Kate Story (3:12)

Uncovered Repairs.

George Taveras (3:21)

I'm George Severis.

Julia Claire (3:22)

And I'm Julia Claire.

George Taveras (3:23)

And this is United States of Kennedy, a podcast about fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week we go into one aspect of the Kennedy story, and today we are talking about the single place most associated with the Kennedy family. Their famous Hyannis Port home.

Julia Claire (3:41)

The Kennedy compound, as it came to be known, was in many ways the beating heart and refuge of this sprawling and immensely powerful family dogged by fame and tragedy.

George Taveras (3:52)

And we thought, who better to guide us through those hallowed halls than Rolling Stone features director Kate Story, author of the great 2023 book White House by the A Century of the Kennedys at Hyannis Port. You might remember Kate from the George Magazine episode where she walked us through an oral history of the magazine that JFK Jr. Ran in the 90s in New York. She's our first returning guest. We're so excited to have her back. Kate, welcome back to United States of Kennedy. It's so good to see you again.

Kate Story (4:19)

So good to see you again. Thanks for having me back.

George Taveras (4:21)

Of course. So last time you were here, we were talking about George magazine. You wrote a piece for Esquire. If I remember correct, it was sort of like an oral history of George magazine, and you talked to people that worked there, and it was George Mag magazine, for anyone who hasn't listened to that episode, is the magazine that JFK Jr. Ran in New York in the 90s. And I don't think I knew this at the time, but through that piece, you found your way into more Kennedy research and like a growing Kennedy interest. And you ended up in 2020, signing on to write a book about the Kennedy compound, which is now out. And I have it here with me. White House by the Sea. I have it open to the page. So the photos I'm seeing Andy Warhol and Grace Jones at the Shriver Schwarzenegger wedding, which is one of, I think, probably my favorite photo in the book.

Kate Story (5:07)

I love that photo.

George Taveras (5:09)

So, I mean, just off the bat, what about the Kennedy compound sparked your interest? And why choose that as, like, the focus of a book?

Kate Story (5:18)

It always seemed like such a mysterious place that kind of would come up over and over again in stories about the Kennedys. And I had a conversation with a book agent after writing the George piece, and she was like, it's my dream to have a Kennedy compound. And as soon as she said it, it was like, that's. I would love to read that book. I don't know if I'm the one to write it, because it felt like just an impossible thing to break into. Hyannis Port is such an incredibly private place. The neighbors are really, really protective of the Kennedys. The ones who love them, the ones who hate them. Like it there. There's just such a sense of, these are our neighbors, this is our community. Just such a kind of a wall around it. So that curiosity about what is it really like there. There's also just a longevity to the interest in the Kennedy compound. The Kennedys moved there, and, of course, it was, like, such a centerpiece of JFK's campaigning. Like, a lot of the most beautiful, iconic photos taken of him and Jackie are in Highness Port and sailboats behind the compound and things like that. But it continues to be a point of interest to the photo that you pointed out that was taken in the 80s. You know, things are still happening there today. So the fact that there's just been this kind of long tail of interest in the Kennedy compound drew me to it. I also am really interested in family dynamics, kind of generational dynamics. So it felt like a really interesting thing to dive into there. And just the chance to tell the story of a family through a place was also really interesting to me, to really kind of anchor them in this one place that's not Boston, that's not Washington, D.C. that's not Dallas. This really private place of theirs. I felt like it would give kind of new insight into the family.

George Taveras (6:52)

Yeah. So in terms of just the basic facts, like, can you describe what the Kennedy compound looks like and what its origin story is?

Kate Story (7:03)

Yes. It does not look like what you imagine unless you've been there. Like, it really is not what you think of when you think of a compound. I had never been there before I started working on this book. I grew up in Florida. You think of a compound you think of huge walls and maybe a guard person or a real walled off from the world type of place. And the Kennedy compound is definitely not that. JFK's parents bought the first house in the compound, which is on the water. And they first rented it and then bought it and renovated it in the late 1920s. And so that was really the heart of the compound. This is just a family house. They bought it to spend their summers and then they ended up buying the house behind it. It's on a very short street in Hyannis Port, which is a neighborhood in Hyannis on Cape Cod. I should back up and say we're talking about Cape Cod. There's a very tiny street in Hyannis Port. They bought the house on the end of it. The family ended up buying the house behind it for Bobby. So they had the two houses back to back. And then JFK and his new wife Jackie ended up buying the house that was kind of caddy corner to those two houses. So the three houses are connected by a lawn, but there's no wall, one piece of property. These are just three houses that were bought up over a period of time. And the press ended up calling it the Kennedy compound because it just came up during the campaign. It was just a shorthand of, you know, send the photographer to the Kennedy compound. And it's really stuck all these years. And it's now in the national historic Register. Those three houses are the official Kennedy compound houses. But it's like I said, in Hyannis Port, which is a neighborhood, and Hyannis is one of the bigger towns in Cape Cod. The Hyannis Port is a very small little neighborhood. There is really not much to it. There are no stores, there are no restaurants. It's really just close together little summer houses. Not little beautiful, wonderful summer houses, bigger than any house that I would ever be able to afford. These are not like McMansions. These are summer houses. And. Yeah, so that's the compound in Hyannis Port.

Julia Claire (8:58)

What was it like? I know you said you had never been there before, you had never been to Hyannis Port. What was it like? Your first time going?

Kate Story (9:07)

Yes, it was funny. My first time going, I went in November, which was the worst time to go there. Like, it's so gray, there's nobody around. That is not the time to be on the Cape. I put the directions into my phone and I just wrote Hyannisport. And I arrived and it was a suburban looking street, just houses. And you normally, when you're going somewhere new I don't know. If you do this, you put the place in and you arrive on Main street, and there are coffee shops and there are restaurants and shops and things like that. And I just arrived to this street. There's nothing else around in November. And so what I ended up doing that first weekend, I was really curious to see if people were going to talk to me. I was very, very unsure if anybody was going to talk to me at all. I ended up going in and out of shops and restaurants in Hyannis, Hyannis Port's neighbor. And there's a wonderful museum in Hyannis called the JFK Hyannis Museum, which really tells us the history of the family there. It's a very cute, wonderful, great place to go if you're ever visiting the Cape. I went there, introduced myself and told them what I was thinking about working on, and they said they would help in any way they could. They let me look through a lot of their old exhibits. And then I just started talking to neighbors and to say, do you know this family? What do you think? People were willing to talk. People were willing to say, you know, they were curious about what's the story you want to tell here. But I said, I'm really interested in the history of Hyannisport and how the Kennedys fit into that. The thing I always say about the book is, of course, it's a book about the Kennedys, but it's to me, more than that. It's a book about this place. And I really wanted to do the place justice and do the neighbors justice. And some of my most interesting characters in the book, to me, are really the neighbors of the Kennedys and people who work there. So those are the stories I wanted to get right. And so that's what I told neighbors and people working around there. And it kind of all snowballed from there. I was really able to crack my way into the community, and people were really amazing in sharing their stories with me.

George Taveras (10:53)

And you ended up talking to over a hundred people. Right? It's a deeply. I think there's a way to write a book like this that is only focusing on the mythology of things. And this is really a book that an actual reporter would write. And we read a lot of Kennedy related media on this podcast, and it really runs the gamut from true fan fiction, I'm sure, to actually factual. So I do want to say we appreciate that. Yeah, this book is well researched. So I do want to talk about the neighbors and the staff, because to me, that is really, what gives the book flavor? And also, that's what I always want to know. I mean, we know enough about jfk, but what did the housekeeper have to say? To me, that's the most interesting part. But in terms of the Kennedy themselves, can you talk a little bit about the Kennedys as non WASPy Catholic outsiders in this community early on in the 20s and 30s, and what the process was like in terms of first being rejected and then defiantly, you know, making it their own.

Kate Story (11:51)

Yeah. So they started off looking for a summer cottage in Cohasset, Massachusetts. They rented for a few summers there. And Joe Kennedy, as the story goes, applied to be a member of the golf club there. And the family's Irish Catholic. There were very few Irish Catholics who were members of the golf club at that time. He applied to get in. And the way the family tells the story is they didn't even give him the dignity of response. He just never heard back. And so they wanted a place where the family could grow up there, really spend summer after summer. And so they kept going further and further away from Boston and these different summer communities. And they ended up. It was actually Rose Kennedy, the matriarch of the family, ended up going on a shopping trip to Hyannis Main Street. And that was the first time the family was ever in Hyannis. And they ended up renting this house in Hyannis Port. And Joe eventually was accepted as a member of the golf club there, and they ended up buying the house and moving there. But that really wasn't the end of that kind of exclusion of the family. They moved there, and he was accepted into the golf club. But there was always this sense of, you know, them versus us. There's a longtime neighbor family, the Tenneys, that lived across the street, who really were not happy to have an Irish Catholic family living there. The Kennedy kids were always trying to draw the daughter Nancy, into coming to church with them on and she would go because she wanted to be with her friends, and her father hated that. And then there was also Rose Kennedy. She's a really interesting figure, I think, but she really was shy and held herself back and didn't really get to know the neighbors for a long time. So they saw her as standoffish and aloof, and they saw Jo as flashy new money. So they were viewed as the Irish Catholic. New money in town was the view of the Kennedys for a long time. The kids very much were immediately a part of the community and had very good friends and fit in quickly.

Julia Claire (13:35)

I was so Interested when I was first reading excerpts from your book about Joe specifically. And I'm just very interested in Joe as a person and as this kind of outsized mob boss figure that he has in history. What was his relationship like to Hyannis Port after this? Because I've heard a lot about exactly what you just said about the origins of it in the 20s, but he lived for a long time. What was his relationship like to that community? Throughout the rest of his life?

Kate Story (14:10)

His anchor and his priority was certainly always his kids and his family. In terms of the social center for him, they really didn't want that house to be a hosting house. Like, it was really where the family could be together. And that was very true for Joe. He wasn't there for a lot of the summers or in the early days. He was working first in banking and then in Hollywood. And when he was home, it was very much focused on keeping the kids in line and having the kids compete. And there's a scene in the book about, you know, he wasn't a sailor himself, but he would go out into the water and follow the kids around sailing and be like, you know, go faster, go faster. A second isn't good enough. So he was very focused on his kids when he was there. One of the contradictions in the book and about the family in general, is it was this kind of sacred family place. But Joe Kennedy also brought the woman he was having an affair with, the actress Gloria Swanson, to Hyannis Sport, which I was beyond shocked to find out because this was his wife's place. Like, he bought this house for his wife and his kids. Really. Rose was there every summer. It was such a sanctuary for. And I found an, you know, old reporting that he brought Gloria there. There's the scene of her arriving and all the neighbors whispering. So there's one definitely firmly reported instance of her being at Hyannis Port during the period of them having an affair, which she wrote about in her memoir. And David Nassau, who's the biographer of Joe Kennedy, confirmed as well that it was during these years they were having an affair that he brought her there. And then the neighbor kids remember her coming and seeing her car come in and out when Rose would go to Europe. I found that quite shocking.

George Taveras (15:41)

Yeah, I mean, like, it is just such a Kennedy classic to flaunt your affairs, to basically want to have it both ways and be this symbol of integrity and patriotism and also be just very clearly embroiled in 15 scandals at any given time.

Kate Story (15:57)

Absolutely.

Julia Claire (15:58)

We'll be back with more United States of Kennedy after this break.

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George Taveras (18:28)

Half half the service.

Kate Story (18:29)

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Julia Claire (19:55)

And we're back with more United States of Kennedy.

George Taveras (19:58)

So you mentioned sailing and I know that you yourself did a little bit of sailing in preparation for this book because it was such a part of their culture that when you asked to talk to, was it Ted Kennedy that you went Max? Yes. Can you talk a little bit about gaining that access to the Kennedys themselves?

Kate Story (20:17)

Yeah, the Kennedys themselves. It was a funny dynamic. Carrie Kennedy was the first one I spoke to and she was really wonderful and welcoming and open and invited me to her home and shared photos with me and she was willing to talk to me. She introduced me to her brothers and her cousins and so it snowballed from there.

George Taveras (20:33)

And for anyone who doesn't know Carrie Kennedy, I'm visualizing the family tree in my head. Yeah.

Kate Story (20:37)

She is one of the children of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy. I see. Okay. And she runs the RFK Human Rights foundation now too. So she's one of the most public facing members of the family. Now most of them are not public facing these days with some very notable exceptions which she is public facing.

Julia Claire (20:51)

And who could you be talking about?

Kate Story (20:53)

I know you might have Been hearing them in the news lately. But, yeah, so I talked to Carrie first, and then she introduced me to some of her family members. But there was a lot of hesitation. There's been so many books written about the Kennedys, so many articles. And so there was a big hesitation from the family of I'll talk to you for a few minutes or, you know, who are you? Type of thing. Max Kennedy is a huge presence in Hyannis Port. One of the first times I went there, there was a guy walking down the street who looked exactly like a Kennedy. Like, he had the smile. I later found out that was Max. He's just always, like, walking around. He's just there all the time. He's. He's a real fixture there. He ignored me for months and months and months. So I called him, I sent him emails. Just ignored me for months. And then I finally heard back from him. It was one of the first falls. I was working on the book, and he said, okay, listen, I'll talk to you, but it has to be on my sailboat, and it has to be this weekend. Cause I'm shutting down the house. House. So I live in New Jersey. So I got in my car and drove five hours the next day to go on his sailboat with him. I'd never been sailing before in my life. I was frantically asking, what do you even wear? What shoes do you wear on a sailboat? What do I need to know?

George Taveras (21:52)

Maybe I'm so ignorant. I'm like, boat shoes.

Kate Story (21:54)

I know from my research. I was like, I think that you don't want to, like, scuff it with black.

George Taveras (21:58)

I know it makes sense that you wouldn't. I just. Because of the name, I'm like, well, that's what you wear on a boat. But it does seem completely convenient.

Julia Claire (22:05)

And they do have white salt.

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Kate Story (22:07)

Exactly. So I just wear sneakers, Adidas sneakers, and, like, four fleeces. It was so cold. And so, yeah, I met him on the dock, and he was like, let's go. So we're talking just on this boat. So I had my recorder, and obviously it's incredibly windy on a sailboat. And so I was trying to interview him while the big boom is going back and forth over my head. And I was there with his wife Vicky, who was also lovely. And then two other friends shouting, duck at me as it would come. And I'm trying to think of intelligent questions to ask him. So we did the interview, and I was like, but really, I'm sure we're gonna keep talking after this, you know, we get off the boat at the dock and he's like, see ya. Like that was it. The whole conversation was just on the boat. And I was like, so, you know, can we get a coffee? And he's like, you know, I just wanted you to experience the boat and sailing because you're just not going to understand our family unless you understand sailing and what these boats mean to us. And his sister, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, another one of Bobby and Ethel's kids, said the same thing to me. I'd interviewed her before. I talked to Max and she'd asked me, she's like, oh, where do you like to go sailing? I was like, I've never been sailing. She was like, well, then how are you gonna write this book? She was so confused, like, what do you mean you've never been sailing? So that is my one and only time I've ever been sailing.

Julia Claire (23:14)

How do you not resent these people?

George Taveras (23:17)

I mean, I will say to Julia's point, you're fair in your descriptions of them, but there's a wistfulness and a nostalgia to the book. There are books that are so damning and critical about the Kennedys and this isn't one of them. This is really focusing on their family relationships. It's not focusing on the scandals, the politics, whatever. How did your idea of the Kennedy family evolve during this process?

Kate Story (23:39)

I went into it with a real open mind, like I have no course in this race when it comes to the Kennedys. I didn't go into it wanting to either tear them down or to build them up and protect the legacy. Whatever I found was going in the book. I didn't know them before. I have not stayed in touch with them really since then. So I went into it really open eyed as a journalist. And I told that to my sources too. I said, if you have something great to say about the family, if you have something awful to say about the family, I. I'm here to listen to you and I'm here to put those stor into this book. The thing about Hyannis Port is a lot of the big scandals that you associate with the family just they didn't really happen there. So like Chappaquiddick, for example, did happen on the Cape.

George Taveras (24:17)

The Palm beach, the.

Kate Story (24:18)

Right, the William Kennedy Smith.

George Taveras (24:19)

The William Kennedy Smith Palm beach rape case was in the Florida Kennedy compound.

Kate Story (24:24)

Yeah. Yes. And so I did ask everyone that I spoke to about him if he spent time in Highest port. And he did from time to time. And he was spotted there after the rape case with JFK Jr. And that was. There were whispers about that. But I said, if you have a story like that that you've heard of that you want to tell me, I'm here to listen to those stories as well. But Highness Port was really like a family place where the family went to be together. So a lot of those stories, that wasn't the place where they happened, but I went into it truly, truly open eyed.

Julia Claire (24:52)

You, over the course of reporting this book, stumbled upon the fact that before he died, Ted Kennedy had been embarking on an oral history project related to the compound. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Kate Story (25:08)

Oh, my gosh, I love that you're asking about this, because I never get to nerd out about this. This is such a nerdy journalism research moment. I had been trying to find this source, Dotson Raider, who was a family friend for like months and months and months. Just I saw his name in the back of another Kennedy book. A story was cited to him. So I tracked him down. For months and months. He had been a journalist. He had written for Esquire and a few other magazines. I had such a hard time finding him. I finally found. I found him. And he invited me to his home on the Upper east side to tell these wonderful stories about the Kennedy family. And it was a great interview. He was very close friends with a lot of the family and spent a lot of time in Hyannis support. And as he was walking me out the door, he was like, well, tell the library thanks for sending you. And I was like, what do you mean? And he assumed that I had found him through the JFK library, that they had sent him to me. And I had spent a lot of time working very closely with the library on the research for the historical documents for this book. And nobody had mentioned his name. And I was like, what are you talking about? And he was like, I had been working with Ted Kennedy on this oral history project about the Kennedy compound before he died. And I was like, what are you talking about there? That doesn't exist anywhere. I'd never heard of anything like that. And he was like, no, I donated it to the library. They must have it. And he had no copy of it himself. It only existed. What he gave to the library was the only thing that existed. So I ran home and called the library and they said, we don't know what you're talking about. Weeks later they called me back and they said, okay, we found it. It was in a closet somewhere in the library, but just hadn't been entered into the system and things take months if not years to be entered into those presidential library systems. At that point, I was one year into a two year contract for the book and they were like, there's no way it's gonna take less than a year to get this done. A month before I turned in the book, they called and they got all the approvals that they needed. And they sent me all of these recordings of these interviews with Ted Kennedy with the neighbors who had never spoken before. And it like, incredible. So the whole kind of like introduction to the book is based on one of those interviews of Ted Kennedy walking Dotson through this house and sharing his memories room to room. And it was just an absolute goldmine. It was so special. And so I'm the first researcher who had access to that. Wow.

George Taveras (27:15)

I mean, it is very Kennedy to participate in their own self mythologizing like it is. It does not surprise me that there was already an oral history being made by the people themselves. But speaking of, of self mythologizing and of the Kennedys, you know, for lack of a better wordpr acumen, there is so much intersection between the compound and pop culture. I mean, I mentioned the photo of Andy Warhol and Grace Jones, but I'm leafing through the photo section you have here, and there are a lot of important historical events, both during JFK's presidency and afterwards that had some sort of relation with Hyannisport. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about some of the most interesting or unexpected celebrities that have been there, events that have happened on the property and things like that.

Kate Story (28:04)

Yeah, the 80s were a really fun, kind of surprising period for me to do research on. And that was because at that point, like, the Kennedys had kind of fallen out of politics a bit, but at that point they were celebrities. Like they had gone beyond a political family into really a family of celebrities. So you have Maria Shriver marrying Arnold Schwarzenegger, Caroline Kennedy at that point, there's just so much attention paid to her. In spite of the fact that she's never really put herself out publicly. The attention stayed there. But the height of it was really that Maria Shriver, Arnold Schwarzenegger wedding, big kind of public, you know, broadcast journalist at that time. And so she invited this incredibly shiny a list guest list to the wedding. And so Oprah was there and Andy Warhol wrote about it in his diaries being there, and Grace Jones was his date. And they made such an entrance together, the two of them. So that was a very fun Very flashy wedding. That. That was probably the most celebrities who were there at one time. And then after that, Ted Kennedy was the one who ended up taking over the big house after the death of his mother, Rose Kennedy. And he really started using it as more of a place to host. The Clintons were there at one point and he started having more political events there, which is where you see some of those names come in.

George Taveras (29:14)

Got it. And there's also. There's sort of just like adjacencies to famous people. Can you talk a little bit about the couch the pope sat on?

Kate Story (29:21)

Yes.

George Taveras (29:22)

He didn't sit on it in its current location.

Kate Story (29:24)

No. And also not when he was pope. It was before he was pope. And then Rose Kennedy put a plaque on it to say like that a pope had sat there and then brought it to the Highness Port house. So it was a very proud item for her.

George Taveras (29:37)

Okay. And then there was like some other story about Oprah, a different time she visited where she didn't want to play family games.

Kate Story (29:44)

Yes.

George Taveras (29:45)

What was the story?

Kate Story (29:46)

The way she told it was that the Kennedy family's incredibly, famously competitive and they're very known for the touch football on the big lawn that they had there. So Oprah was invited to come with Marissa Shriver, who was a good friend of hers, and she wrote that. Oprah ended up writing that she was so exhausted from the competition, she ended up hiding in a bathroom. Wow.

George Taveras (30:04)

I mean, to exhaust Oprah, someone who is a harder worker than any of the Kennedys, it really goes to show you that it's a unique and special family.

Kate Story (30:11)

Yeah, absolutely.

Julia Claire (30:12)

And wasn't Taylor Swift there at one point as well?

Kate Story (30:15)

Yes. So Taylor dated one of the Kennedys a number of years ago and ended up buying the house across from the big house, like on this tiny little street. She ended up buying the house. She never really lived there. So she bought it and ended up renovating it and sold it a number of years later at a huge profit. So she really didn't spend time in that house, but she was dating Conor Kennedy. And so the neighbors and people very much remember her being there. And there are these very Kennedy esque looking photos of her July 4th walking around in her bathing suit. But the neighbors loved her. They were very excited to see her there. She went out for ice cream with the family at the ice cream shop in one town over.

George Taveras (30:53)

I do want to say we did a whole episode about Taylor Swift and Connor Kennedy with Fran Hoepner, who's a vulture writer. And she really walked us through the sort of mythology of the Kennedy era for Swifties and for the Swifty fandom. It's interesting. Taylor Swift apparently has a long time obsession with the Kennedys.

Kate Story (31:10)

Yes.

George Taveras (31:11)

And so it was seen as kind of vulturous for her to, in the words of the more suspicious anti Swift people, ingratiate herself with the family. But apparently they left.

Kate Story (31:20)

Yeah, they loved her. Ethel really in particular loved her. The whole thing was very quiet. Her buying this house and it remains kind of quiet. But Ethel on the golf course was like, I can't wait for her to be my neighbor. She was very into it. But yeah, Taylor and Ethel had an interesting little friendship happening. But I'll have to listen to the episode. I would love to hear more about that.

Julia Claire (31:38)

Well, moving away from the celebrities and the more famous people who graced the halls of the compound, clearly there was a whole world of regular people, support staff, people who kept the lights on at the Kennedy compound. Nannies, cooks, nurses, drivers, sailing instructors, tennis instructors, gardeners. How did they contribute to the history and why was it important to you to include them?

Kate Story (32:10)

Yeah, those were some of my favorite stories. Because I think for me, and I think for a lot of people, it can be hard to put yourself in the shape the Kennedys. There's no families like that. But I could imagine being a neighbor to a Kennedy or working for a Kennedy. So to think about the family through the eyes of the people who were crossing their paths in that way was the most interesting to me. One of my favorite interviews was with this piano player who was hired to play at the family home. At the end of Rose Kennedy's life, she always played the piano. It was like a big part of her life growing up and for the kids. But as she got older, she wasn't able to play anymore. So Ted Kennedy hired this local musician to come play the piano for her. And his story, you know, a piano player is kind of an interesting one too. Cause as I guess most people in these roles, they're kind of invisible. So the guests are walking by them. And so it's really such a fly on the wall type of perspective that you're getting. So John, this piano player had these amazing stories of the celebrities coming in and out. I just found it fascinating.

George Taveras (33:09)

Can you tell us a little bit about Eugenia Fortes?

Kate Story (33:11)

She was.

George Taveras (33:12)

She was one of the more interesting non Kennedy characters in the book.

Kate Story (33:16)

Yeah, she's one of my favorites. You were asking about my first time there, and what struck me when I got to Hynesport is that there's a tiny sliver of a public beach there, and it's called Eugenia Forts Beach. And it just really struck me that this is a place so associated with the Kennedys, and the one public place is not named for them. It's named for this woman, Eugenia, who I had never heard of. And so it was important to me to learn more about her. She was a Cape Verdean woman who lived in Hyannis, not Hyannis Port, and she worked as a cook for many of the families in. Never the Kennedys, but some of their neighbors. So the Kennedy kids all grew up knowing her, particularly Ted Kennedy. She kind of had a bit of a friendship with Ted Kennedy when he was growing up, and she ended up becoming one of the founding members of the NAACP on the Cape. And she really, really fought to keep that beach public. The community really wanted to make that a private beach. It's where the yacht club is set. And Yacht club is kind of a funny name for what this is. It's like a tiny little hut, basically, where the boats come in and out, but that's where it set. And so they wanted to turn it private. Many this came up, and Eugenia really, really fought to keep it public. Like, she would bring a rocking chair and come sit at these town meetings to fight for that to continue to be public. And then later on in Ted Kennedy's political career, he turned to her when kind of a dark period of. There were the reverse Freedom rides is what they were so called that this racist organization sent black Southern Americans up to Cape Cod to the houses of Democratic politicians to say, you know, like, we don't want them here. We're sending them there. It was horrific. It was absolutely inhumane. And Ted Kennedy turned to Eugenia Forts to say, what should we do with these busloads of people who have arrived? And she kind of gave him guidance about making sure they were taken care of, had a place to sleep. I mean, they were kind of tricked into getting onto these buses because they were told they would have jobs when they got to Massachusetts.

Julia Claire (35:10)

They did the. I mean, Republicans did the exact same thing. The Trump administration did the exact same thing.

Kate Story (35:14)

The Martha's Vineyard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was the exact eclipse. But Eugenia was a really important voice and kind of making sure that that was a wrong that was righted.

Julia Claire (35:23)

I think it's so cool that you included her for a number of reasons. One, I'm from Massachusetts originally, and Eugenia was from New Bedford, and New Bedford has a big Cape Verdean population. And that's just not something that a lot of histories of the area really detail. But the Cape Verdean population has been there for a really long time. A lot of people forget that at the time, Eugenia Fortes was a young woman. These speeches were segregated even in Massachusetts. One of her founding acts before becoming involved in the NAACP was getting stopped by a police officer on a segregated beach and saying that there were complaints about her and her friend being there. I don't know. This is a bigger problem I have with a lot of selective histories of Massachusetts, but I feel like there are these really important black histories that. That get erased all too often.

Kate Story (36:20)

Yeah, absolutely. I was lucky enough to speak to her nephew who was able to give me incredible insight into her. The interesting thing about working on more local history about a national family, you say Cape Cod, you say Highness Port and people say Kennedy's. But people in that community, Eugenia was really one of the ones they wanted to talk to me about the most, that it was really important to them that her story be told. And she's really the one who shaped this community in a really tangible way.

Julia Claire (36:41)

We're going to take a short break.

Kate Story (36:42)

Stay with us.

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Julia Claire (40:39)

And we're back with more United States of Kennedy.

George Taveras (40:42)

Were there any other nannies, governesses, tennis instructors, cooks? I'm fascinated by the kind of Downton Abbey feel of a place like this. You know, I know so many of these people are very loyal to the Kennedy family and have been there for generations. Were there other people like that that you spoke or whose relatives you spoke to or anything like that?

Kate Story (41:01)

Yeah, they had these kind of governesses for the summer because it was not their permanent residence. So they would bring in these women, young women to come for the summer to help with the kids. So I spoke to a number of those women who would come in to help, really from the big Camelot years. There were a few people who worked there who wrote memoirs that I leaned heavily on that were really insightful and incredibly interesting, including a driver who worked with a family for a very long time who ended up living above the garage of the family home. His perspective was just incredible, like what he was able to see. I was able to talk to a neighbor kid who was the one who ended up teaching Jackie Kennedy how to slalom ski. So there were the people who worked for them in official capacities and then the people who came in and out for these little brief moments. Another really important person who worked for the family was this man named Sandy Eyler, who was basically a one man summer camp for the Kennedy families and the neighbors. The family loved to tell stories about Sandy that he was really one of the ones who they would really light up talking about. He was the one who would organize the flag football games and the baseball games for the. And the neighbor kids too. The Shriver kids remember him going from house to house to wake up the kids and then making them to go jump into the water before breakfast. And he ended up being invited to many of the weddings of the kids. He stayed in their lives for a very long time. He had passed before I started working on this book, but I spoke to a lot of people who knew him really well.

Julia Claire (42:21)

Man, slalom, skiing, sailing.

George Taveras (42:24)

Yeah. I mean, this is all so relatable. This is how Julia and I are.

Julia Claire (42:26)

My class issues are absolutely frothing right.

George Taveras (42:29)

Now, and you'll feel better after our yearly ski trip during the season. This has been so interesting and it is such a fascinating lens through which to view a family is through this, you know, space that had so much meaning for all of them and also a place where so much of their life is in this kind of public, official capacity. And this is where they went to relax. But I'M wondering, what is the compound like today? I mean, we're past that kind of golden era. We're even past the era you mentioned in the 80s where there was such a celebrity ecosystem built around the Kennedys. The Kennedy name is in such an interesting place right now because on the one hand, of course, RFK Jr. Has gone in a completely different direction, but on the other hand, there are still young people that are trying to carry on some sort of mythology, some sort of legacy. What is the compound like now? Just as a place.

Kate Story (43:21)

So the big house, the main house, is empty and it's owned by an organization that was made in Ted Kennedy's name after he passed away by his wife, widow. And they're trying different things with it. What they want eventually is it for it to be a place where their, like, big meetings can happen for politicians is what they've landed on. It is a tricky property because it's at the end of this very short, very residential street. So there were talks about turning it into like the JFK birthplace type of house that people could visit. And that's really what Rose Kennedy wanted done with it. But the logistics of that are incredibly complicated because of where it is. So right now it's in this kind of what's going to be a meeting. I don't know how much is actually being used right now, though, as a meeting place. When I was working on the book, it basically was empty. Ethel Kennedy spent the whole end of her life as a year rounder in Highness Port. She was at that house all the time. She recently passed away and that house now belongs to Max Kennedy, my sailing buddy, Max. So he moved in with his family there recently. There was a beautiful spread and I think El Decor had these incredible places.

George Taveras (44:18)

Well, I should hope so.

Kate Story (44:19)

Yes, yes. So, yeah, you get a peek of what it looks like now and then. The JFK house is now owned by one of Ted Kennedy's sons and is a private residence. So there is a big fence up around that JFK house now that went up during the presidency and has been replaced over the years, of course. But the other houses all remain open and look like they always looked from the outside. The estimate that I have been told is there are about a dozen other Kennedy houses in Hyannis Port. The family members have bought up other houses as the years have gone on, including Kerry Kennedy and including Bobby Kennedy. Bobby Jr. He has a house there around the corner from the compound too. So there are a number of other houses that have been bought up by the family and they continue to go. They continue to spend their summers there. I asked one of the family members at one point, why do you keep. Why do you still go there? Because when people go there, people still try to sneak photos at the compound from the beach. And you see that on social media, people tagging, you know, the Kennedy compound from walking behind the house. And there's just such a. There's such a. It's so associated with the family now. It feels like if you want your privacy, and many of these people are incredibly private people, why here? Like, go to any other part of Cape Cod, and you would be able to have so much more privacy. And what they said was that this is where our family is, and this is how these cousins know each other. So this is where they spend holidays. And when I was doing a lot of the interviews at the houses that were owned by the Kennedys, there were cousins coming in and out the door, you know, asking, do you have a wiffle ball bat kind of thing? But, yeah, they still. They're still there. Wow.

Julia Claire (45:43)

Well, that would be a great place to end in and of itself. But there is just one more thing that I've been wanting to ask you about, which is I've heard you say, obviously, that you had no real preconceptions or ties to the Kennedys before you started this project, but that one of your favorites over the course of researching them came to be Rose. She's someone who we haven't talked about as much on the show as other members of the Kennedy extended universe. And so I just wanted to maybe close out by letting you dish about why you love Rose.

Kate Story (46:16)

Yeah, I think, you know, reading the histories of the family, when I got started, the kind of perception of her as, she's very cold and there's a lot of, like, oh, my God, she would leave her kids to go shopping in Europe. Like, there's a lot of that kind of writing about her and the fact that she stayed with Joe through, obviously, his terrible indiscretions and so many other things that Joe did over his life, there's kind of like a. Like, she's this kind of cold, stoic, you know, willing to hang in through anything kind of woman. That's kind of the perception. But as I researched and talked to people who knew her, particularly at the end of her life, there was the other side of her that came out through this place that was her home, where she obviously felt the most comfortable. And as a parent myself, there were just things she would say. You know, one of my favorite quotes in the book was she ended up building a little hut at the end of the property just for her. And she said something like, any mother will know. It's not splendor, it's solitary confinement I need. Like, she had this huge family with these crazy kids running around, and she just wanted to be by herself for a moment every day. And as a parent, that's incredibly relatable. She was picky about who she opened up with. And there were these neighbors of hers who really became her closest friends at the end of her life, who she really opened up with in ways about Joe's behavior, about what to her daughter Rosemary, which is obviously so horrific. And you get these glimpses of humanity that I think she's not often granted in the bigger histories of the family.

George Taveras (47:36)

Yeah, she's such an interesting figure because I always go back and forth where you hear about these stories where she's so cruel. I mean, one of them that has stuck with me is her disapproval of Kicks of Kik marrying a non Catholic. And of course, initially you're like, how can a mother be so disapproving? And blah, blah.

Kate Story (47:54)

And.

George Taveras (47:55)

And then during the episode we did about Kik, you know, you have the realization that one of the reasons why she's acting like that is because she is so genuinely religious, that she thinks Kik would not go to heaven if she went through with this marriage. So even though it seems so cruel, it comes from a certain kind of actual love for her daughter. And there's always moments like that with Rose. She's both a very hardened woman, but also does really care about her family.

Kate Story (48:23)

Yeah, absolutely. I think her family was really always the most important thing to her and so kind of. And this is a family house, and this is where the family would be together when great things happen, weddings, when terrible things happen, funerals. And this is where they always came. And so this place that was so important to her, I think allowed her to open up in a way that you just don't see in other settings for her.

George Taveras (48:41)

Well, the book is White House by the Sea. This was so interesting. And I have to say, if nothing else, the photo section in the center of it is great. And speaking of Eugenia Forts, a really great photo of her in here. There's all these crazy looking family photos. You know, there was just this haunted quality to any visual representation of the Kennedys that really comes through.

Kate Story (49:03)

Yeah, looking at the old photos was really such a fun part of the process.

George Taveras (49:06)

Well, thank you so much, Kate. You're our first returning guest and I hope you write another book about a different element of the Kennedys and come back soon.

Kate Story (49:12)

Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Julia Claire (49:14)

So that's it for this week's episode.

George Taveras (49:17)

Next week we're doing a special episode counting down the top Kennedy moments of 2025. And there were a lot. So happy holidays from everyone here at United States of Kennedy. And we will see you next week.

Julia Claire (49:28)

United States of Kennedy is hosted by me, Julia, Claire and George Taveras.

George Taveras (49:33)

Original music by Joshua Topolsky Editing by Graham Gibson Mixing and mastering by Doug.

Julia Claire (49:38)

Boehm Research by Dave Ruse and Austin Thompson.

George Taveras (49:41)

Our producer is Carmen Laurent.

Julia Claire (49:43)

Our executive producer is Jack Jenna Cagle.

George Taveras (49:46)

Created by Lyra Smith.

Julia Claire (49:47)

United States of Kennedy is a production of I Heart Podcasts.

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Kate Story (51:15)

And it was.

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