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♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(FILM PROJECTOR WHIRRING)
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
PRIEST: The grace and peace of God our Father,
the Lord Jesus Christ, be with you all.
We remember the birth of Robert Francis Kennedy
and his rebirth into the new life
of the kingdom.
I was reading the beautiful statement
on the monument here.
"What we need in the United States
is not division...
What we need in the United States
is not hatred..."
What we need in the United States
is not violence and lawlessness,
but is love and wisdom
and compassion toward one another.
(CHEERING)
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
RORY KENNEDY: My father, Robert F. Kennedy,
died on June 6, 1968,
more than 40 years ago.
I'm Rory, his last and 11th child.
Because I was born six months after my father's death,
I never had a chance to know him.
I was raised by my mother, Ethel Kennedy.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
Forty years is a lot of time.
Memories fade, and people grow older.
(SEAGULLS SQUAWKING)
I found myself wanting to tell my mother's story...
about the life she shared with Daddy
and the life she shared with us, her children.
Here we go.
A personal story,
but because her life was intertwined with history,
more than that.
♪ (MUSIC ENDS) ♪
There was just one problem...
Why should I have to answer all these questions?
RORY: Uh, well, we're making a documentary about you.
(LAUGHS)
(CHUCKLING)
- Such a bad idea. - (RORY LAUGHS)
Luckily, I had my brothers and sisters to talk to,
and there are a lot of them.
♪ (UPLIFTING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
My name is Kathleen Hartington Kennedy Townsend.
RORY: Okay, are you comfortable in that chair?
No. My ass is asleep, and my back hurts.
RORY: If you can look at me
- when we're talking. - Oh, my God.
- RORY: I know. I'm so sorry. - No, no, no.
- No. Say it ain't so. - RORY: (LAUGHING) Don't.
- You're doing so great. - Thank you.
- I need a lot of encouragement. - RORY: Yeah, you're beautiful.
If you could just give me a standing ovation
- every once in a while... - (RORY LAUGHING)
You know, Mommy has said that she, of course,
that she considered being a nun.
RORY: But before she married Daddy, she...
Of course, before she married Daddy.
(BOTH CHUCKLE)
- RORY: Mommy had 11 children... - Wh... She only had ten children.
No, she had 11 children.
Kathleen, Joe, Bobby, David, Courtney, Michael,
Kerry, Chris, Max, Douglas.
Rory.
(LAUGHS) Oh. Sorry, I always... I just always forget.
(LAUGHS) This is what it's like to be the 11th.
There are so many times in my life where people
have said, "I want to introduce Robert Kennedy's daughter."
Oh, makes me so mad. (LAUGHS)
What about the one who delivered us
and carried us for nine months,
and that has been with us the last 40 years?
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: Mommy and Daddy met in the winter of 1945.
ETHEL KENNEDY: Daddy's sister, Jean Kennedy, and I
were in college together.
Jean and I plotted that we would bring our families together
on... on a skiing vacation,
and went up to Mont-Tremblant in Canada.
Grandma Kennedy came, as did my parents.
We skied in groups.
I mean, there were always about, I don't know,
at least ten or more of us skiing together.
(MAN LAUGHS)
RORY: And did the Skakels and the Kennedys get along well?
They did. And eventually...
each of the Skakel boys took out each of the Kennedy sisters.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
RORY: Growing up, my mother and father had childhoods
that were in some ways remarkably similar,
and in other ways very different.
Daddy was a Kennedy
and grew up in a wealthy, large Irish Catholic family.
CHRIS KENNEDY: The Kennedys were shaped by their culture,
the Kennedys were shaped by their religion,
and for them, that meant embracing the crowd.
They were part of the fabric of the city.
RORY: Mommy was a Skakel
and also grew up in a wealthy, large Irish Catholic family.
CHRIS: The Skakels were outdoors people,
and that love of nature,
that comfort with mountains and streams
and rivers, the forest, outdoor adventure.
(GROWLING)
CHRIS: They were the great individualists.
They were not conformists. They didn't want to be part
of something bigger than themselves.
RORY: But whereas Daddy's father,
Joseph Kennedy, went to Harvard
and Daddy's mother, Rose,
was the daughter of the mayor of Boston,
Mommy's father, George Skakel, was a self-made man
who started off working for only eight dollars a week.
ETHEL: He worked for the railroad.
And I don't know how he saved the money,
but he started a coal company.
It was amazing,
because he hadn't been to college.
CHRIS: Grandpa ultimately grew Great Lakes Carbon
into one of the largest private family businesses
in the United States.
♪ (MILITARY MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: The Kennedy household,
whether in Brookline or Palm Beach,
was very disciplined.
Dinner was at 7:15, and it did not mean 7:16.
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: The Skakel home in Greenwich was more chaotic.
- (WOMAN SCREAMS) - (FIRECRACKERS POPPING)
ETHEL: In our house, you didn't know
whether you were going to have supper
at 5:00 or at 10:00.
(LAUGHING)
ETHEL: My brothers were real rascals.
For instance, they would take the train to New York,
but they never rode on the inside of the train.
They always rode on the top of the train. I mean...
They made life really fun,
and interesting, and a challenge.
And they were plenty scary, too.
RORY: Both families were very religious.
MAX KENNEDY: Both families said evening prayer.
All of our grandparents went to daily mass.
The people of America are dedicated
to the cause of peace.
RORY: The Kennedys were staunch Democrats
and politically very active.
The Skakels, on the other hand...
My parents weren't bedrock Democrats.
(RORY CHUCKLES)
RORY: They were Republicans?
ETHEL: Conservative Republicans.
RORY: Did you have any consciousness of politics
- when you were growing up? - No. None whatsoever.
♪ (ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: Both families were athletic.
Mommy was a natural.
Mommy is the most fiercely competitive person
I have ever met in my entire life. (CHUCKLES)
KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND: Mommy competed in riding,
competed in sailing, was really a champion.
RORY: Daddy, on the other hand,
was physically the smallest of his brothers
and had to try a little harder.
BOBBY KENNEDY JR.: Daddy was regarded
as the runt of the litter,
but he was very tough.
And when he went to Harvard, he worked his way up
to first string on the football team.
And he made it by showing up an hour early to practice
and staying an hour late.
RORY: Didn't he play the Harvard-Yale game
- to get his letter? - (CROWD CHEERING)
Yes, and he had a broken leg. He had a cast on his leg.
RORY: So, what does that say to you about Daddy's character,
that he was playing this game when he had a broken leg?
He really wanted to get his letter. (LAUGHS)
RORY: Whereas Daddy liked to stick to the rules...
Mommy liked to bend them.
CHRIS: Mommy's a Skakel.
And as a Skakel, she inherited
a healthy disregard for authority in all its forms.
As your mother, I probably shouldn't, uh, tell you this.
But every morning at college, even at college, imagine that,
from 8:30 to 9:00, I read the odds...
(BELL RINGING)
ETHEL: ...about the racetrack.
If only my tests had been on the racehorses
- instead of history. - (RORY LAUGHING)
(LAUGHS) I would have really gotten an A-plus.
RORY: Now you read the New York Times every day.
Yes. I wasn't a very deep thinker.
Like I am now. (CHUCKLES)
RORY: You and Aunt Jean got into a little bit of trouble.
Uh... No, they never caught us.
RORY: Okay, well, I have proof.
- (CHUCKLING) - You do not.
- RORY: I have the demerit book.
Do you remember this demerit book?
I can remember a demerit book.
(GROANS)
I got censured for talking in assembly
and chewing gum...
(SIGHING) ...and disorder in the tea room.
This is ridiculous.
We wanted to go to the Harvard-Yale game,
but if you had racked up a certain amount of demerits,
you... you were campused.
So we took the demerit book
and threw it down the incinerator...
and went to the Harvard-Yale game.
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: So what happened on that skiing trip
to Mont-Tremblant,
when my mother and father met for the very first time?
ETHEL: He was standing in front of a roaring fireplace
in the living room.
RORY: And what'd you think when you saw him?
"Wow!
Pretty great."
- RORY: Really? - Yeah.
- So, was it love at first sight? - It was.
- Really? - ETHEL: It was.
We made a bet right away
about who could get down the mountain faster.
RORY: And who won?
- I'm not gonna tell you. - (RORY LAUGHING)
(LAUGHS)
And then, Daddy took a...
left turn...
and he started dating my sister, Pat!
Oh, that was a black period.
But at the time, I thought, "Well, no contest.
She's so pretty and so smart and so wonderful."
And so they went out for two years.
- Ooh! Ouch. - Ooh! Ouch.
(LAUGHS)
KATHLEEN: Luckily, the Boston Post
asked Daddy to cover the war of independence in Israel.
And so, when he went off to what was then called Palestine,
Pat found Luan Cuffe and fell in love with him.
So that when he returned, Mommy could get him.
♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (KENNEDY CAMPAIGN SONG PLAYING) ♪
♪ Who can fight And fight till he wins? ♪
♪ Kennedy can Kennedy can... ♪
RORY: Mommy's first exposure to politics came in 1946,
while she was still at Manhattanville College.
Her roommate, Jean Kennedy, took her to Boston to help
with my uncle Jack's very first campaign for Congress.
ETHEL: That was really fun.
We'd drive up to Boston...
and then lick stamps,
and I thought, "This is so exciting!"
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
We went house to house and talked to people.
And why they would listen to a 17-year-old
who knew nothing, I have no idea.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
But it was great experience.
It was a room full of people
who I had not exactly rubbed elbows with before.
A lot of minorities
and financially challenged people.
RORY: So, did you start thinking during this campaign of...
They are faced with a lot of hardship and struggle, and...
- Yes. - ...if government can help them,
- that's a good thing? - Yeah.
- RORY: Can you talk about that? - No.
- RORY: Oh! (LAUGHING) - (LAUGHS)
All this introspection, I hate it.
KATHLEEN: Her first love and her great love was Daddy.
So whatever Daddy was, she was gonna like.
She was not, uh, James Carville and Mary Matalin.
She was... she believed that the woman stayed with the guy.
And I think that being with Daddy
certainly opened her up to other experiences,
and she saw what a difference she could make.
♪ (CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ETHEL: We got married in Greenwich,
and it was a beautiful wedding.
It was wonderful.
And there were about 600 guests.
And there were fountains of champagne.
Lots of dancing, and lots of dogs...
- (DOGS BARKING) - ETHEL: ...all over everything.
And I think Daddy had 21 ushers.
- (RORY LAUGHING) - (ETHEL LAUGHING)
- ETHEL: He had a lot of friends. - RORY: Yeah.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
(CROWD CHEERING)
ETHEL: We went on our honeymoon in Hawaii,
and then we went back to L.A. and bought our convertible
and drove across the country.
Just will-o'-the-wisp.
We'd go to Montana,
and then we'd go down to a southern state.
We went wherever we had friends.
It was a very happy time.
(LAUGHS)
RORY: In the book Robert Kennedy and His Times,
the historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote this
about Daddy's relationship with Mommy.
"For Robert Kennedy,
it was the best thing that could have happened.
She awakened his sympathy and his humor,
and brought him out emotionally.
He never had to prove himself to her.
Ethel gave him unquestioning confidence,
unwavering direction, and unstinted love."
♪ (MUSIC ENDS) ♪
They made their way back to Virginia,
where Daddy was finishing his final year
at the University of Virginia Law School.
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: Mommy tried her hand at homemaking.
ETHEL: I was really bad at it.
RORY: Can you describe Mommy as a homemaker?
- No. - (RORY LAUGHING)
She... she was a horrible cook. I remember one night,
she put some Vaseline, like petroleum jelly,
in a frying pan, and cooked bananas.
That was not why he fell in love with her,
her cooking.
RORY: While at UVA Law School,
Daddy headed the Student Legal Forum,
an organization that brought important speakers to campus.
One of the speakers he invited was Dr. Ralph Bunche,
who was the first person of color
to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
At the time, UVA was still segregated,
and much of the local community and student body were angered
by Dr. Bunche's impending visit.
Everyone agreed that the... safest...
Imagine having to use the word "safe."
It was so appalling.
Uh...
The safest place for him to stay was at our house.
And he was so charming and...
non-complaining.
But they did throw things at our house all night long.
It was so unthinkable and outrageous,
but you got a little taste of what Black people
in our country had to go through at that time.
And I was glad I was married to Daddy, who had the courage
and the forethought to have someone...
of color speak at Charlottesville.
RORY: After graduating from law school,
Daddy got a job at the Department of Justice.
But he was there only briefly.
Uncle Jack had decided to run for the Senate,
and asked Daddy to manage his campaign.
ETHEL: It was a major decision.
He had felt he was just starting his own career
and that he had to put it on the back burner.
It was a big sacrifice.
It was wonderful that he did it.
RORY: And why did he make that choice?
Oh, 'cause he loved his brother.
RORY: Everybody in our family banded together to help,
and Mommy did her part too.
BOBBY: She and Aunt Pat and Aunt Eunice
and Aunt Jean and my grandmother
had famous tea parties across the state,
and they would invite hundreds of women
from the neighborhood, and people would come
to meet the Kennedy girls.
ETHEL: The tea parties were fun
because Pat and Jean and Eunice were there.
You'd just meet hundreds of people
and shake hundreds of hands.
BOBBY: By the end of the campaign,
she had probably met every voter
in the entire congressional district.
My brother Bobby, who managed the campaign,
perhaps he could give us some idea, more up to date,
of what the final figures were.
I think that from what we got up to about 20 minutes ago,
that you were winning by about 70,000.
About 100,000 more votes will come in,
and I think that that plurality will remain.
Very fine.
Well, I guess you're glad it's over, aren't you, Bobby?
- I am, Jack. - Okay.
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
RORY: Uncle Jack won his seat in the Senate.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
RORY: After the race,
the Republican candidate, Henry Cabot Lodge,
blamed his loss on "those damn tea parties."
In 1953, Daddy went to work
for the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations,
chaired by Joseph McCarthy.
The raw, unpleasant fact is that Communism is an issue.
RORY: You know, it's hard now, looking back,
to understand the sense
of what the Communist threat was in this country.
- But did you feel like there was a real threat at the time? - Right. Yes, I did.
Especially growing up in a Republican atmosphere,
they were always talking about the communists.
My grandfather had been friends with McCarthy
by virtue that they were both Irish Catholics.
And McCarthy had actually dated two of my aunts, Pat and Eunice.
ETHEL: He could be so affectionate
and warm, and then... (INHALES DEEPLY)
get in that hearing room and, um...
it was very unpleasant how he treated people.
He started drinking, and...
the whole thing was just falling apart.
And Daddy realized he didn't wanna be a part of it.
BOBBY: He stayed on the committee
for a couple of months, and he quickly...
broke with McCarthy
and helped author the report
that was used in the end to censure McCarthy.
Have you no sense of decency, sir?
At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
RORY: Daddy was quoted as saying, "At the time,
I thought there was a serious internal security threat
to the United States. McCarthy seemed to be
the only one who was doing anything about it. I was wrong."
He often changed his mind.
Daddy had an open mind. He judged things continuously.
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: On the fourth of July in 1951, Mommy gave birth
to the very first of the Kennedy grandchildren,
my sister, Kathleen.
Daddy was the seventh of the nine children,
and yet he has the first grandchild.
RORY: Our family grew very quickly.
My brother Joe was born next.
Then Bobby in 1954.
David in 1955.
And Courtney in 1956.
You were pregnant for 99 months...
- out of your life. - (LAUGHS)
Well, that is a statistic that...
(LAUGHS)
I never...
This is the first time I've heard it.
RORY: Obviously, you went on to have 11 children.
So did you have any sense that you wanted
- a big family, or... - ETHEL: Yes.
RORY: Did you guys talk about how many kids you would have?
- Did you have any... - No. Never.
♪ (CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KATHLEEN: When I first went to Hickory Hill,
it was owned by Jack and Jackie.
And when I was about five or six years old,
Daddy and Mommy actually bought Hickory Hill,
and we moved there.
And it was really in the country.
Georgetown was kind of confining
- with all the children. - RORY: Right.
And there they had the lawn.
They could run. Run, run, run, run, run.
We had a pony and a cart,
and I'd take the children out for a ride every day.
They'd go out in the snow and...
behind them on a... We had a sled that they could ride in.
COURTNEY KENNEDY: The word that comes first, of course, is "magical,"
because our mother has an amazing imagination.
So there was always something going on to interest us,
all these children.
KATHLEEN: Mommy and Daddy brought in a lot of horses.
We would get up early in the morning and ride over
to the CIA, which was nice.
She thought we should know about farm animals
and how they lived.
And so we had goats and pigs and cows and chickens.
(CLUCKING)
COURTNEY: And they never were penned very well.
So they'd spend a lot of time up in the, uh, living room,
particularly the goats, who liked the flowers. (LAUGHS)
So it was fun 'cause you'd be walking up to the front door,
and a herd of horses would come galloping by.
So it was... (CHUCKLES) It was kind of unusual.
- (DOG BARKING) - (CHILDREN LAUGHING)
RORY: I remember having, like, 15 dogs when we were growing up.
At one point, I think you guys had 19 dogs.
ETHEL: But that was my own life growing up.
We always had at least 16 dogs.
My mother, who really never skipped a carpool,
one day appeared to pick us up with a seal in the back seat.
(COURTNEY AND RORY LAUGHING)
ETHEL: He had to be fed fish every day,
but he didn't like the eyes.
So there were always hundreds of eyes around.
(GROANS)
That we could have done without, but...
he was fun,
and he'd make all sorts of noise,
- like... (IMITATES SEAL, LAUGHS) - (RORY LAUGHING)
He was a great seal,
but when he pushed my sister Kathleen in the pool
through a hula hoop on Christmas Day,
that was when he was sent off to the Washington Zoo. (LAUGHS)
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: In the fall of 1955, Mommy received terrible news.
Her parents were on their way to California
when their plane crashed.
Both of them were killed.
It was hard on everybody.
It was.
CHRIS: She was incredibly devoted to her parents,
and she was 27 or so years old,
and, you know, that was a tragic loss for her.
- RORY: Was Daddy supportive of you? - ETHEL: Very.
Very. I remember he was campaigning,
and, uh, I really...
felt it would be good to be with him.
And, God love him, he got off the train and...
drove home.
He had to drive all the way through the night,
and he did it.
In certain circles, people deal with death all the time,
and they deal with it in different ways.
I think what Mommy...
how Mommy has dealt with death, she's...
You know, she does go to mass every day.
You will always see her holding the rosary.
But she certainly doesn't talk about it.
And she doesn't discuss it, and she doesn't reflect on it.
She... she wanted a lot of people around,
and I would say, not solitude.
And I think that's how she got through
a lot of the really, really tough things.
MAN 1: If I may, sir.
RORY: In 1957, my father became chief counsel
of the Senate's Labor Rackets Committee.
The committee investigated criminal activities
surrounding labor-management relations.
Did you say, "That S.O.B., I'll break his back?"
- Who? - ROBERT F. KENNEDY: You.
I did it to who?
ROBERT: To anyone.
RORY: Probably the most famous case was Jimmy Hoffa,
the labor organizer accused of hijacking
the Teamsters Union.
ROBERT: Well, whose back were you gonna break, Mr. Hoffa?
Figure of speech, I don't even know who I was talking about,
I don't know what you're talking about.
He thought the working man was getting a raw deal
and that the Teamsters Union was corrupt...
and it was wrecking the lives of so many people.
RORY: Mommy was there almost every day,
supporting Daddy.
KATHLEEN: Mommy thought it was really important
that we understood what Daddy was up to.
So, for instance, um...
oftentimes, rather than take me to the...
uh, playground where we could go on the seesaw,
she took me to the Senate Racket Committee hearings.
And so some of my first words were,
"I refuse to answer that question
on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me."
Well, I think it might have been a little
over their heads but, uh...
it gave them a taste, I think, of what their daddy did.
EDWARD R. MURROW: Uh, Mrs. Kennedy,
do you attend many of Bob's committee hearings?
Oh, Mr. Murrow, I do, yes, most all of them.
MURROW: Does Bob ever strike you as a seemingly mild-mannered man
- for a rackets investigator? - (BABY COOING)
Well, I'm awfully surprised most of the time
when he really keeps his temper.
You know, when witnesses aren't telling the truth
and being quite frank,
or when they take the Fifth Amendment so often.
I think it's really amazing that he does so well.
I thought it was a courageous thing to do
to go after racketeers...
and particularly Hoffa.
It had its consequences on the family.
They had thrown acid into the eyes of a journalist
from the New York Post.
And they said, "We're gonna do the same to your children."
KATHLEEN: They were trying to intimidate Daddy.
And so there was a period of time
when we were going to Our Lady of Victory School,
we couldn't leave with all the other kids.
We had to go up into the principal's office
and wait for Mommy to pick us up,
because it was supposed to be too dangerous for us to...
just to walk out of school.
CHRIS: She was not afraid of that.
She was not gonna be turned around.
She was not gonna be made to hide.
I think her inner Skakel came out.
And she was emboldened.
And I think that helped my father
through that difficult time.
♪ (KENNEDY CAMPAIGN SONG PLAYING) ♪
♪ Kennedy, Kennedy Kennedy, Kennedy ♪
♪ Kennedy, Kennedy Kennedy for me ♪
♪ Kennedy! Kennedy! Kennedy! Kennedy! ♪
♪ Do you want a man For president ♪
♪ Who's seasoned Through and through ♪
♪ But not So doggone seasoned... ♪
RORY: In 1959, Daddy resigned from the Labor Rackets Committee
to run Uncle Jack's campaign for president.
Was it clear that Jack was gonna run for president?
Well, it was certainly clear to the family.
You know, we'd talk about it over the dinner table.
RORY: At what point exactly
did you learn he was gonna run?
Oh, for God's sakes, it was 50 years ago,
- 60 years ago, I have no idea. - (RORY LAUGHING)
♪ Kennedy, Kennedy Kennedy, Kennedy ♪
♪ Kennedy, Kennedy... ♪
RORY: Once again, the family rallied,
and everyone hit the campaign trail.
My mother played a very active role.
This lovely little girl here,
a mother of seven children,
who has given birth to her own precinct.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
JACK PAAR: Hey, you have any news for us?
- (CHUCKLES) No, I don't. - (LAUGHTER)
Listen, you've been out campaigning
for your brother-in-law.
- Do you enjoy it at all? - Oh, yes.
JACK: How do the kids take it? Now, you have seven children.
What do they think of all this?
Oh, mostly they think it's taking an awful long time
- for Uncle Jack to be president. - (AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
BOBBY: We were part of that campaign,
and we were involved in every aspect.
We climbed the stop signs and, you know,
put "Nixon" stickers under the stop sign
so it said, "Stop Nixon."
We passed out buttons, we traveled across the country,
and that was such a thrill for us.
ETHEL: Daddy really wanted the children with him.
So whenever we could, the children campaigned too.
And I think the children really loved it.
KATHLEEN: I remember campaigning
and there were special dresses we all wore.
The Kennedy girl dresses. And we all put them on.
I was a little kid but, you know... (STAMMERS)
we wore them, very exciting to go campaigning.
ANNOUNCER: Coffee with the Kennedys.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: First, I'd like to thank my wife, uh, Jackie,
for presenting this program,
and also my sister Eunice and my brother's wife, Ethel,
who are helping to answer the telephones this morning.
RORY: I mean, it's interesting.
You grew up in a Republican household,
and now you're in this Democratic campaign
- for president. - But I just...
totally put the Republican part behind me.
RORY: And your family didn't care, the Skakels?
I think they thought I was a little communist.
I think that we have a great deal of work.
I think that the work on registration...
RORY: The 1960 election would be one of the closest in history.
♪ (QUIET PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: It was a grueling year for Daddy,
who crisscrossed the country, campaigning nonstop.
I really remember 1960 largely for Daddy's absence,
particularly during the West Virginia primary.
I mean, he just disappeared
for, like, three months and we just never saw him.
RORY: Where were you on election night?
ETHEL: I was here at the Cape.
And we waited and waited and watched right in there.
I don't think they knew about Jack
till the early morning. But we had gone to bed.
Oh, Daddy stayed up for a long time.
RORY: And so then you woke up?
Just elated, happy. Hallelujah. I mean, bravo.
Then we all went over to the big house
and had a photograph taken.
Everyone was genuinely happy.
RORY: Everybody had worked so hard.
ETHEL: But it's funny, nobody looked tired
in the photograph, everybody just looks happy.
It was so full of joy knowing...
that the rest of the world would now know
how great Jack was.
And so, my fellow Americans...
ask not...
what your country can do for you,
ask what you can do for your country.
(CROWD CHEERING)
BOBBY: We went to his swearing-in,
and that was our first visit to the White House.
And we went upstairs with Daddy and Mommy.
We toured through the upper floors of the White House.
Mommy took us up and showed us where John,
who had just been born, and Caroline
were gonna live in the private quarters.
And then we came back down,
and Daddy slid down the banister.
♪ (CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BOBBY: He had us all slide down the banisters,
and then we went and saw the bowling alley,
and we went and jumped in the swimming pool.
And then we toured through the corridors
and the secret tunnels underneath the White House.
Just... It was a moment in history.
- RORY: Yeah. - That was, you know, you were...
kind of unaware of it at the time.
But what fun, 50 years later.
RORY: After Uncle Jack became president,
he asked Daddy to serve as his attorney general.
ETHEL: Daddy was reluctant.
And I think people were questioning
whether that was the best choice,
whether he was the best choice.
JFK: He has proven his ability...
in almost ten years of public service
as an attorney for the Justice Department
and, more recently,
as chief counsel of the Senate Labor Rackets Committee.
ETHEL: Daddy felt so sheepish and so shy.
The president had to say to him,
"Don't you think you should comb your hair...
(CHUCKLES) ...before we go out?"
- (LAUGHS) - (RORY CHUCKLES)
REPORTER: How does being a brother of a president
affect your role as a member of the cabinet?
Oh, I think it probably, uh, makes it easier.
I think having the same last name as the president
of the United States helps, probably.
Some of my earliest memories
are of when Daddy was attorney general
and Mommy would pile six or seven of us
into the back of a convertible
with two or three dogs and a football,
and bring us down to the Justice Department.
COURTNEY: In his Justice Department office,
there were drawings by all of us
taped up onto the walls, and so it made us
feel like we were important in his life,
just as important as his work.
ETHEL: The children were always included in everything we did.
I think it probably made them more interesting.
There was just not much of a separation
between grown-ups and children.
Mommy believed very much that we should, you know,
know what was going on. So every night at dinner,
there would always be quizzes at our dinner table
about current events or history.
And so it was very important where you sat,
um, at the dinner table, 'cause if you sat
at Mommy's right, you only had to read
the front page. But as you went around
the dinner table, as you can imagine,
you really had to know what was going on.
MARY KERRY KENNEDY: What we loved to do
was go down to the FBI building
and watch the sharpshooters at practice.
At the time, the director of the FBI was J. Edgar Hoover,
who was a man not known for his sense of humor
or his love of children,
and he, um, particularly had this intense,
uh, clash with my father.
One day, we were all over there watching the sharpshooters,
and in the bottom of the FBI building,
which is a little weird, they had a suggestion box.
(LAUGHING) I don't know why,
But anyway, so Mommy took out her telltale red pen,
and she always only used a red pen,
and, um, wrote on a little card,
"Get a new director."
- (LAUGHS) - (RORY LAUGHING)
Which was, you know, if you have any idea
who J. Edgar Hoover was at that time, I mean,
he was an awful, horrible man.
And just to be able to stand up to him there
was an important lesson to me at a very, very young age.
(CHILDREN SHOUTING AND PLAYING)
COURTNEY: When we came home from school every day,
we played a football game.
(CHILDREN LAUGHING)
Mommy loved to play football,
but only if she was on the winning side.
BOBBY: You know, a lot of parents will let their kids,
like, beat them at a sport, you know, to encourage them.
And... But she wouldn't do that. (LAUGHS)
That wasn't part of her parenting philosophy.
CHRIS: Every time we did anything,
- it was about competition. - (CHEERING)
RORY: And was coming in second okay?
Only if you were the Shrivers.
( BOTH LAUGHING)
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KATHLEEN: Trying hard didn't cut it.
You know, people now say, "Oh, just try hard." No.
Win. That was important.
Trying hard, not part of the... not part of the culture.
As well as the idea that Kennedys don't cry.
I mean, you cannot show weakness.
You always had to be tough.
I also remember falling off my horse
and hurting my leg.
And it took them about four days
to realize that it might be broken
and I should go to the hospital.
RORY: Had you in fact broken your leg?
Yes. (CHUCKLES)
But I'm glad we're laughing.
♪ (ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MAX: The 1960s were just a completely,
really unique period in American history.
There's sort of, every 30 or 50 years,
there's periods where... where... where there's enormous change
or enormous growth,
and Daddy was in the middle of all of that.
(ENGINE ROARING)
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Daddy spent...
virtually the entire time at the White House,
and for the first couple days, nobody knew what was going on,
but then, they announced it on TV,
and everybody realized
that, you know, the next day, we could all be dead.
Within the past week, unmistakable evidence
has established the fact
that a series of offensive missile sites
is now in preparation...
on the island of Cuba.
The Cubans, along with their allies, the Russians,
were installing nuclear missiles
capable of first strike attacks on the United States.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ETHEL: I can't imagine anything worse.
It was on your mind all the time.
"Oh, where are the children?
Should we come? Should we go?"
RORY: Daddy, who played an important role
in the handling of the crisis,
had to stay in Washington by President Kennedy's side.
I just remember Mom and Dad got us together
as a family, and, uh...
they said that there was a provision
that allowed some officials' families
and their children to maybe be...
taken outside of the city to a place of safety.
Daddy was gonna have to stay in Washington,
and, of course, Mom would never have left him.
What they wanted to know was how we all felt
about leaving or staying together as a family.
We all had to say what we wanted to do.
And we all said that we wanted to stay.
I think Bobby and I had...
(LAUGHING) ...maybe some second thoughts about it
between ourselves afterwards.
(LAUGHS)
I think if she had said, "Hey, I'm getting the hell outta here,
I'm not gonna stick around Washington,"
it would have had a completely different effect
on all of us.
But when you see that kind of loyalty, you just suck it up.
♪ (PROTESTERS SINGING) ♪
RORY: In his job as attorney general,
Daddy found himself at the forefront
of the civil rights movement.
(CROWD CLAMORING)
Citizens are being denied the right to register
and the right to vote because of their color.
BOBBY: Mommy would make sure
we understood the importance of those battles,
the historical significance of those battles,
and that we talked about them.
- (CROWD CLAMORING) - (MAN SHOUTING)
(SINGING)
RORY: In 1962, the racial integration
of the University of Mississippi had been violent.
A year later, the University of Alabama
was headed in the same direction.
ANNOUNCER: Today, the majority of the white population of Tuscaloosa
still does not favor integration of the university.
RORY: The state's governor, George Wallace,
stood in the schoolhouse door in an effort to stop
African American students from entering.
In the face of this, Daddy sent his deputy attorney general,
Nick Katzenbach, down to Alabama
to persuade the governor to let the students in.
NICHOLAS KATZENBACH: I'm asking from you an unequivocal assurance
that you will not bar entry to these students
and that you will step aside peacefully.
KERRY: I was maybe three or four years old,
and I was in Daddy's office, and the phone rang,
and Nick Katzenbach was calling.
NICHOLAS: He won't step aside.
He'll be carried off by soldiers.
ROBERT: Want to say hello to Kerry?
Yeah!
- KERRY: (OVER PHONE) Hi, Nick. - Hi, Kerry. How are you, dear?
What are you doing?
Are you at our house?
No, I'm not out at your house. I'm way down in the Southland.
And you know what the temperature is down here?
The temperature down here is 98 degrees.
You tell your father that.
Tell him we're all gonna get hardship pay.
(LAUGHTER)
- We got Kerry on here. - MAN 2: Kerry? (CHUCKLES)
We're all gonna get hardship today.
- We're gonna all get what? - Hard...
RORY: After several days,
Governor Wallace was forced to step aside,
and Vivian Malone and James Hood
were peacefully admitted to the University of Alabama.
To this day, I have a letter that was written to me by Daddy
on that visit, and it says, "Dear Kerry,
today, over the objection of the governor of Alabama,
two Negroes were allowed into the university,
and I hope these events are long past
by the time you get your pretty little head to college."
And here's Daddy making sure that we were engaged
and knowledgeable about what he was doing.
Felt a connection and felt, I think, you know,
a responsibility to make sure that when we were in college,
we were still knowing what was going on in the world,
and if there was discrimination, um, fighting it.
RORY: At the Justice Department,
Daddy was at the center of the storm.
♪ (UPLIFTING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
But at Hickory Hill, Mommy was her own force of nature.
KERRY: 'Course, I remember as a kid, people who worked
at the government were always at our house,
and they all had these special plates, you know,
which would mean basically that the cops
wouldn't give you a ticket, and we didn't have those plates.
And I remember saying to Daddy,
"Well, why don't we have those plates?"
And him saying, "Are you kidding?
The last thing I want people to know
is who's driving that car." (LAUGHS)
So Mommy has a long history of... of dealings with cops.
- (LAUGHS) - (RORY LAUGHS)
But in fairness to her, when she stole those horses,
she wasn't really...
She was trying to save their lives.
♪ (MYSTERIOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
We were on a ride one day, and we heard these...
forlorn moans coming out of this barn.
So we got off our horses and went into the shed.
And in this shed were these three starving horses.
KATHLEEN: And she thought, "This is outrageous."
And so she immediately got the groom
to come and take these starving horses
and bring them over to our house.
Well, some people think that's stealing.
COURTNEY: A few days later,
the man who had been starving the horses
sued my mother for horse thievery,
which at that time was a hanging offense in Virginia.
(CHUCKLES) So the wife of the attorney general
had to go to court and defend herself
against a hanging offense.
- RORY: And how did she do? - And she won. Thank goodness.
What did your husband say?
You just had a chance to talk to him.
What does he think about all this,
his wife, a courtroom star?
(CHUCKLES) I'm not sure that's the way he looks at it.
I don't think he's gonna let me off the property again...
- (INTERVIEWER CHUCKLES) - (LAUGHS) ...without my keeper.
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CHRIS: As the head of the Justice Department
and the president's brother,
Daddy became his ambassador to the rest of the world.
(CROWD CHEERING)
(SPEAKING HALTINGLY IN JAPANESE)
- Um... - (CROWD APPLAUDING)
(CONTINUES SPEAKING HALTINGLY)
- Is that right? "I thank you"? - (CROWD LAUGHING)
- (REPEATS IN JAPANESE) - (MAN 3 SPEAKING JAPANESE)
Oh, no. (SPEAKING JAPANESE)
(CROWD LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
RORY: There was a cute shot of you
trying to speak Japanese?
That wasn't so cute. That was ego-destroying.
I was horrible.
(STAMMERING IN JAPANESE) Oh, dear.
It was so bad.
RORY: You had clearly tried so hard.
You have no idea. All the way over on the plane, rehearsing.
RORY: Japan, Indonesia, Korea, Germany, Poland, Chile, Peru,
South Africa, Kenya, the Philippines, Brazil,
Italy, Ivory Coast, and Hong Kong.
ETHEL: Every minute was filled.
But whoever was in power in those countries
felt they had the ear of the president.
They knew they were talking to someone
who could change policy.
ROBERT: I appreciate your frankness.
And I think you would expect the same from me.
(TRANSLATOR REPEATS IN JAPANESE)
And you're gonna get it.
- (TRANSLATOR REPEATS) - (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
ETHEL: Daddy would speak his mind,
and, you know, it was really, uh, refreshing.
He didn't fool around.
- MAN 4: I just wanna talk... - You're talking about the United States 100 years ago.
(TRANSLATOR REPEATS IN JAPANESE)
ROBERT: What, do you think we stood still?
♪ (CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
- Whew! - (LAUGHTER)
ROBERT: I asked my wife as I was coming down
whether she could think of a joke.
She said, "If they look at the top of your hair,
- they'll laugh." - (CROWD LAUGHING)
(CHEERING)
RORY: There is great footage of you in Poland,
where Daddy's signing all these signatures
and then he gets a cramp,
and then you start signing the signatures.
JOE KENNEDY: (LAUGHING) You know,
I remember that trip to Poland so well, 'cause, uh...
instantaneously, they would show up,
you know, hundreds of thousands of people to see Daddy.
KATHLEEN: That was a big deal because Daddy was, first of all,
not given, um, the visa ticket to Poland for a while,
and they didn't wanna have any publicity for his trip there,
and yet through the underground, people found out about it,
and thousands and thousands of people came.
ETHEL: It was so wonderful to see the United States
held in such high honor.
RORY: When Mommy and Daddy went to Rome,
the members of the press corps traveling with them
gave Mommy a scooter.
(APPLAUSE)
ETHEL: They presented it one day at a restaurant.
It was such a cute little red scooter.
So I got on it and went flying out the door... (LAUGHS)
(SCOOTER ENGINE STARTING)
...and into the traffic, where I hit a truck.
- (CAR HORN BLARES) - (SIREN WAILING)
ETHEL: It was really unpleasant.
But I didn't know how to stop it.
RORY: So what did Daddy do
while you were riding the scooter?
He was finishing his pasta.
(LAUGHS)
COURTNEY: He got such joy
out of Mommy and some of her antics
or little naughty things that she might get up to.
He would just throw his head back
and laugh and say, "Oh, Ethel,"
and put his hands over his eyes, and his eyes to God. (LAUGHS)
KERRY: My father really had the weight of the world on him.
And Mommy was funny, and fun,
and full of laughter, and full of life.
And she was at ease throwing parties
and making him enjoy life.
COURTNEY: Any occasion that there was to have a party,
there'd be a party.
♪ (CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
She had every single member of President Kennedy's cabinet
knocked into the swimming pool.
BOBBY: It was in the papers, and, uh, Jack,
actually, who adored my mother
and loved her sense of mischief and her sense of humor,
but he called her up and he said,
"We can't have any more of that."
And that was the end of pushing people in the pool...
- (RORY LAUGHING) - ...at Hickory Hill.
I remember, Daddy had promised...
uh, Mom this, like, really terrific birthday party
and terrific present.
And I saw Daddy and Uncle Steve go out the front door,
and they rustled around in the car for a while, and they...
pulled out a guy.
And the guy was dressed in black tie,
and they had wrapped him up in...
ribbons with this gigantic pink bow.
They carried him in and laid him at...
Mom's feet,
and it was Gene Kelly.
GENE KELLY: (SINGING) ♪ I'm singin' in the rain ♪
♪ Just singin' in the rain... ♪
JOE: (LAUGHING) And she... she rips the bow off of him,
and he jumped up, and he grabbed her
and danced her around the dance floor.
And that was Daddy's gift to Mom that she would never forget.
- RORY: Aw. - (JOE LAUGHING)
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(CHILDREN CLAMORING)
CHRIS: I'd say in the history of the country,
there's probably never been as unique a relationship
between two brothers as the one between Daddy and Jack.
It would be rare to be able to identify a team of brothers
who were as close as they were
and achieved as much success as they did.
They had a great relationship.
I think there was enormous affection between them
and admiration on each of their parts.
It was very funny. So often, people said
they couldn't understand their dialogue,
and it was because one of them would start a sentence
and the other would finish it.
He knew exactly where the other one was going.
♪ (ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
WALTER CRONKITE: From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official.
President Kennedy died
at 1:00 p.m. central standard time,
some 38 minutes ago.
It was like a tidal wave of grief...
to see this vibrant man
with all his character and sense of fun and...
um...
wonderful judgment...
was lost.
Everyone was devastated.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ETHEL: It was, uh...
it was like Daddy had lost both arms.
RORY: And how did you talk to him?
Or did you feel like you could reach out to him?
No, I didn't, no.
RORY: Was it months?
It was six months of just...
blackness.
KATHLEEN: Well, Daddy became much more withdrawn
after Jack died. And he would go to his room after dinner,
and he read a lot of poets. He read...
um, Aeschylus, Edith Hamilton on the Greeks.
And he read the Bible, obviously, the Old Testament.
And really the notion of how do you face tragedy,
how do you go forward?
And how do you make sense of your life?
And I think that he tried to really...
feel the pain.
He said, "I'm gonna dwell in the pain, and I'm going to...
understand that something terrible
has happened."
And I think that helped make him a really...
a stunning, extraordinary leader,
because, um, oftentimes,
people who are in the public life
don't go deep into pain,
and he was willing to do that.
This is a letter he wrote two days after...
uh, our Uncle Jack died.
"Dear Kathleen, you seem to understand
that Jack died and was buried today.
As the oldest of the Kennedy grandchildren,
you have a particular responsibility now.
A special responsibility to John and Joe.
Be kind to others...
and work for your country. Love, Daddy."
And you have to think about this.
He had just had the most terrible tragedy,
he had just lost his brother,
he had lost his power,
which was as the attorney general.
He didn't know what was gonna happen to Jackie,
and he didn't know where to go.
And you can imagine that others in that situation
might be filled with a spirit of revenge,
or anger, or...
being, you know, kicking out, or just so mad.
And his words are just amazing to me.
They are about responsibility, kindness,
working for our country,
and love.
(CROWD CLAMORING)
ANNOUNCER: And now, it is my privilege and honor...
to introduce Robert Kennedy.
(CROWD CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE CONTINUE)
Mr. Chairman...
KATHLEEN: I was sitting in the living room,
just watching him give the speech,
and the clapping continued for 17 minutes.
And it was just so breathtaking.
And it was sort of like tears coming down his eyes.
(CHEERING CONTINUES)
Mr. Chairman...
(CROWD CHEERING)
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE CONTINUE)
I realize that, as an individual,
that we can't just look back,
that we must look forward. When I think of...
President Kennedy, I think of...
of what Shakespeare said in Romeo and Juliet.
"When he shall die...
take him and cut him out in little stars,
and he shall make the face of heaven so fine
that all the world will be in love with night...
and pay no worship to the garish sun."
(APPLAUSE)
ETHEL: It was such an outpouring of emotion and love for Jack...
and it washed over Daddy.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CHRIS: I think after the Canadians named Mount Kennedy,
the highest unclimbed peak in Canada,
after his brother,
I think he knew that he needed to be the first to climb it.
When did the idea first come to you
to climb the mountain?
I think my younger brother suggested that we both do it.
JOURNALIST: Why isn't Teddy coming out?
Well, that's what I'm gonna f... try to find out.
Here was Daddy, who arrived in a business suit,
changed into his mountain climbing gear,
and just wanted to get right up there.
It was three days of climbing up and back again.
Daddy brought up a flag
with the Kennedy family coat of arms,
and then coins with Jack's face on them.
RORY: Did he like climbing?
ETHEL: No, he hated every moment of it.
But he did it to honor Jack.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
It was cleansing, or...
gave him the impetus to...
go on, and, uh...
start again.
He started...
little baby steps to come out of it...
but I think it was really you children who did it.
And you can see it in the photographs of the time,
when he was playing touch football with you.
ROBERT: Oh, Kathleen!
♪ (MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: In 1964,
my father decided to run for the United States Senate.
Over the past few weeks...
many leading members of the Democratic
and the Liberal parties here in the state of New York
have talked to me about being a candidate
for the United States Senate.
JOURNALIST: Mrs. Kennedy, how do you feel
about transferring your family to the state of New York?
- I'm looking forward to it. - (JOURNALIST CLEARS THROAT)
RORY: This was the first time he was running...
- ETHEL: On his own. - RORY: Yeah.
Yeah, and it was totally different, and he was...
(INHALES)
not as comfortable.
I think that the election is of great importance,
and I think Queens is a pivitable... piv...
- It's been a long day. - (CROWD LAUGHING)
- It's been a long campaign. - (CROWD LAUGHING)
ETHEL: Whereas Jack was a born orator,
nothing came naturally to Daddy.
He really had to, um...
- struggle for everything. - (BEEPING)
In 1963, the people in the Plattsburgh area
paid 12 million dollars... taxes... schools...
If my opponent had his way, your a... area would have lost.
I stumbled on that.
Campaigning was totally against his nature.
RORY: And how did you like it?
I loved it. (CHUCKLES)
- (RORY CHUCKLES) - What can I tell you?
Well, I just think when people think
of Bob Kennedy, they think of courage,
and I can't think of anyone
who would better represent you
in the Senate of the United States.
CHRIS: Daddy moved from behind the scenes to,
you know, a very public figure in those years,
and those were not easy transitions for him.
KATHLEEN: Mommy lifted Daddy up.
He had a lot in him, but it's hard to get that out,
and you had to have that faith that she had in him.
I always have felt that,
having been a campaign manager before, that...
90 percent of the talk was done by men,
and 90 percent of the work was done by women.
(CROWD CHEERING)
♪ (UPLIFTING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
- WOMAN 1: Hello. - Nice to see you.
- Hello. - WOMAN 2: Nice to be here.
- Thank you for wearing his button. - (WOMAN LAUGHS)
ETHEL: We had a house in New York.
It was in Glen Cove, Long Island.
So there were a lot of gatherings there.
Hundreds of women. But I was pregnant.
(RORY CHUCKLING)
- You were always pregnant. - I know.
I was just getting bigger
and bigger and bigger. I mean... (CHUCKLES)
For the last 14 years, Bobby' been down serving
the federal government in Washington.
And now he'll care for you. But the only thing is
he needs you to care for him first,
and for you to support him.
BOBBY: We were part of that campaign,
and we went everywhere with him.
We went to the Finger Lakes, we went to Syracuse,
and Rochester, and Rye, and Schenectady...
KERRY: We just could not wait to go campaigning,
which, if you talk to children of politicians,
this is not a common theme whatsoever.
But they always made it an adventure.
So it just felt so holistic,
like this was part of our life.
RORY: Daddy was attacked for his decision
to run for the Senate in New York.
He was called a carpetbagger.
Aren't you really using New York State
as a kind of jumping-off place
for your own presidential ambitions?
(CROWD APPLAUDING)
Well, first let me say I would... I have really two choices
uh, over the period of the last ten months.
I could've retired,
- and, uh... - (CROWD LAUGHING)
And I... my, uh... father has done very well,
and I could've lived off him.
(CROWD LAUGHING, APPLAUDING)
Frankly, I don't need the title.
'Cause I could be called General, I understand,
for the rest of my life. I've been...
(LAUGHTER)
And I don't need the money,
and I don't need the office space.
- (CROWD LAUGHING) - So I would just... I mean...
Frank as it is, and maybe
it's difficult to understand in the state of New York,
I'd like to just be a good United States senator.
- I'd like to serve. - (CROWD APPLAUDING)
ANNOUNCER: He's the United States senator from New York,
so said the people of this state by a half a million votes.
RORY: Daddy won his seat in the Senate,
beating Kenneth Keating with 55 percent of the vote.
Senator, in assessing the results of the campaign,
what do you attribute your success to?
I think just the effort that we made in the campaign.
- And Ethel. - (LAUGHING)
Here's a senator from Massachusetts.
RORY: He joined his younger brother, Teddy,
in the Senate.
(LAUGHING AND CHATTING)
It was a magical time, because Daddy
was very interested in ideas.
He was reading the Greeks.
Mommy and Daddy would take us to the theater.
You know, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were friends.
They would recite the Crispian Day Speech together.
I mean, there was just...
there was really a sense of excitement.
Mommy and Daddy also wanted us to see,
you know, how other people lived.
And so we'd often drive through Harlem
and the Bronx and Bedford-Stuyvesant.
They wanted to make sure that we didn't just think we...
the world was how we saw it.
- (DOG BARKING) - (SIREN WAILING)
ETHEL: We were appalled by the poverty
and that nobody was paying attention...
to the people on the lowest rungs
of the ladder.
I don't think that it's acceptable,
as I said before,
with the gross national product that this country has,
with the great amount of wealth that this country has,
that we still have people who can't find jobs,
we still have children who don't have enough to eat
and don't have clothes to wear.
KATHLEEN: Daddy was very focused on trying to do something.
You know, when I was very young,
he was interested in sort of justice, as in making sure
that people who had ripped off their fellow workers
or their employees should be brought to justice.
And now he was interested in justice
for the whole country.
(DOG BARKING)
KATHLEEN: When Daddy went down to the Delta,
he was just so riveted by the experience.
ROBERT: What did you have for lunch?
I haven't eaten.
- You haven't had lunch yet? - No.
KATHLEEN: He described how the children
had distended stomachs
and had sores all over their tummy
because they didn't have enough to eat.
ETHEL: He arrived home just as we were having dinner,
clearly moved and emotionally exhausted, I'd say...
from seeing such dire poverty.
I remember it was a lovely... a lovely evening,
and the... the table in our dining room was set.
And as you know, we had a really nice dining room,
with chandeliers and the crystal on the glasses,
and a cook to cook dinner, and somebody to serve it.
And Daddy walked in. I was... I was just there,
and he said, "I've just been, um...
to Mississippi, and I've seen a family
who live in a room the size of this dining room.
Do you know how lucky you are?"
And he was shaking. "Do you know how lucky you are?
You have to do something for our country.
You have to give back."
MEN: (CHANTING) Huelga! Huelga! Huelga!
Huelga! Huelga! Huelga! Huelga!
KERRY: At that time, Cesar Chavez was organizing
with the grape pickers, and he was on strike,
and he asked Daddy to come and see him.
REPORTER: Senator, are you a supporter of Mr. Chavez?
Is that why you're going up there?
Uh, he's been on a hunger strike
and has, uh, committed to non-violence,
and I think that's terribly important.
ETHEL: Cesar had been on a very long fast,
and Daddy wanted to be there at his side
after Cesar had made such a personal sacrifice.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Look at what friendship they had developed.
RORY: Yeah.
ETHEL: I think they would have been friends
under any circumstances, just because...
they cared so much about the same kind of people.
Somebody wrote on the, uh...
on the pyramids, the...
time they were being constructed, the words,
"And no one was angry enough to speak out."
I think people should be angry enough to speak out.
I think there are injustices.
I think there are unfairnesses in my own country
and around the world, and I think...
that, uh, if one feels involved in it,
that, uh, one should try to do something about it.
♪ ("THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'" BY BOB DYLAN PLAYING) ♪
♪ Come gather 'round, people Wherever you roam ♪
♪ And admit that the waters Around you have grown ♪
♪ And accept it that soon You'll be drenched to the bone ♪
♪ If your time to you Is worth savin' ♪
We'll get to the promised land!
♪ And you better start swimmin' Or you'll sink like a stone ♪
♪ For the times They are a-changin'... ♪
RORY: By the mid-1960s, race relations
in the United States were badly strained.
Violence had broken out in cities across America.
Los Angeles, Newark, Detroit.
Added to this was Vietnam
and the growing anti-war movement.
CROWD: Get out of Vietnam! Get out! Get out!
Get out of Vietnam! Get out!
RORY: Do you remember when Daddy decided
to run for president?
Yeah, I mean, I remember we had this conversation
around the dinner table, and he asked all of us, um...
all the kids, what do you think about him running?
And there was some discussion about Vietnam,
and there was some discussion about the civil rights movement.
(GUNFIRE)
RORY: Vietnam informed Daddy's decision
to run for president.
- Is that right? - Yes.
I would say 90 percent, probably.
RORY: Was the feeling that Johnson
- wasn't gonna get out? - ETHEL: Yes.
RORY: And was he interacting with Johnson
- at that point? - No.
- RORY: They didn't... - No, he was clearly
persona non grata.
For 20 years, first the French and then the United States
have been predicting victory in Vietnam.
Once, in 1962, I participated in such a prediction myself...
but for 20 years, we have been wrong.
(CLAMORING)
ETHEL: The country was in such a state of miasma,
and it needed his spirit.
I am announcing today my candidacy...
for the presidency of the United States.
RORY: Do you remember when he announced
- his run for president? - ETHEL: Yes.
- RORY: Where was it? - In the Senate Caucus Room,
where, before him, Jack had.
So it was...
it was great.
ROBERT: I run for the presidency
because I want the United States of America
to stand for hope...
instead of despair.
For reconciliation of men...
instead of the growing risk of world war.
Most of Daddy's aides did not want Daddy to run.
Mommy, more than anybody,
knew that Daddy would be miserable
if he didn't join that campaign.
RORY: Daddy had entered the race late,
but he started campaigning vigorously.
And Mommy, who was pregnant with me at the time,
joined him as often as she could.
I don't think it's tolerable that young men and young women
growing up in our great cities are not able to find jobs.
And I think whites and blacks, poor and rich together,
- that we can work together. - (CHEERING)
REPORTER: This first week has taken him
all across the country to the South
and to the Far West.
I would like to have the politics of reality
and the politics of hope.
REPORTER 1: Do you think it's going well, in general?
(WHISPERING) Well, I think winning in three primaries,
three for three, isn't bad.
I hate to burden you with questions now,
- but I'm just wondering. - (WHISPERS) That's okay.
Is this laryngitis a result of the campaign
- and the talking a lot? - (WHISPERING) Yes, yes, yes.
REPORTER 2: Is it 'cause you've been making so many speeches?
(WHISPERS) No, I think it's just the strenuous pace
of the campaign.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of non-violence
in the civil rights movement,
has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee.
NEWS ANCHOR: The nation has not known such shock,
nor has it been so stunned,
since the assassination of President Kennedy.
RORY: Mommy and Daddy's campaign plane had just landed
in Indianapolis,
when they learned of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death.
Riots were breaking out in cities across the nation,
and the police told them to stay in their hotel.
The police did not want Daddy
to go into the inner city that night,
and I believe they said they wouldn't protect him,
but absolutely nothing was going to stop him.
'Cause I think he thought that maybe, just maybe,
he could present it in such a way...
that people would not riot.
(CROWD APPLAUDING, CHEERING)
ROBERT:
MAN 5:
ROBERT: Ladies and gentlemen...
I have some very sad news for all of you,
and I think, uh, sad news for all of our fellow citizens,
and that is that Martin Luther King
was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
(CROWD SCREAMING, EXCLAIMING)
For those of you who are...
Black...
and are tempted to fill with...
be filled with hatred and mistrust
against all white people,
I would also say that I can also feel in my own heart...
the same kind of feeling.
I had a member of my family killed...
but he was killed by a white man.
But we have to make an effort in the United States
to get beyond, or go beyond, these rather difficult times.
My favorite poet was Aeschylus.
And he once wrote,
"Even in our sleep,
pain which cannot forget...
falls drop by drop upon the heart...
until in our own despair...
against our will...
comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
What we need in the United States...
RORY: In the wake of King's assassination,
riots broke out in more than 100 cities.
But in Indianapolis, there was no such violence.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BOBBY: I think there was a loss of hope at that time.
After Jack died, and then Martin Luther King was killed,
many people put their final hopes in Daddy.
(CROWD CHEERING)
MAN 6: Robert Kennedy is the only man
on the current political structure
that can do the job that we need done.
Is there a second choice?
There is no second choice as far as we're concerned.
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
I want to first thank my wife, Ethel,
who, as all of you know, has made such a major difference
in this campaign and a major difference for me.
(CROWD APPLAUDING, CHEERING)
I don't think anybody could have
campaigned more vigorously or thoughtfully,
or gone to more cities or towns or villages.
And he had tremendous energy, and he really...
felt the need to talk to different people
and to get his views across.
RORY: Did you feel like Daddy was going to win?
He had lost in Oregon, right?
He lost in Oregon, and it was the first time
any Kennedy had lost, and it was...
not fun. Losing isn't any fun.
No kidding.
Why did I lose?
Just because I didn't do well enough.
I mean, I can't... There wasn't any, uh...
I can just... The only fault or blame is me.
I can't... But I can't... That's me.
RORY: Everybody agreed that Daddy's loss in Oregon
did not bode well for the campaign,
but he went on to California,
and there the campaign picked up steam.
Decency is at the heart of the matter,
for poverty is indecent.
Illiteracy is indecent.
The death or maiming of a brave young man
in the swamps of Asia or South Vietnam,
that is indecent.
(CROWD CHEERING)
COURTNEY: We went to, uh, California
in June, and we campaigned in Watts,
and we had Rafer Johnson and Rosey Grier, uh...
holding Daddy on the top of a convertible,
and we were all holding on for dear life,
and everybody was just reaching up
to see him and to touch him and to...
to even, like, to rip... rip his shirt off.
It was like he was a Beatle.
(CHUCKLES) He was... he was just...
He touched people,
and they, in return, wanted to physically touch him.
- MAN 7: Mr. Kennedy! - MAN 8: Mr. Kennedy!
California loves you!
RORY: There was a lot hinging on California.
- I think the works. - RORY: Right.
Daddy went on to win
- the primary... - ETHEL: Right.
- RORY: ...in California. - ETHEL: Yeah.
RORY: Which is such a thrilling moment,
'cause it really seemed...
- like he might win. - Yeah.
Yeah, then there was a very optimistic feeling.
CROWD: (CHANTING) RFK! RFK! RFK!
♪ (SAD PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: A few minutes after he made his victory speech
in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel
in Los Angeles,
my father was shot.
Then we lost Daddy.
Talk about something else.
KERRY: What happened was I was in California
with Courtney and David and Michael,
campaigning, and, um...
uh... (CHUCKLES)
Um...
David stayed with Daddy and Mommy
to, um, watch the returns, um...
and Michael and Courtney and I went back to the hotel
and, um, and went to sleep.
And the next morning, I probably woke up
at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning,
and I turned on the television to watch cartoons,
and, uh, the news, you know, just kept coming across,
um, about Daddy.
Senator Robert Francis Kennedy...
died at 1:44...
a.m. today...
June 6, 1968.
He was, uh, 42 years old.
Thank you.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BOBBY: We flew back and waked him
at St. Patrick's Cathedral, and in front of St. Patrick's,
there was, um, hundreds of thousands of people.
The crowds were eight feet thick.
RORY: It was such an outpouring.
It was amazing. You know, around the block...
five deep...
at St. Patrick's.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
EDWARD MOORE "TEDDY" KENNEDY: My brother need not be idealized
or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life.
To be remembered simply as a good and decent man
who saw wrong and tried to right it,
saw suffering and tried to heal it,
saw war and tried to stop it.
♪ (MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BOBBY: The next day, we took him down
to Washington, DC, on the train.
The train ride took us seven hours
because there were so many people on the tracks.
COURTNEY: It was long...
and hot and very sad,
and just people... all along...
with the signs that they had up, and...
and the tears in their eyes, and...
They just seemed like...
broken.
♪ (ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KERRY: I have just such a strong memory
of all those crowds of people.
And I kind of loved going through that train and seeing
all those friends of our families
and just feeling like we're all here together,
and everybody loves each other, and...
And looking out the windows of that train
and seeing so many different people
and it just seemed like every color of the rainbow,
and these kind of groups of white people
and these groups of Black people all along the tracks.
I don't know, it was a very positive,
very, very, positive sense,
in the midst of all that horror, this kind of...
sense of unity and of love.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: Everybody commented at the time
how extraordinary you were, and strong and...
Well...
I don't know.
A lot of wonderful children to be with.
RORY: Do you think that faith helped you at that point,
- or is it just keep going? - Yes, I just wake up
every morning and think of Daddy...
uh, up there with Jack...
and Joe and...
my parents and a lot of my brothers and sisters.
RORY: Yeah.
Probably arguing with them, but...
RORY: (LAUGHING) Trying to convince them
- to become Democrats? - (LAUGHS)
When we lost Daddy, I was 11. I didn't understand it.
And, uh...
she said to me, "Daddy is so happy,
nothing can take that away from him,
and he's in the most joyous, abundant place."
And she's joyous.
While the rest of the world was grieving
and the family was grieving,
she saw the best in it.
And she saw the best in it because her faith is so strong.
And that's carried her, I believe, through everything,
through, uh, losing David and then Michael.
And she so strongly believes that they're happy and free.
♪ (QUIET PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: In 1984,
my brother David died from a drug overdose.
He was 28 years old.
And then, in 1997, my brother Michael died
in a skiing accident.
He was 39.
♪ (ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
COURTNEY: I remember
sort of towards the end of June of that year,
we went with my uncle Teddy on a sailboat,
and we went around Martha's Vineyard
and Nantucket Sound for a few days,
just to get away from everything
and to be with the family, and...
I remember dragging behind the boat with my mother
and thinking she looked very pregnant.
And...
Teddy said something, and she started laughing
and laughing and laughing, you know, almost uncontrollably.
And I thought... and then I thought, "Well...
there is going to be laughter again.
There is laughter, and this doesn't all have to be
so dark and horrible."
Although she'd lost Daddy, she... she did have 11 children.
And she had you to fight for
and live for in the first six months.
♪ ( PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: I was born.
- Yes. - (RORY LAUGHING)
That was the joy of my life.
RORY: Thank you.
- So that was a few months... - That was wonderful.
RORY: A few months later.
We want to say how happy we are today, and, uh...
uh, and I told Ethel that I think Joan and I are gonna
take this baby home.
We think Ethel has enough of them at home, anyway.
RORY: And then you guys went to Arlington with me?
ETHEL: Yeah.
RORY: And how was that?
Well, bittersweet, you know.
RORY: Yeah.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
(BABY RORY CRYING)
- ETHEL: Dougie, see your little sister? - MAN 9: Look how big she is!
ETHEL: It's Rory.
Can you say her name?
Teddy had asked what your name would be...
and I said, "Rory, the last of the Irish kings."
And he said, "Oh!
Well, you need to teach her
'Rory, Rory, grab the dory, there's a herring in the bay.'"
- (LAUGHS) - RORY: "Forget the dory, Rory."
- Oh, yeah, forget the... - RORY: "The herring got away."
(LAUGHS) You remember it more than I did.
RORY: By the time I was born,
part of the story was already over...
and another, different story was just beginning.
(BOY MUTTERING)
Good afternoon. My name is Christopher.
Coming about... Right now we're coming about.
The sheets are rattling. Mommy's turning that wheel.
We're gonna have Douglas Kennedy speak on the recorder,
and he is a great guy.
This is Douglas speaking. Uh, I'm four and a half.
- (RADIO CRACKLES) - And I love Mommy.
RORY: At home, how much did things change
after Daddy died?
I think the only way to deal with 11 children,
with their friends, with 30 or 40 first cousins,
is with structure and discipline and routine and organization.
And Mommy brought structure and discipline and routine
and organization to every aspect of our lives.
KERRY: It's interesting because, especially after Daddy died,
we learned sports from Mommy.
And she taught us to ski,
she taught us to play football, she made sure
that we weren't going to sit around
and feel sorry for ourselves.
Bless us, oh, Lord, in these, thy gifts
which we are about to receive
from thy bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen.
David called in today.
GIRL 1: He did?
And do you know what the temperature is
where he's working?
A hundred and seventeen, in La Paz, California.
KERRY: She sent the older kids to places in our country
and around the world so that we could understand
and live with different cultures.
So Kathleen went and lived on an Indian reservation,
and Joe lived with a family in Spain,
and Bobby lived with a group of people in Africa.
Uh, Courtney and I went and worked on a farm in Utah.
David worked with Cesar Chavez.
Do you know that he works ten hours a day,
for eight cents an hour?
Are you looking forward to doing something like that?
Wouldn't you like to work for Cesar Chavez?
GIRL 1: Sure.
GIRL 2: Not for eight cents an hour.
- (ALL LAUGH) - Not for eight cents an hour.
Imagine trying to raise your family on that.
Although I think they were equal partners,
my mother took a step behind, and she was supporting Daddy.
And after we lost him, I think she felt the need
to become more of a leader.
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KATHLEEN: She continues, in a wonderful way,
to help carry on a lot of Daddy's causes.
You know, she'll go walk with Cesar Chavez.
(CROWD APPLAUDING)
ANNOUNCER: Cesar has broken his fast
from the hand of Ethel Kennedy.
She became a force of nature in her own right
and was questioning authority,
and calling congressmen and governors and senators
to say, "Why aren't things being made better?"
She put so much energy
into the Bedford-Stuyvesant restoration program.
She started the Robert F. Kennedy Center
for Justice and Human Rights
to carry forward his unfinished work.
RORY: The Robert F. Kennedy Center,
which my mother founded in 1968,
helps support journalists, writers,
and human rights activists who carry on my father's work.
KERRY: Over the last 20 years,
she's gone on human rights delegations
to Namibia, Albania, Czechoslovakia,
Haiti, Hungary, Kenya, Mexico,
Northern Ireland, Poland, South Africa... (FADES)
MAX: Seeing our mother walk in his absence,
along that same path, really impacted all of us.
That gave us not the obligation, but the gift
of a contributory life.
So many kids in our family, so many people in our family,
are involved in social justice work,
and it's always attributed to my father, and... which...
He deserves that.
But the truth is, he died when we were very, very young,
so that really comes from my mother.
And those are her values,
and those are the aspects of Daddy that she chose
to have us remember and think about.
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ETHEL: Everybody's done very well
in their chosen fields.
Uh, I mean, it really is a great tribute to Daddy
that you've all done so many wonderful things.
RORY: Well, how about to you?
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
No, I think it was the other gene.
RORY: You raised us, Mommy.
I just don't feel I can take the credit.
- (RORY CHUCKLES) - I just don't feel it.
♪ (ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RORY: When my father was alive,
my mother was always there for him.
Her love lifted him up.
And after, when my mother was left to raise us
and to carry on his fight,
he was there for her too,
his love still lifting her up.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
RORY: I remember at a very young age,
we would pray together every night,
and we would have about 25 people
who had all died, who we would pray for.
You've had a lot of loss.
I have, but, uh...
as I've often said, nobody gets a free ride.
Everybody faces...
friends who have died or family who have died or...
who are really sick.
So, you know, have your wits about you, and...
dig in and do what you can...
because it... it might not last.
♪ (ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
MAN 10: Let's take one big picture together.
(CHEERING)
CHRIS: I think one of Mommy's great legacies
is her children.
And there's another generation coming up behind them.
RORY: How many grandchildren does Mommy have?
CHRIS: Mommy has 33 grandchildren.
She wants more.
Never enough, as far as she's concerned.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
Okay. We're coming about.
♪ (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
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