As someone raised in a family that revered John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, I grew up steeped in Kennedy lore. I was more familiar with JFK and his family, including his glamorous wife, Jackie, but was always a bit fascinated by Ethel Kennedy, widow of RFK and mother of his 11 children — the youngest of whom (Rory) was born six months after his assassination. Every photo I ever saw of Ethel, it seemed she had a twinkle in her eye.
I often wondered about that — what it must have been like to be the young mother of such a large brood — a high-profile family — widowed at 40 and in such a traumatic way. It can’t have been easy, though I can’t pretend to know much about Ethel Kennedy aside from what I could glean from the aforementioned photos and the carefully curated public accounts of her in the years since.
I wrote about Ethel Kennedy recently, in light of the rift…
