A Farewell To Ethel Kennedy

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When word came of the passing of Ethel Kennedy last week, it was more than the end of a long, event-filled life. It also marked the loss of the last living link to a unique moment in American history. 

The sister-in-law of one president – and the wife of someone who nearly became one – her life spanned three quarters of the 20th Century and the first quarter of the 21st. She went from being a teenager during World War II to seeing her own son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., run for president himself.

After dropping out of this year’s presidential race and endorsing Donald Trump, Kennedy could possibly return to the White House himself in a Cabinet position should Trump be reelected next month.

Ethel Kennedy’s 96-year lifetime saw the transformation of a political candidate’s spouse from being a dutifully supportive wife to an activist in her own right.

While she raised their many children, her husband – Robert Kennedy – managed his older brother John’s razor-thin 1960 presidential win and then became his attorney general. Ethel carved out a niche for herself as a popular hostess of legendary exuberant dinners and parties at the Kennedys’ Hickory Hill estate outside Washington, D.C. The couple personified the image of the New Frontier: Attractive, terribly smart, and overflowing with youthful energy and enthusiasm. It was a dramatic change from the stodgy Eisenhower years of the 1950s.

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It all abruptly ended, however, in a matter of seconds on the streets of downtown Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.

Robert Kennedy was shattered by his brother’s murder. He eventually pulled himself together and was elected a U.S. senator from New York. Ethel campaigned at his side (while continuing to have more children, too). Democrats hoped the promise of “Camelot” – cut short by one assassin’s bullet – might be restored when Robert Kennedy ran for president in 1968.

It might have been, too, had he not been murdered himself on the night he won California’s Democratic presidential primary.  Ethel — pregnant with the couple’s final child at the time — conducted herself with the same dignity her sister-in-law Jackie had displayed during her own husband’s death nearly five years earlier.

A widow at age forty, she set about raising her large brood as a single parent. But she did much more than that.

Ethel Kennedy endeavored to carry on her late husband’s legacy. She founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. A staunchly loyal liberal Democrat, she was involved in dozens of social causes. She even had a cameo in a 1992 episode of the popular “Cheers” sitcom (which, you will recall, was set in a Boston bar).

And she was a practicing Catholic who regularly attended mass.

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Her offspring carried on the family’s political presence. Son Joseph P. Kennedy II was a congressman from Massachusetts, as was grandson Joseph P. Kennedy III  (and who now serves as U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland). Daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was Maryland’s lieutenant governor from 1995 to 2003.

Still, Ethel will always be remembered for her role in the Kennedy Family’s glory days of the early 1960s, “that one brief shining moment known as Camelot.”

The lore lingers as a tantalizing ‘what if’ in American history. What if JFK had lived? Would the U.S. have been dragged into the morass of the Vietnam War? Likewise, what if Bobby Kennedy had become president himself? How would the 1970s have been different? What contributions to White House history might Ethel have made herself as First Lady?

Those questions will not only remain forever unanswered, they will now recede ever deeper into dark shadows of the past now that the final remaining link to this once-shining era is now gone. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.

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