt fate and fate has the last word, and they
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get into planes over and over again. But it's important to consider the fact that this is the era of World War II during and then in the aftermath. So a lot of things are going wrong for a lot of people here. It's a time of great loss. And frankly, they almost lost Jack. You know, when his boat is rammed in the Pacific by a Japanese destroyer, he's lost at sea for time. And if so, we could probably skip this curse because, I mean, he would have never made it that far. But as we move on, the family story becomes a real roller coaster. Jack runs successfully for office in Massachusetts. First House, three terms. Then. I always love to review his career because people often forget that he had such a long time in Congress. Three terms in the House, then a term as a US Senator when he famously marries Jackie in Newport, Rhode island, runs for and then wins the presidency. The age of Camelot is upon us. But of course, things start to go wrong. But one before the famous November event that we'll talk about in a moment is the loss of their baby, which I think I had forgotten about before this.
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Yes, they had two children as they entered the White House. Caroline, who was three, had been born in 1957 after a couple of miscarriages and stillborn children for Jackie. So that was another set of tragedies that they had to experience. Again, many people have faced these issues, but it just is something that was visited upon the Kennedy. So they were thrilled when Caroline was born and healthy in 1957. And then they remain today, the only couple who had a baby between the election and the inauguration. So in late November 1960, John F. Kennedy, Jr. Is born and is an infant when they enter the White House. And then they were so delighted to hear that Jackie was pregnant with what would have been their third child and was due in September of 1963. And that news went out all over the world. And we have to remember that Kennedy is still, to this day, Jack Kennedy, the youngest president ever elected at age 43. And Jackie was only 31 when they entered the White House. So she was, you know, some 12 years younger. So they were so looking forward to this. And John Jr. Was a little too young to comprehend, But Caroline by this time was 5 or 6. She was looking forward to a new baby brother or sister. And Jackie again had this history of difficult pregnancies. And she went into early labor up in Hyannis Port at the family compound in August of 1963. And the baby boy they would name Patrick Bouvier, for the mother's maiden name, Patrick Bouvier. Kennedy was born with slightly undeveloped lungs because of his premature status, something that not long after that, could have been easily been treated, but it was not able to be treated well at the time. They whisked the baby to Children's Hospital in Boston, but after about a day and a half, he passed away, and it was a crushing blow to both parents. There are stories of President Kennedy after a little mass that was said, a little funeral mass for this little baby in a little coffin at the Cardinal's home in Boston. And Cardinal Cushing later said that Jack Kennedy, the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, just held onto the coffin and wept over it. And the Cardinal had to say, jack, we must go now, and we must go to the cemetery. So Jackie is also reported to have said to the President, I couldn't now bear anything if I were to lose you. I could never bear that. And three months later, he's gone.
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A
These people had become so famous. The wedding in Newport. I've seen the new newsreels. Look them up on YouTube. They are gorgeous people. The world is focused on these two. You know, this is before he's president. This is in the 50s when they get married, they are the couple of the year at that moment. And everybody's even without cable news, they are being watched like hawks. You know, the public is aware of their every move. That's how famous. And flying to the sun, as we mentioned, this story gets all the time.
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B
Well, and Donna, and you know, in addition to that, it was because of Joe Kennedy behind the scenes pulling the media strings. He had been a Hollywood producer in the 1920s in Hollywood, California. And knowing that he wanted Jack to be the first Roman Catholic president, when that wedding happened in 1953, he wanted to be sure that Life magazine covered it and the newsreels covered it and the newspapers covered it, much to Jackie's upset. She didn't want thousands of people surrounding the church. And it was Joe who made all of the invitations and made sure that there were thousands of people at the reception. So she was not pleased about that. But I'm sure Jack was. And I know Joe, Joe senior was,
- [25:19]
A
of course, November 22, 1963. But four months after they've lost this baby, we keep that in mind. U. S. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. And all that follows we covered this in many different episodes in the past as well. Invite you to listen to those. This almost doesn't belong in this, in this conversation. It's, it's such an extraordinary, you know, American historical event. But when you step back, it just looks like it's part of this, this grand pattern in some bizarre way, because five years later, after that, June 5, 1968, U.S. senator, Democratic presidential candidate, brother of Joe, Jack and sister Catherine, all of whom have died at this point. Robert Kennedy is shot in Los Angeles the night of his victory in the California primary and passes the following morning. We're already at the point where I run out of words. You know, that's how it feels when you talk about this and why people are fairly glib about it, I think, because it's so extraordinary what has happened to this one part of his family, never mind the whole.
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B
Well, Rose Kennedy herself said if she had read this story of two brothers at the height of their careers and fame and power were to be assassinated within five years. She said, if I read it in fiction, I would say it's unbelievable. And there was a woman who was a nurse to the family because one other tragedy that again, others have faced, but just the piling on of the layers, was that in 1961, Joe Kennedy Sr. Suffered a very debilitating stroke that rendered him, in effect, mute. He could no longer speak intelligibly and had trouble with his mobility. So from that point on, then they had a live in nurse and the woman who had that role when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. And it also remembered back to when Jack was five years before said, you know, the family somehow bucked up under the strain of Jack's death. It was horrible, but they carried on much like, you know, keep calm and carry on. But this woman said she just saw Rose Kennedy almost collapse in 1968 when she heard the news of Bobby. And she just kept saying, my son, my son. And in many ways, I think Bobby was the closest of the four brothers to her. He just had a certain, at least with his mother, a certain sweetness, an ability to accept her critiques, which she, as a Victorian mother, gave out quite freely and then joke with her and sort of poke fun at her and that. She seemed to love that. And he was the most devout at that time of the four brothers as well. So I think it was especially a blow to her.
- [28:03]
A
Yeah. And it all comes, of course, in the late 60s when so many awful and trying things are happening at the same time for this country and everyone has to suddenly digest the fact that the Kennedy the curse is continuing. But I want to consider within this short span of It's 24 years we're talking about, Joe and Rose Kennedy have lost four children. They've also had a fifth, incapacitated, which is its own story. She's Rose, who's committed to an asylum for strange reasons. All told, they had nine children, including Ted Kennedy, of course. And we'll come back to him later on. You mentioned that Joe had this stroke, but did, did Rose and Joseph ever sit down and talk about this curse in any way, like. Like in so many terms. They would never have called it that, would they?
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B
Not that we know of. And let's face it, despite everything that's been written about this family and all of their public interviews and presentations and appearances, that still leaves probably 90% of what was said in their homes and to each other to be unknown. So we also have to remember, sadly, that as all of this is happening from 1963 onward, Rose can't speak to Joe and expect a response because he's rendered mute by the stroke. Interestingly, she then becomes the voice of the family. And she had been that from the time Joe became toxic after his undiplomatic statements just before America entered World War II. But she now really takes on that role of being the campaigner in chief for the family. But yeah, so imagine how sad that was, was not to be able to sit with your husband and have a heart to heart conversation about how he was feeling and about how she was feeling. People should take a look at the photo and the video of Ted Kennedy and his mother reading their eulogies outside the home in Hyannis Port with Joe sitting mute in June of 1968 in his wheelchair. Even just to look at the still photograph is quite poignant.
- [30:08]
A
I hadn't seen a picture of her as a young woman for a long time before I was prepping for this. What a gorgeous face. You know, she was extraordinarily attractive. We'll talk more about her, but I want to understand her. Steely willed woman, right?
- [30:21]
B
Totally. I think part of that was just built in again to the DNA. I have to trace it back to those Fitzgeralds and Kennedys who came to the US in the 1850s leaving the potato famine. And just last October I appeared in rough Ireland in County Limerick, where all the Fitzgerald clan was from. And in fact, now every October they run what they call the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Autumn School. And they bring together those who knew the Kennedys, the family. There's still Fitzgerald's There. And you remember when President Kennedy came to Ireland in 1963. But I just could see in the people of rough Ireland the strength of them. And I think that Rose inherited that. And then her faith, her Catholic faith, gave her just such an iron will that, despite the fact that she would grieve, of course, but she had this view that they would all be gathered together, the family would be reunited in heaven.
- [31:21]
A
Okay, marching onward. There is more than a decade, which was kind of my childhood, I would say, more than a decade in which we didn't have any Kennedy tragedy to speak of. Unless you called Jackie marrying Aristotle Onassis tragic. For her, it was not. I remember the pictures, and it was quite controversial. But then come the 80s and 90s. Oh, Lord. April 25, 1984. Robert Kennedy's son, David Kennedy, dies of a drug overdose in Florida. December 31, 1997. More than a decade later, Robert's son, Michael Kennedy, dies in a skiing accident in Aspen. I remember that very well. Ran right into a tree, all that sort of thing. Not to say this makes a difference, but it's a remarkable fact that Bobby And Ethel had 11 children. I mean, that made a lot of kids. So that family extends the tree quite a bit beyond this tragedy. But that doesn't mean there's not more to come. Barbara. The shift happens, you know, over to the. To Robert Kennedy's family, obviously, when. When Jack is gone, then indeed when Jackie marries Aristotle Onassis. She's sort of. That's part of the controversy is the public saying goodbye to her as a Kennedy.
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B
She drops down the list of most admired women, you know, from about 1962, when she was First Lady. She replaced Eleanor Roosevelt, who had been on that list from the 1940s, and she replaces her as the most admired woman, at least in the United States, maybe even in the world. But that is a real blow to Americans, particularly, and some around the world who admired her and wanted her to be true to President Kennedy even after his death.
- [33:01]
A
Right, exactly. But throughout the 70s, it's kind of. It all sort of calms down because the world is in very strange turmoil. It's a depressing era, frankly. What turns things around is the 80s. And as far as the Kennedys goes, the beginning of the talking of John F. Kennedy, Jr. Coming to, coming of age, and, boy, is that a big story. Let's talk about his path. I remember that he was a reluctant participant in this whole legend. He sort of was. He wanted to sort of stay out of the. Out of the limelight and Become a regular guy, which is so interesting to me. He was more his mom's kid than a Kennedy kid, right at that point.
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B
Sure, because he turned just three years old the day of his father's funeral and the day of the famous salute of his Dad's casket outside St. Matthew's Basilica in Washington. But he didn't have any memories of that. And he. He told Oprah Winfrey one time when she asked him, you know, what memories do you have of your dad? And he said, I. I don't. I can't separate in my head what I might have memories of. He said, I do remember him. He said, he used to call me Sam. And I. That upset me. I'd say, my name is John. Don't call me Sam. So he had that little bit of a memory. But he said, I've heard so much about him from other people and I've seen all these goes. So I can't separate out in my head what I know and what I don't know. But he did give so much credit to his mother for raising him and Caroline in a way that she could be proud and the country could be proud. But yes, they would say he didn't use the term junior. He would call himself, hi, I'm John Kennedy, not I'm John Kennedy Jr. Or I'm JFK Jr. No doubt he obviously had a lot of benefits from that, but he was reluctant to be part of this mythology of Camelot that Mrs. Kennedy herself had created the week after President Kennedy's assassination. But he did not want to be viewed as the prince of the king of Camelot who had been so tragically taken away. He wanted to be his own person to the extent that he could control that, and in a sense he did.
- [35:06]
A
That was the key, is that the media storytelling was so out of control now compared to when his dad was a young guy and it could be controlled by a. His grandfather. Everybody was feeling it back then. Lives of the rich and famous.
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B
And also just think of the. The wedding of. Of Diana and Charles in 1981. So the. And then the paparazzi and the oncoming of the paparazzi. So, yes, that. And then cable television comes into being, and 247 television comes into being. So it's an unfortunate thing for John Kennedy Jr. In terms of his privacy. Now we know that he started George magazine. It was very helpful, much as it was for Diana when she had a cause like being working against landmines, when she wanted the press there, that was a good thing. When John wanted The press there for the debut of George magazine. Snap of the fingers and they'd be there. It's hard then to draw that line when they're standing outside your house or taking photos inside your windows.
- [36:07]
A
Right, exactly. I can attest to something. I was in 1991, 99, somewhere in there. I got an apartment above Walker's Bar in. In Tribeca, my first apartment in New York by myself. It was next door to where Carolyn and. And John had their apartment. That came later I'd left, but in those years he was living on Greenwich Avenue around the corner, and nothing was really happening in Tribeca in those days. It was pretty. Pretty barren down there. And he had kind of come there because it was out of the. Out of the line limelight. But I'd see the guy all the time at breakfast. He'd be sitting there eating oatmeal before he was going to work as a public prosecutor. One time I stood behind him at a Korean deli. You know, I was barely aware of him. He was just a nice presence. He was a very friendly guy. And he'd say hi and smile to you, but he never really got a conversation of the guy, nor did I want one. But I was standing behind him late at night, I remember, and I'm talking about. I'm like 28 years old or something, so he's quite a number to be standing near. And I watched him buy. This is late at night after the parties, buy a ginseng, you know, from the thing. And I thought, oh, maybe that's the secret.
- [37:12]
B
I, too, can be handsome if I drink, maybe ginseng.
- [37:16]
A
I should buy that little thing. Anyway, it was a fascinating period of time to see this, and it only made it more, you know, torturous to know what had happened July 16, 1999. A lot has gone on in this young man's life before this. Obviously, John F. Kennedy, Jr. Dies when his plane that he was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha Vineyard. Also killed in the crash were, of course, his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette. This was really in my mind. I mean, John F. Kennedy dying is a cultural defining moment of American history. In my life, this is the Nader. This one really hurts because it just drives a nail in the coffin, as you will, of. Of this story. They just can't escape this mega tragedy that happens to them.
- [38:04]
B
I can remember that day, and I have to say, I also remember. I guess I'm the. The last grouping of Americans in terms of age who can remember when his father died. I remember that day because I was in Catholic school and we were taken to church to pray for the president. This time I was with my mother. We were shopping and we were driving home, and I had it on the radio. And at that point they said that John Kennedy, Jr. S plane was missing. And I said to mother, oh, I think I feel sick to my stomach. And she said, I think I'm going to cry. And I think that just sums up, as you say, how Americans, particularly maybe people around the world, who had their hopes pinned on, rightly or wrongly, John F. Kennedy, Jr. As to be the restoration of Camelot in the White House. And he would be somewhat coy about whether he would go into politics, but you had the feeling that he would someday. And so just think of that handsome man with his beautiful wife and her equally beautiful sister to be lost and so unnecessarily. And yet once again, the irony of the curse is he had been fascinated with flying and aviation from the time he was a little boy with his dad, particularly in the helicopter that he would love to ride in with his dad, the president. So that goes back to when he was 2 or 3 years old. But he also wanted to be a private, private plane pilot so he would not have to put up with people in airports and people coming up to him and sitting next to him in planes and trying to talk to him. So because he was trying to escape from his fate, fate caught up with him. He should not have been flying that plane by himself into the darkness and into what turned out to be a marine layer, as they call it, where you can't tell the difference between the ocean and the sky. And he went into what they call the dead man spiral, and he pulled the wrong way on the stick, and he drove the plane right into the Atlantic Ocean.
- [40:06]
A
You know, we talk about the emotional impact of this, and it speaks to how much we are perhaps the creators of this, the levels of which this goes. You know, we project, we experience, rightly or wrongly, you know, these events in our own ways. And that has fueled this mythology, hasn't it?
- [40:24]
B
It has, because people take on celebrities, whether that be from the silver screen or athletes or politicians or royalty, and they bring them into their homes in the old days, through newspapers and then newsreels and then television and now all sorts of computer wizardry. And we feel, incorrectly, that we know them. Of course we don't, but we feel that we do, and we sometimes pin hopes on them, or we, you know, you talked about just being able to see John Kennedy Jr. In person was meaningful to you. And that is the notion of celebrity, that somehow people want to tie themselves to that because they feel important, they want someone's autograph or they aspire to that kind of life. And so when people like that are taken from us, especially at such a young age under such tragic circumstances, it feels as though they've lost a member of their family. And studies showed after President Kennedy's death that there were pollsters who fanned out across the country asking people how they felt. And people actually were experiencing the signs of grief, as if they had lost a family member. They couldn't sleep, they didn't want to eat, they were crying uncontrollably.
- [41:42]
A
Barbara, tell me. I mean, the events go on, quite honestly. I have a list that goes down a page here of events that happen after. After John. John is gone. 2011, Ted Kennedy's daughter, Kara Kennedy dies of a heart attack. Ted Kennedy, of course, died in 2009 of natural causes, at least as far as the cancer that took him. But there are suicides, there are over so many more things. I almost don't want to get into this because it gets almost maudlin, you know, to talk about.
- [42:10]
B
What's so particularly sad is that it carries on to the next generation. So this past December, just before the first of this new year, Caroline Kennedy lost her daughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, to a very rare form of leukemia. And the daughter was just 32 years old and found out that she had this terrible, fatal condition after giving birth to her second child. And they did a blood test, a routine blood test, and something wasn't quite right, and she tried every possible treatment and wasted away to death. That's the next generation after the Camelot generation of John Jr. And Caroline. And how someone like Caroline, who had lost both of her parents by the time she was in her early 30s, then her brother and now her daughter, her much beloved daughter is just beyond me. Kathleen Kennedy, Robert Kennedy Sr's eldest of the 11 children named for her aunt Kathleen or Kik, lost her daughter and that daughter's son. So Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is her married name, she lost in a canoeing accident at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, March of that year. And again, another one of these situations where the daughter was playing soccer, kicking football back and forth with an eight year old, her son by a creek in Maryland, and the ball rolled into the creek, you know, instead of saying, let's just go down to the store and buy another football or soccer ball. They jump in a canoe, apparently without life jackets, and they are pulled out into the Chesapeake Bay. I remember the day on the coast here. It was very blustering, windy. They capsized and drowned. Now, again, this is. Could it just be that there's so many of them that the law of averages just has to catch up with some, just as it does with regular people? So there's some of that. And regular people make mistakes, too. They drive too fast, they drive under the influence, they accidentally take too much of a substance, they are struck down by cancer. So it may just be that there's so many of them that it catches up with them. But things like this, or skiing into a tree, playing ice football when they're told not to do that in Aspen, a drug overdose. And so it carries on. But the most recent tragedy of Tatiana Schlossberg's death. She had done nothing but live a good life. And she wrote on November 22, 2025, a beautiful article about her oncoming death. And she said, I feel so bad for my mother because my mother, Caroline went through so much in her life. And she said, I tried to be good. I tried to be good and never give my mother anything to worry about about. And now I'm dying. So it just brings a tear to the eye. Acast powers the world's best podcasts.
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- [47:08]
A
To look at it in a more positive light, I want to say that this is a family that has been extremely proactive, to say the least. Not only in their own personal life, but of course, politically and civically. If you have such an overwhelming energy in a family like this, this, you're, you're not asking for trouble, but you're bound to run into things that other people might not.
- [47:27]
B
This is true. And let's also think of Joe Jr. And Jack Kennedy. They first of all could have waited to be drafted into World War II. They both, like many men of their generation, and particularly those at Harvard where they were undergraduates, and then Joe Jr. By this time was a law student. They signed up, up and in the case of Jack Kennedy, had had such poor health and did his whole life, but particularly from the time he was a child into his teen years, he probably would have been declared 4F, ineligible to be drafted and ineligible to serve. But he used his family's influence to get into the Navy. And then Joe, who was very healthy, got into the Navy. Then they could have sat at a desk in this country stateside. Instead, they took on the most difficult roles of aviator and PT boat skipper. And then they asked to go into combat. They volunteered to go into combat. So the energy and the courage that they have to do things that mere mortals tend not to. Again, there were many courageous people who went into these wars and lost their lives, but not, I would say a majority of people don't want to do that. They want to live, they want to save their lives. So the very essence of their energy and courage, courage and civic mindedness that causes them to go into combat and run for office and become President of the United States and Senators is also, I think, the very characteristic that causes them to take risks in their daily lives. Literally driving their cars too fast, you know, they just, they do that and sometimes under the influence. So it's a two edged sword.
- [49:11]
A
My father was a World War II vet and he took great pride in his service, but told me, you know, he figured out how to stay out of combat. It was the reason that he admired JFK so much, is that he knew a man of his same age had made a more courageous decision in his more courageous and daring choice in his life, and he greatly admired that. About, about jfk, same story for so many people like him, the healing force was going to be Ted Kennedy. He was going to be that final brother who was going to put it all together, together and escape this terrible curse. And in a way he did. I mean, he had a full life. Could have been fuller. He died a little bit young at 77, but nonetheless an extraordinary career in Congress and took this family legacy further than the others for that reason. But again, it's, it's so ironic and sad that after the fact, there are so many other situations that happen before. The girl that stands out for me, Sarsa, is, is that descendant of all this. That really touched me in that she's a kid who, she dies so tragically of an overdose in her grandmother's house in Hyannisport. But when you go past the sensational headline of and the, and the automatic judgment of oh, that 22 year old overdose, you start to see what was wrong. There was a depression involved. She was sort of self medicating on this. She had undertaken the role of speaking out for people with depression. She'd done that Kennedy thing and then it catches up to her at 22. I mean, it just is a horrible story, but this is the way it goes so often. Barbara, in your studies as a presidential expert, the Miller center, as I've talked about, have you stepped close to this Kennedy myth? Do you have clues as to its true nature?
- [50:56]
B
I do, because not only have I researched them extensively, but I have met with a number of them over the years and particularly Robert Kennedy, seniors, children, and what I see is a sense of energy among them, a desire to be out in the world and do things that draw attention to themselves and their famous parent. In that case, I've also seen a certain sense of entitlement and I do think that this at its extreme ends up being that the normal rules don't apply to. I had a chance to spend an entire day with Robert Kennedy Jr. In 2006. He was brought to my then college, Sweet Briar College in Virginia to speak on environmental issues. And I was driving him away from the college and I had an hour's drive with him back to Charlottesville, Virginia to drop him off where he was to stay and then take him to the airport the next day. And he started saying to me, you seem, to me, he said, you seem very rural, R U L E rule oriented. Because I kept him on time through the whole day, all the things he needed to do. And I said, well, yes, I, I was raised that way. I was in a household that had discipline and rules, and I went to Catholic school. And he said, well, you know what? My mother. That would be Ethel Kennedy taught us 11 children, if you're obeying all the rules, you're missing all the fun.
- [52:26]
A
Oh, well, interesting.
- [52:28]
B
And that was true of Ethel Kennedy and to some extent, Robert Kennedy Senior. And I didn't say, well, that has cost a brother, two brothers, maybe even uncles, to some extent. But all during the day, throughout his events, receptions, dinners, everybody came up to him to say, oh, Mr. Kennedy, I loved your father. Oh, Mr. Kennedy, I loved your uncle. I once met her father, and I noticed he wasn't saying anything. You know, I would say, oh, really? You knew my dad? Oh, I loved my dad. Dad. But it must. You must have to draw a line at some point to keep your own sanity. But I also realized he was 12 or 13 when his dad was assassinated, and he was the head of the casket. And with his mother coming to and from the funeral, and what impact that must have had on him. It really taught me a lesson about the Kennedy curse. And sometimes it's brought on by themselves.
- [53:26]
A
Exactly. I mean. I mean, one need only pause for a moment to consider your father or family or whomever being assassinated in your time and what an impact that would have on you psychologically. And yet we project upon the Kennedys this sort of superhuman quality that. Okay, they just, you know, hey, that happens to some people. No, it doesn't.
- [53:48]
B
Right. And they move on. And in the case of his brother David, as you say, in 84, who died of a drug overdose, he was at the Ambassador Hotel the night his father was assassinated. He had been with him on that campaign swing, as were all the younger children who weren't in boarding school. So all throughout California, and he's upstairs in his room watching his dad, Bobby Kennedy Sr. Making his victory speech. And then you can go back and watch the video. You hear shots and people are screaming, and you hear, the senator's been shot. Is there a doctor in the house? Here's this little boy who at that time would have been, you know, 10, 11 years old, and he never overcame it.
- [54:31]
A
Yeah. You carry survivor's guilt all the way through. The question, as you mentioned, is, how much is fate at hand here? How much is created by one's own actions? Is there something mysterious? And I think it's a combination of all of the above.
- [54:47]
B
I agree with you. And I will say that Rose Kennedy, when she was acting asked, she did not die until 1995. She lived to be 104 and she suffered a series of strokes in the last 10 years or so of her life and became incapacitated. But up until that point, at age 90, she was campaigning for son Teddy in the nomination fight with Jimmy Carter to get the nomination for the presidency. But she would be asked in those later years when she was sentient, how do you describe your life? And she borrowed a title of an Irving Stone biography of Michelangelo that was called the Agony and the Ecstasy. And that's how she described her life. And she didn't attempt, I think, to answer this question, is it a mystery? Is it fate? Is it something we're doing? She just described how she felt that sometimes it was ecstatic, sitting and watching her son be inaugurated President of the United States, being the wife of the ambassador to the Court of St James and meeting with the king and Queen of England, coming again from a tenement in the north end of Boston and one generation removed from the peat bogs of Ireland. That was the ecstasy and the agony she felt, I'm sure, on a daily basis as one by one, this family of nine children that in her Victorian ways she tried to perfect effect. Most of them who went out into the world to do the things she taught them to do died.
- [56:15]
A
Yes. I have a feeling this is a family that does well with staying in the present moment, one hopes. Yes. Barbara A. Perry is a professor of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. Look them up for meaty but digestible biographies and think pieces about our many presidents. Millercenter.org is the website, right?
- [56:36]
B
That's right. And we've just released our Barack Obama Presidential oral history. So now that's, that's up front and center.
- [56:42]
A
And Barbara, you've got a new book coming out, right?
- [56:44]
B
I do. It's called Reconcilable Differences, the Unlikely Political alliance of John F. Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt.
- [56:51]
A
Oh, wow. Very cool. Well, thank you very much.
- [56:54]
B
It was good to be with you, Don. Thank you so much for asking me.
- [57:02]
A
Thanks for listening to American history hit. You know, every week we release release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, please share with a friend. American history hit with me. Don Wildman, so grateful for your support. Thanks so much.
- [57:43]
B
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