chapter

Honey Fitzs Daughter

A pproaching the john f. kennedy library, home to roses three hundred archival boxes, takes the visitor along Bostons Dorchester Bay. On a sunny day the waters sparkle accents the small Harbor Islands. Dead ahead rises the nine-story library, I. M. Peis modern edifice of white poured concrete and glass, dramatically poised at the bays edge like a gleaming ship ready to launch. On the bay side of the building sits JFKs twenty-six-foot sailboat, Victura, displayed on a manicured point of land. Onshore breezes produce an invigorating burst of fresh salt air that recalls Kennedy sailing excursions off Hyannis Port. The contrast of arriving at the library from the northwest couldnt be more pronounced. Condos line the beach, blocking bay views. Suddenly the street that seems to be heading directly to the library turns sharply, detouring around a monstrous Boston Public Works building behind a chain-link fence. Constructed of dreary gray granite, the Gothic castle might once have camouflaged a pumping station. It has fallen into utter disrepair, punctuated by broken windows, decaying walls, and boarded-up entries. The grounds are equally squalid. Mounds of mulch and road salt spill

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out of storage sheds. Occasionally a city dump truck roars off the property, spewing a cloud of dust. On hot days a nauseating stench wafts from grates outside the fence. The scene evokes F. Scott Fitzgeralds valley of ashesthe wasteland Jay Gatsby traversed to reach New York City from his Long Island mansion. Whereas evil forces in The Great Gatsby ultimately destroyed the eponymous character, Rose Kennedy declared after her sons assassinations, Im going to carry on.1 Indeed, she did, struggling to rise above the darkness that threatened to envelop her. She reached for the light and clarity now symbolized in the Kennedy Librarys facade. Her mission included mitigating or dispelling any blot on her familys public image, which she meticulously strove to create and convey. Mother is a perfectionist, Teddy Kennedy explained.2 She demanded perfection from herself and attempted to perfect everyone and everything around her. What she couldnt perfect, she ignored or masked. Born Rose Elizabeth, on July 22, 1890, to John Francis and Mary Josephine ( Josie) Hannon Fitzgerald, she was only two generations removed from the muck and mire of Irelands peat bogs and peasant farms. Fleeing the blighted isle in the midst of the 1840s potato famine, Roses paternal grandparents, Thomas Fitzgerald, a farmer, and Rose Mary Murray, both left County Wexford for a better life in the New World. They sailed to Boston on filthy death traps dubbed coffin ships, where a quarter of migrs typically perished en route. The couple met, wed, and produced eleven children in Boston. One of them, Roses father, was born during the American Civil War in an eight-family North End tenement. Rose began her revisionist family history by labeling John Fitzgeralds birthplace a modest flat.3 She accurately pinpointed the source of her interest in American history by noting her fathers fascination with North End landmarks, starting with the Old North Church, where Paul Reveres comrade signaled that the British army was indeed coming to quell the American revolutionaries. A bundle of frenetic energy, Roses father married beautiful but reserved Josie Hannon from Acton, Massachusetts, in 1889. Her parents hailed from County Limerick. A graduate of Boston Latin

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School, established in 1635, making it Americas first public school, John Fitzgerald studied medicine at Harvard for less than a year before leaving to care for his six younger brothers after their parents died in close succession. He acquired a civil service clerkship in Bostons Customs House, earning $1,200 to $1,800 annually. At the North Ends 4 Garden Court Street, John and Josie welcomed baby Rose, their firstborn. The little girl exhibited physical and personality traits acquired from both parents. Her flashing blue eyes matched her fathers, but she developed lush dark hair like her mothers thick tresses. To the ghostwriter of her 1974 memoir, journalist Robert Coughlan, Rose observed admiringly that her mothers hair never was gray. Her hair always stayed its natural coloreven when she was quite old her hair was quite dark.... Everybody thinks that the reason my hair isnt gray is that I have it done so expertly that it doesnt look gray, doesnt look dyed. 4 John Fitzgerald sported a compact, athletic frame, and Josie, a petite woman, stood perfectly erect well into her tenth decade. Rose maintained ramrod posture for most of her life, along with her girlish figure. A nervous tummy, which she inherited from her father, prompted her to eat birdlike portions of bland foods. For years she existed on baked potatoes, toast, custard, and sponge cake. Most photos of Rose as an adult picture her holding one hand behind her back and turning at an angle toward the camera. She advised her children and grandchildren to do the same in order to appear thinner. In modern parlance, Rose exhibited body image issues. Rose also inherited her fathers broad jaw line and aquiline nose, making her face appear more mature at an early age. Her sister, Agnes, two years younger, acquired their mothers softer, more refined, facial features. Rose admitted, My sister was very attractive. In fact, she was the beauty of the family.5 Self-deprecatingly, she often told the story that when her father took Agnes and her to meet William McKinley in 1897, the president exclaimed to Agnes, You are the prettiest girl who has entered the White House! A teenaged John F. Kennedy would tease, Why didnt he say that to you, Mother? 6

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If the genetic lottery denied her Josies natural beauty, Rose enhanced her attractive features and exhibited the best of her mothers common sense. There was no use in getting excited over little things, getting nervous, getting upset, Rose reported about her mothers equanimity.7 Yet her whirling-dervish father bestowed an energy and joie de vivre on his firstborn. He talked to me incessantly when I was a child... about everything in sight, especially Bostons historic landmarks. She so completely adopted his rapid- fire speaking manner that teachers called on young Rose for class recitations if the bell was about to ring. Although exhibiting none of her mothers introversion, Roses self-contained personality allowed her to sit quietly alone and read as a child or travel by herself and spend long solitary hours as an adult. Yet she was completely at ease before crowds. She frequently observed with pride, Id been in the limelight since I was practically five years old,8 when her father won election to the US House of Representatives. He had already served on the Boston Common Council (1891 to 1892) and in the state senate (1892 to 1894). Possessing a leprechauns twinkle, charm, and mischievousness, John Fitzgerald exemplified the paradigmatic Irish politician. Crooning Sweet Adeline, and displaying Irish loquaciousness, he earned the label Fitzblarney for his presentations and the nickname Honey Fitz. Rose attended first grade at St. John School in her North Square neighborhood. Founded in 1873, the school is located on Bostons Freedom Trail, which includes Paul Reveres North End home. The schools current mission recalls its goal in Roses era: teach the children of new immigrants. Although Rose wouldnt attend Catholic schools again until after high school, she maintained a devotion to Jesuss mother throughout her life and remembered St. John as where I learned my prayers.9 At age seven Rose and her family, now joined by sister Agnes and brother Tom, left Boston, moving northwest twenty miles to 391 Main Street in West Concord, near historic and picturesque Concord. The Fitzgerald family was now closer to Josies parents in adjacent Acton, where she had grown up on a farm. Making the half-hour trip by horse and buggy to visit the Hannons nearly every

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summer day provided some of Roses happiest childhood memories. She loved rural life, with its predictable seasonal rhythms, the freedom to explore nature, and family traditions like making homechurned ice cream using farm-fresh ingredients. Yet Rose sometimes begrudged being the oldest child in a growing brood that eventually numbered six after the addition of her sister Eunice and brothers John Jr. and Frederick. She remembered her mother teaching the older children catechism while feeding the infants. There was always a baby in the house, she recalled, which I rather resented... because most of my friends had only a brother or sister. They didnt have six members in their family. I couldnt get much attention because I was the oldest and left to go on my own. She admitted, however, that being the eldest gave her self-confidence and made her independent.10 Catholic Rose, both as daughter and mother, always found herself at odds with American birthrates. From her own birth in 1890, until her last childs arrival in 1932, the average number of children born to women who lived to age fifty continued a decline from a high of seven in 1800 to a low of two by 1940.11 Roses youthful disquietude may also have stemmed from her fathers frequent absences. In 1894, three years before the family moved from Boston, Honey Fitz had won election to the US House of Representatives, where he served until 1901. As a young girl, she accompanied her father to scores of dedications, parades, banquets, and political rallies. There she absorbed his lessons of maintaining the common touch. Rose discovered the balance between making her privileged life intriguing to voters while portraying herself as approachable and empathetic. Foreshadowing her own married life, Rose had to adjust to her father being in Washington during the week and returning on weekends during his congressional career. Sometimes both her mother and father left her and the Fitzgerald siblings behind to vacation at health spas. A nursemaid and housekeeper cared for the children. A stern disciplinarian, Roses mother ran a strict household, trying to control the chaos of having five children in the span of less than a decade, followed by the sixth four years later. Believing

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that rod-sparing spoiled children, Josie inflicted corporal punishment if they violated punctuality, neatness, or etiquette rules. She expected them to study secular and religious lessons assiduously. In 1968 Rose wrote to a journalist that her father had exercised the greatest influence on her, in part, because as a devout Catholic, my father brought me up in a religious atmosphere. He often discussed the great heritage of art and learning as well as of faith and morals which the Church had bequeathed to its members. 12 Yet she credited her mother with imparting religious faith to her. Although Honey Fitz followed the Catholic Churchs requirement of weekly and holy-day Mass attendance, Rose claimed that he did so as much to engage with friends and constituents as to commune with the Almighty. In contrast, Josie incorporated Catholicism into the households routine. Each May, the month that the Church devotes to Mother Mary, Rose and her siblings erected a shrine to the Blessed Virgin and decorated it with fresh flowers. For a devout Catholic girl who loved gathering blossoms in West Concords idyllic meadows, this ritual made a lifelong impression. More painfully, Rose remembered how her mother insisted that the children pray the rosary with her each of Lents forty nights, while they knelt on the hard floor of their darkened living room.13 Nevertheless, Rose rhapsodized about the comfort that fingering rosary beads gave her during the most tragic times in her adult life. She suggested to her grown children that they turn to the rosary rather than alcohol, pills, or cigarettes to relieve their anxiety. Instead, if they said a Hail Mary, it would be much better for their figures than an extra drink.14 Given the Kennedy familys well-documented addiction problems, Roses descendants would have saved more than their physiques by heeding her advice. One of Roses favorite childhood pastimes was driving her horse-drawn carriage to the town library and borrowing books by Louisa May Alcott, who lived in Concord from 1845 to 1888. As a preteen, Rose devoured Alcotts works, including An Old-Fashioned Girl, Little Men, Eight Cousins, and the classic Little Women. The March daughters adoration for their heroic, absent father must have

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resonated with Rose. I think her books inspired me to lead a studious, poised life... Rose remembered.15 Alcott also offered a model for creating fictional images that masked painful realities.16 Alcotts Concord was imbued with Transcendental values, including striving for perfection, Roses lifelong pursuit. Bronson Alcott, Louisas father, joined his neighboring philosophers, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, in attempting to perfect human beings, to be at one with nature, God, and reason. Unfortunately for Bronsons theory, Louisas nature proved rebellious. Perhaps Little Womens rosy interpretation of childhood is Louisas homage to her father. Yet Jo, nearly every girls favorite character in the book, is so beloved because of her obstreperous streak. Rose would soon enough challenge her own fathers efforts to corral her teenage passions. Another influence on Roses childhood and, ultimately, her own maternal instincts were prevailing Victorian social mores. As womens historian Kathryn Sklar writes, Seeing it possible to exert in early childhood an influence of lifelong personal and social significance, Victorians were far more sensitive than their ancestors had been to the importance of the right kind of mothering.17 Republican Motherhood, a New England movement that encouraged women to produce patriotic sons who would serve in government, specified the goal of successful mothering. It also emphasized womens education so that they could teach republican virtues to their children.18 Exploring Concords environs, most happily with her gregarious father, Rose embraced history lessons permeating the cradle of American independence. Born in the shadow of the Old North Church, educated initially in Paul Reveres neighborhood, she had then moved near the destination of Reveres legendary ride, where 1775s shot heard round the world at Lexington signaled the colonists revolt from England. No wonder Longfellows The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere remained one of her favorite poems, cited by son Teddy in his eulogy to her. For her eighty-fifth birthday, Rose requested that each of her grandchildren memorize a stanza. Some of the naughtier ones misquoted a verse or two to

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test Mothers memory, Teddy reported, but she caught them. 19 When several of her grandchildren, including Caroline Kennedy, attended Concord Academy, Rose penned a letter to its headmaster, inquiring whether the school took students to Americas founding landmarks.20 She also instructed Caroline to visit the Alcott house, telling her how much she had loved reading Louisas novels as a girl. Rose had continued her own education at Edward Everett Grammar School and studied a year at Concord High School, always achieving top marks. My father was in Congress and that put me in a unique position as far as my school friends were concerned in public school, she remarked in 1972, clearly relishing those days when she first began to stand out among her peers.21 In 1901, having served three terms in the US House of Representatives, Honey Fitz left Congress when hometown Democratic bosses, including Patrick Joseph (P. J.) Kennedy, blocked his renomination. Undeterred, Honey Fitz set his sights on Bostons mayoral office. In the meantime Fitzgerald purchased and became the publisher of a weekly newspaper, The Republic. Under his guidance, it thrived, and in 1903 he moved the family closer to downtown Boston, into another rambling home. Located in suburban Dorchesters Ashmont Hill, the sprawling Italianate house with mansard eaves sat above Welles Avenue. While Rose compiled superb grades at Dorchester High School and played intramural sports, her father maintained his position as the North Ends ward boss and formed a temporary alliance with his counterpart in East Boston, P. J. Kennedy. Like Fitzgeralds mother and father, Kennedys parents had emigrated from Ireland and settled in Boston, where his father died in middle age. A successful tavern owner, liquor importer, and banker, Kennedy had risen into the Irish American middle class and served eight terms in the state legislature.22 When Mayor Patrick Collins died suddenly in 1905, John Fitzgerald pounced on the opportunity to run for the Democratic nomination. Kennedy and other ward bosses opposed him, but they were no match for the Little General, another moniker the diminutive Fitzgerald earned. The energetic forty-two-year-old Fitzgerald... traveled from one ward to another in the back seat of

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a large open-air touring car, delivering more than ten speeches a day to enthusiastic crowds. On primary eve [he] organized the citys first motorcade, complete with honking horns and blazing red flares, during which he spoke in every one of the citys twenty-five wards. Completing the campaigning in his beloved dear old North End, where his supporters dubbed themselves Dearos, Fitzgerald captured the nomination by nearly 4,000 votes. In the general election he won the mayors office with 44,171 votes, more than 8,000 ahead of his nearest rival.23 Taking the oath in Bostons old City Hall on New Years Day 1906, John F. Fitzgerald became the citys first native-born Irish Catholic mayor. The pastor of St. Stephens Church, site of Johns and Roses baptisms, offered the invocation. Once in office, Mayor Fitzgerald launched into a blur of activity, implementing his slogan, A Bigger, Better, Busier, Boston. Because my father was in Congress and then he was mayor for six years, I was always more or less prominent..., Rose explained about her youthful fame in Boston. When I graduated [from Dorchester High School in 1905], he was the one who gave me my diploma, so... eyes were focused on me when I was graduating from school. And I went abroad with him and we had special suites on the boat....24 She embraced public life with the same gusto as her extroverted father, and he chose her to accompany him to numerous official functions. Dressed like the iconic Gibson girl, Rose proudly stood next to Mayor Fitzgerald as he acknowledged passing soldiers in a festive 1910 parade.25 When asked by her memoirist why Josie Fitzgerald abdicated her role as the mayors wife, Rose initially took issue with that characterization, defending her mothers choices. [S]he was so... devoted and... really gave me my character, gave me my religious instructions.... And she was very attractive and always kept a girlish figure, which was great. Which my father viewed with great pride because a good many of his contemporar[ies] had wives who were rather fat and rugged looking, and she always maintained that very chic slim figure, which all the pictures show.26 Justifying her mothers choices, Rose responded, You see the woman had six children, and women did not participate in politics

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in those days. In the White House or in the social world, you didnt hear anything about the womens movement.27 Perhaps Rose didnt hear about it in her circles, but the womens suffrage movement shifted into high gear during her fathers tenure as mayor, especially during his second term between 1910 and 1914. Alice Paul of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, founded in Roses birth year, 1890, had organized more than five thousand women to parade down Pennsylvania Avenue on the eve of Woodrow Wilsons 1913 inauguration.28 Roses indifference to womens political issues marked most of her life. Although the Kennedy men used her to attract female votes, she did so usually by talking about her family and encouraging women to vote for her sons, rarely by discussing womens issues related to health, jobs, wages, childcare, or education. In 1962 she encouraged women to support Teddys first run for the US Senate because no Kennedy had lost an election since females garnered the right to vote in 1920. She also visited his campaign headquarters to bolster women volunteers.29 Rose translated her secondary role into a primary one: asked if she would rather be a senator or president herself or the mother of one, she chose the latter. She was a Victorian who had trained her sons to be important contributors to society in a post-Victorian age when women wanted to serve society directly rather than through their children. Holding her first baby ( Joe Jr.) in her arms was the most meaningful event in her life.30 Rose asserted that her mothers absence from public events resulted from her devotion to children, church, and kitchen. That was [womens] main function, and they were quite happy to do that. And [Mother] was happy that way.31 Rose claimed that initially her mother upheld the duties [of ] hostess for the mayor very well. There wasnt very much to do, but there were tea parties, and she belonged to... a club for Catholic women.32 Displaying youthful enthusiasm for public duties, Rose embraced more of them.33 As Mayor Fitzgeralds companion, Rose attracted her own headlines. At sixteen she accompanied him to Philadelphia to christen the Bunker Hill, a large steamship named for her hometowns Revolu-

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tionary War battle. Newspapers announced her upcoming trip to the launching ceremonies. By train, she traveled to Philadelphia with her father, along with a Boston contingent and group of New York City officials.34 She was especially pleased that the steamship company presented her with a handsome locket of pearls and diamonds.35 Soon after, the Boston Sunday Globe published a feature story on Roses autograph collection. Writing to statesmen, kings, and rulers throughout the world, she asked for their signatures. A photograph of her most prized acquisition, President Theodore Roosevelts autograph on a White House calling card, appeared in the paper.36 Rose adored being near important personages. Her lifelong autograph pursuit gave her a sense of proximity to influence, especially when she collected a VIPs signature in person. Although Honey Fitz had transitioned his political career from Washington to Boston, his continued absence from the Fitzgerald household earned Roses criticism years later. I was certainly not happy about that. . . . Im sure none of us were, especially my mother. Yet Rose justified his absence as the price a political family has to pay. I watched my own sons and their wives and children go through the same strains and disappointments.37 Honey Fitzs initial disapproval of her future husband also strained relations between Rose and her father. For years the Fitzgerald family had vacationed each summer at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where other Irish Catholic Bostonians gathered, including P. J. Kennedy and his family. His oldest child, Joseph P. Kennedy, two years Roses senior, first laid eyes on her when he was ten. A Boston newspaper photo shows the two children standing a few feet apart, but neither remembered this encounter in later years. Meeting again as teenagers on the Maine beach, Rose fell deeply in love with the fair-haired boy and his warm smile. Attired in their Victorian bathing costumesfor women, long woolen dresses and stockingsRose relaxed on the beach with P. J. Kennedy and his son Joe. Sitting several feet from her future husband, Rose smiled broadly, betraying her happiness.38 The object of Roses teenage affection possessed her fathers energy and drive, attended his alma mater (Boston Latin School), and starred on its baseball team.

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Believing she deserved a more suitable beau, however, Honey Fitz disapproved of Roses crush on his political rivals son. Rose had earned her high school diploma through a three-year course prevalent in the early twentieth century. The Boston Post ran a photo of Rose receiving her diploma from her father, the mayor. Only fifteen when she graduated, Rose took a year of college preparatory courses, hoping to attend Wellesley, the premier womens college, located in a Boston suburb. In fact, Rose wrote to a friend that she would soon [be] at Wellesley.39 To her lifelong disappointment, Honey Fitz vetoed her enrollment. She maintained that he thought her too young, only seventeen if she had matriculated in 1907. Doris Kearns Goodwin offers another explanation: Bostons archbishop convinced Mayor Fitzgerald that such a prominent Irish Catholic should not enroll his daughter in a secular college.40 Instead, he sent her to the Sacred Heart Convent in downtown Boston. Rose also took classes at the New England Conservatory of Music, honing her skills as an amateur pianist. Well into her seventies, she would play her fathers theme song, Sweet Adeline, hitting all the right notes in a slightly arrhythmic tempo. All her life she regretted Honey Fitzs decision barring her from Wellesley, but, typically, she claimed it disguised a blessing.

after losing his1908 reelection, amid charges of cronyism and administrative incompetence, Honey Fitz took Josie and their two oldest daughters to Europe for what Rose presumed was a brief vacation. Yet Honey Fitz used the trip to place an ocean between her and young Joe Kennedy. Just four days shy of her eighteenth birthday, Rose began her first overseas adventure. She and her family waved farewell with billowing red handkerchiefs to two launches accompanying the ship out of Boston harbor that sultry July afternoon. One carried her fathers friends, another her aunts and uncles. The departing Fitzgeralds signaled to the launches until the small boats disappeared over the horizon. The ex-mayors family found their staterooms filled with flowers and candy to wish them well. Always worried about her tummy,

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its sensitivity now compounded by possible seasickness, Rose did not dare eat any of the candy the first night out of port except a little butterscotch. They sailed through fog and drizzle, making their way through the choppy North Atlantic, bound for London. On the second day, Rose received an invitation to participate in Sunday service of the Church of England but declined... to play the piano for the singing of hymns. 41 The Roman Catholic Church instructed its adherents not to participate in other religions services or even enter a non-Catholic church. After a brief London stay, the Fitzgeralds crossed the Irish Sea to Dublin and their ancestors Emerald Isle. Roses diary didnt rhapsodize over Eire. Her family, like many with immigrant roots, was becoming a full-fledged participant in the American dream.42 After touring Dublin, Killarney, and Cork, the family returned to England via Stratford-on-Avon, where Honey Fitz showed them Shakespeares grave and regaled them with stories of the bards plays. Taking the train back to London, Rose caught her first glimpse of Windsor Castle. One part reserved now, where present king lives, but which we only saw from a distance, Rose recorded.43 She couldnt know that it would become a prominent landmark in her life story. Then the Boston quartet sailed across the English Channel and journeyed by train to Paris, which captured Roses heart. She seemed most intrigued by all things Napoleonic, even more so than by Catholic landmarks. Stunning Sacr Coeur, atop Montmartre, earned only Church of Sacred Heart on high hill in her diary. On to Switzerland and Germany the family traveled, where Rose noted all the honey-mooners in Lucerne and the beautiful cathedral in Cologne.44 Honey Fitz predicted that there was sure to be a war later because Germans, an ambitious and industrious race, were crowded into a congested area and were bound to seek more territory. 45 Honey Fitz and Josie bid a sad farewell to Rose and Agnes in Holland. There they enrolled in Blumenthal, a Sacred Heart convent, near the convergence of the Dutch, Belgian, and Prussian borders. It would shape Roses life, but not in the way her father had hoped.