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LITTWIN: The night I met 'Teddy'

By Mike Littwin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published May 21, 2008 at 9 p.m.

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My Life With the Kennedys is an admittedly brief affair - it basically covers one day, in which, sadly, no one asked me to play touch football - but we won't let that get in the way of a good story.

The invitation came in the mail from Eunice Shriver - her friends call her Eunie, she would tell my wife and me when we arrived at the Shriver manse in suburban D.C. "Thanks, Eunie," I said, and a friendship, lasting well into the evening, was sealed.

Somebody (not a friend; you don't tip friends) parked the car - a guy, by the way, clearly unused to parking Toyotas - and someone else served the drinks and hors d'oeuvres, and Sarge walked us through the house, past the Kennedy family photos on the wall and past the butler's pantry in which, I couldn't help noticing, there was sufficient booze to float the entire family fleet.

We had come to a party, a party for one of Arnold and Maria's just-born children, an intimate party, not at all what I had imagined when I pulled up. I was guessing it would be an enormous lawn party where - as a member the visiting press - I'd either be on the wrong side of the rope line or else mistaken for the help.

But it turned out to be a cocktails and conversation kind of evening, with maybe 20 people, and not a rope line in sight. And if you're wondering what in the hell someone like me was doing in this setting out of a Noel Coward play, you're not alone. It's the exact same question my wife asked.

As a reporter, I'm not easily impressed. In my job, you meet famous people and almost always come away very unimpressed. You meet senators who don't know Shia from sushi and you hang around with Hall of Fame athletes - this is a true story about an athlete I'll leave unnamed - who say about Malcolm X's autobiography, "You got anything else by that X guy?"

Still, this was different. These were the Kennedys, the American version of royalty, and it's hard to take the usual cynical posture when you grew up on Life magazine photos of Jack and Jackie in the sailboat and when you've been to Arlington to see where Bobby is buried next to Jack. And when you're in the house of the woman who founded the Special Olympics and the man who ran the Peace Corps, and you remember a time when you still believed in the Great Man (or Woman) theory of history.

Of course, I'd been around royalty before. I'd actually seen the Queen of England at an Orioles game - possibly eating a hot dog - and was once forcibly stopped at an elevator at the Los Angeles Biltmore by the Secret Service when Princess Margaret walked by.

But this wasn't just an opportunity to take a day trip to Camelot. This was an inside look at how a certain class of people live. And here's what they do: They think it's perfectly normal to invite perfect strangers to important, intimate family gatherings, to join them as they watch Maria walk down the stairs holding their new grandchild - and you keep waiting for someone to say, "And you're here because . . . ?"

It was a fair question. Jamie Wyeth, of the artist Wyeths, who had painted the famous portrait of John Kennedy, was there. He had painted Arnold, too. "Everyone in the Village came to see him pose," Wyeth told us.

And Ben Bradlee was there, Bradlee my idol, Bradlee the Washington Post editor during Watergate, who had once offered me a job and whom I had once turned down, proving, if nothing else, you should never come to me for career advice. This was Ben Bradlee, who used to run with Jack Kennedy and who was telling us how "ever since that damn movie" - that movie would have been All the President's Men - everyone thinks he makes all important decisions in an elevator as the door closes.

There were others, including an obscure lieutenant governor of Virginia and assorted Kennedy cousins.

I was taking it all in as Ben and I were talking about the newspaper business - back when you could do that without weeping - when Eunie came up behind me, slipped an arm through mine and said words I never expected to hear in this order: "Mike, have you met my brother, Teddy?"

It turns out, I hadn't.

This was 20-some years ago. I've been telling the story ever since - but I've never had an ending. It was a party. There was food, drink and conversation. When it ended, we went home and had to think of a baby gift to send a Kennedy.

Teddy was not yet the lion of the Senate. He was still the Kennedy known for late nights at the bars and as the brunt of late-night TV jokes. He was the Kennedy of Chappaquiddick, the liberal that conservatives loved to hate.

On this evening, Eunie introduced us and we talked about a reporter we both knew and about the alma mater we had in common and about the politics of the day. He told his stories and listened to your stories, and he was the back-slapping Irish pol in every story you ever heard.

Kennedy would outlive his youth. He would go on to be what John McCain would call the "single most effective" member of the Senate. More than that, he would be the Kennedy brother who lived through all the family tragedies, the one who became father to all the Kennedy children.

When the news came of his malignant brain tumor, it reminded everyone again of the narrative of death and the Kennedys, even though this Kennedy is 76 and has been allowed to live a life.

When he left the hospital, they said he was going sailing this weekend. It doesn't give me an ending for my story. But it does give him one for his story - at least for today.

littwinm@RockyMountainNews.com.

Comments

  • May 22, 2008

    2:37 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    arby writes:

    Good story Mike. As you know you'll get a lot of crap from the goofs that post here. What an experience! I don't know how I would have handled it. Maybe I wouldn't have gone. But then to actually be with those people you would have to. Wouldn't you.
    Anyway best of luck with the BS that will follow me.

  • May 22, 2008

    5:19 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    rambam1776 writes:

    First, let me say all the obligatory stuff. Of course I hope Kennedy recovers, feels no pain, and I wish his family well. Such things are above politics.

    However, Just as Strom Thurmond was in the senate for far too long, so have Byrd and Kennedy. The sooner they go, the better.

  • May 22, 2008

    11:03 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    dirkle writes:

    Mike writing about a Kennedy: - "incommmminnnnngg!!!" ... - prepare for all the bilious "stinky commie / hippy" observations from the resident local geniuses

  • May 22, 2008

    12:27 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    SirRealist writes:

    Yes, obligatory stuff indeed. And let's add, Mary Jo Kopechne, may she rest in peace. I hope Teddy did enough "good" in the world to offset the awfulness of what he brought her and her family.

  • May 22, 2008

    1 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    malis writes:

    hmmmm, nice job Mike, not the least in shaming the usual suspects into silence, if only for a few hours (nearly disproving the thesis that they have no shame).

    Hard topic to write about, and to make it moving but not maudlin. Thank you.

  • May 22, 2008

    2:38 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Spencer writes:

    The mere mention of Ted Kennedy puts the snakehandlers in a tizzy. (or is that a dither?)

  • May 22, 2008

    5:32 p.m.

    reddog writes:

    (This comment was removed by the site staff.)

  • May 22, 2008

    7:27 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    tpiland writes:

    I feel the same as you...the Kennedy's are American Royalty....true patriotic Americans!!

  • May 22, 2008

    8:27 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Vandala writes:

    Let the usual crap fly against Litwin from the mental midgets....who are afraid of a different point of view and spout ignorance to confirm it. Reddog - is there not some woman in a trailer park you should be slapping around - your wife...I mean sister?????