This week’s This American Life featured a story about meeting famous people and the awkwardness of such an event, which is as good a prompt as any to tell this little story of my own experience with that situation. It’s also a nice bit of coincidence that Ira’s intro story involves the same group of famous people as my own, the Kennedys.
The Kennedys hold a special sort of mystique in my home. My mother is a passionate democrat and when it comes to famous democrat presidents they don’t come more idolized than JFK. A signed photograph of him hangs on the wall of my staircase, addressed with friendship to my grandfather. At the time the photograph was taken my grandfather was the mayor of the city of Shively, and the only democrat in office in the state of Kentucky, so when it came time for our Commander in Chief to visit the state, it seemed only natural that he would stop by to see him. The two developed something of a friendship which became, as those things do, a family friendship, and soon whenever a Kennedy made a trip to Kentucky, my grandfather’s house became their vacation home. My mother developed a particular friendship with Robert Kennedy Jr., “Bobby” as she refers to him in casual conversation.
Growing up she frequently told me the story of one his visits, during which a young woman followed him into our home one night, only to meet my Grandmother at the top of our stairs who proceeded to pick her up and forcibly throw her out onto the doorstep, saying sharply, “He’s a Kennedy, he doesn’t associate with trash.” She then slammed the door and the girl did not attempt to enter again. My grandmother was a terrifying woman to everyone but me, it seems, and I do not blame the girl.
After you hear a story enough times, the people in it become legends themselves and so it was with Bobby. In my mind he was a towering figure, a giant of a man who embodied all of those values that my mother had gone out of her way to try to exalt as good character.
In fourth grade we were required to begin a correspondence with any person of our choosing, the only requirement being that they lived in another state. My mother offered Bobby as a possible pen-pal. Intimidated, I slaved over my first letter, trying to be as polite and professional as possible. What did you write to a fable? How do you communicate with someone larger than life? Do such figures even have time to read letters? As it turns out, no, they do not. I received one very nice letter back, but after that things came up and our conversation failed to continue. When it came time to present the final portion of our project, some object sent to us by our chosen communication partner, my mother ended up purchasing a very cheap stuffed penguin and I pretended as though Bobby had given it to me, its clandestine significance known only to the two of us.
One night when my mother was out working or socializing or whatever it is parents do when their children are stuck at home studying, she managed to have Ted Kennedy call me. She had done this before, a few years earlier, with Uncle Kracker. I had liked whatever song of his was popular on the radio at the time and so, naturally, I would have a lot to talk to him about on the phone. He was, I remember, very hard to hear over the Barnstable Brown party in the background, but nevertheless he seemed very polite. For my part I was more or less speechless. “I like your song…” I muttered, “Thanks little man.” He replied. “I like your song…” I repeated, and so it went. After some time my mother took the phone away saying that she had to go back to her table. She was sitting with Kid Rock and Justin Timberlake and their drinks had just arrived.
The Kennedy presidency is often referred to as Camelot and for me at least that rang true. The members of that family existed in a kind of Arthurian legend, they were heroes and gods and now one was talking to me and asking me about college and what I wanted to do with my life. As a fifth grader I had no real answers and though I knew that was to be expected I felt very ashamed of my lack of preparedness. I was sure that Ted Kennedy had probably known what he was going to become far earlier in life. By the time he was my age, I imagined, he had already strode onto the field of politics and shaped a nation.
I remember too the day John F. Kennedy Jr. died. My mother sat in her office with the TV on, the kitchen radio on as well, blaring at full volume. At the first report of the disappearance of his plane she became anxious and fretted about the house in a panic, but now she sat quietly at her desk and waited by the phone. She had been calling Bobby all day, not that he knew more than anyone else, but I suppose it gave her some solace to hear the information from a close source. After some time had passed and the tragedy of what had occurred had been confirmed, my stepfather changed the radio station in the kitchen. The classic rock station was playing “Sympathy for the Devil”. A few verses went by until finally Jagger sang, “I shouted out who killed the Kennedys/ when after all it was you and me”. My mother turned off the radio. “Bobby can’t even listen to that song you know,” she said indignantly. She went into the office and cried.
You can imagine then the kind of weight a question like “Would you like to go meet Bobby in New York?” carried with it for a younger me. It was 2001 and my mother had finally decided to take Bobby up on his invitation to his yearly River Keeper party, bringing along myself, as well as my cousin Melissa and her young daughter Olivia. Olivia was at the time quite the fan of the Eleanor at the Plaza books and was chomping at the bit to see the New York City of those stories first hand and, perhaps, meet Eleanor herself. For my part I spent the days before our trip in a building panic over potential ways I could embarrass myself. Probably I would die; I would simply curl up in a ball of familial disappointment and fade away. There was every chance I would be disowned, my name stricken from the family record.
The trip itself is something of a blur. Melissa turned into a whirling dervish upon our landing and ran through the New York streets in a fever pitch. I, still wearing exclusively dress shoes for some inscrutable reason, spent the trip blistered and aching, lamenting the fact that I would be spending the rest of my short life in such conditions. It was an altogether predictable trip to New York aside from one afternoon when I almost involuntarily slaughtered an old woman with a piece of rolling luggage, but that is a story for another time. Museums were visited, my mother likes to talk of how I amazed a crowd with my preternatural, and now sadly absent, knowledge of astronomy, money was spent by the handful on overpriced food in restaurants and in our hotel, and taxi drivers were offended. Eleanor was absent at the Plaza, the doorman informed Olivia that she had just stepped out, and as such she spent the rest of the trip in the bitter disappointment of which only a child is capable. She’s about to start college and I’m sure she’d be pleased to know I still remember this.
My memories of the River Keeper party are somewhat vague. I met and took pictures with Bobby and his cousin, Ted Kennedy Jr., whose prosthetic leg fascinated me. Their autographs are in a small Harry Potter journal I rediscovered recently in my bedroom, along with a hawk which I believe was drawn by Bobby, though it bears a remarkable resemblance to the hawks my mother doodles on her calendars and notebooks, although slightly more ornate. Something about the whole event, hundreds of people, many of them quite famous, was quite a bit to take in. In the end the celebrity I was most excited to meet was the owl that played Hedwig in the recently released Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone film adaptation. I should note that, to this day, that remains one of the most exhilarating moments of my life. I remember it with the same kind of abject awe that some people reserve for, for example, seeing the Sistine Chapel up close.
Left at that this would all be somewhat disappointing, but very fortunately for the purposes of future anecdotes, Bobby invited us back the next day for a smaller party and a game of capture the flag. Yes, I, Patrick Greenwell, played capture the flag with the Kennedy family, and various affluent friends, and, let me tell you, it was great.
Bobby Kennedy Jr.’s estate, for that is the best term to encompass its grandeur, is a massive thing. I’m not sure if it qualifies as a mansion. It stands as one in my memories and I’ll be damned if I’ll ruin that image with actual figures. Regardless it is a mammoth thing with a sizeable back yard and a twisting, forested path that running behind it. I spent some time running along that path with Bobby’s children, before moving to their sizeable trampoline, which alternated as a home for their pet raven, Poe. Poe was something of a marvel to me, as I had never seen a pet raven before and this one was quite large. It was not particularly friendly, spending most of its time biting my cousin Olivia’s ankles, much to my delight, doing little for her sour mood.
I did not see Bobby until the game began. He and several other adults formed a rather effective team which quickly routed every attempt we made at taking their ever elusive flag. At some point in the course of the game, Bobby was tagged by one of my teammates and sent to the makeshift jail we had set up in the center of the yard. I watched him there, towering over the kids around him, waiting impatiently for a chance to escape. Cunningly, he called over one of his younger children and attempted to have him unwittingly release him. As he motioned for his son to come closer, I ran to intercept him. I placed myself between the two of them, turned to Bobby and uttered words which have now become infamous in my home: “Cheaters never win Bobby!”
It’s sort of a strange moment when you inform the person who has, for most of your life, been the model of stalwartness and character about the penalties for moral indecency, and you might expect that it takes away, somewhat from the legend. To a degree you would be right I suppose. Since then I’ve spoken with Bobby several times, albeit briefly. He once told me to hold my cellphone away from my face because forthcoming reports indicated that they caused brain tumors. I replied that though I might get cancer, at least I wouldn’t look like an ass. I found out a few years ago that he had supported the theory that vaccinations cause autism, and that was fairly crushing. I don’t know if he still believes that in light of recent evidence, but I asked my mother to relay to him the fact that he was a damn fool regardless. And though you might suspect from my greeting him with a hearty handshake while wearing a shirt with a unicorn on it that we are on casual terms, there’s something still there of the old legend. Three years ago he came to town for the Derby and my mother held a cookout in his honor at our home. The two of them were late in arriving and the house was full of dozens of politicians and various local celebrities and I the only person to there to host them and direct them to the food and, eventually, the guest of honor. I felt, ushering guests into my crowded living room, a strange sense of pride. In a way, I thought, I am a part of the story now. For a few hours across my life I’ve been able to share the stage with the giants and the heroes and the stories I grew up on. Perhaps Bobby came down to earth, or perhaps, in my mind at least, I ascended, or perhaps that all sounds ridiculous.
The game ended with the children handily defeated, as it should have been, and Bobby was positively beaming. I have not seen those children since. I have met his oldest son, also Bobby, who works as a film director in Italy, though from what I understand that occupation entails a great deal more boating than it does directing. He gave me his hat, which promptly found itself crushed in the backseat of my car. I still keep it in my closet though; it would not have fit me anyway.
Bobby’s wife killed herself a week ago, hanging herself, and one of their dogs or so I am told, not far from where we played the game that day. My mother called me when it happened, distraught. She could not understand, she said, how a Kennedy, of all people, could do something like that to themselves. “Well mental illness doesn’t really care who you are,” I said, “they may be Kennedys but they are only human.” That’s was practical answer, I suppose, but I doubt either of us truly believed it.
-Patrick
