Free Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot by J. Randy Taraborrelli Page B

it, “keep up with those Kennedys.” Parlor games such as Twenty Questions were especially popular in the Kennedy household, and competitive Ethel wanted to be certain she was not embar- rassed by all of those erudite Kennedy offspring.
    Dorothy Tubridy, a friend of the family’s from Ireland, understood Ethel’s predicament. In an oral history for the Kennedy Library, she once recalled, “They all read the newspapers every day, and at dinnertime somebody might come out with a name, or something that happened that had been written about, and if you didn’t contribute to the con- versation, you’d be immediately pounced on and asked why you haven’t read one of the twelve newspapers! It was frightening. I would feel so stupid if I couldn’t follow the conversation.”
    In 1951, three years after Bobby had graduated from Har- vard, he was admitted to the Massachusetts bar. He and Ethel departed for the Skakel estate in Greenwich to await the arrival of their first child, Kathleen (named after Bobby’s late sister), who was born on Independence Day.
    “It was a difficult pregnancy,” recalls the Kennedy family nurse, Luella Hennessey, who tended to Ethel at Greenwich Hospital. “Ethel was depressed, upset. She was too small to have a baby as large as Kathleen, and it caused her to have certain female problems, very severe internal problems. [Her perineum was damaged during the birth.]
    “She was embarrassed about it. She told me that none of
    the men in the family should ever know. For her to not have an easy pregnancy was a sort of defeat. She hated to be defeated. I don’t think Bobby ever really knew how much pain she was in, how she suffered. When he would walk into the hospital room, she would have a full face of makeup on and a smile on her face. Then when he would leave, she would absolutely collapse in tears. Already, she had that Kennedy stiff upper lip in a time of great stress.” Luella concluded that “Ethel was hand made for the Kennedy family.”
    “I won’t be having any more children,” a choked-up Ethel told Luella as she held her newborn in her arms.
    “Oh, yes you will, honey,” said the nurse, trying to com- fort her. “You’ll forget the pain. All women do. I promise.” “Oh no I won’t,” Ethel countered. “A smart woman would
    never forget this kind of pain.”
    After the baby’s birth, Ethel and Bobby moved into one of the Skakel family guest houses, and in less than six months Ethel was pregnant again—just in time to start stumping for Jack’s senatorial campaign (of which Bobby was campaign manager) in Massachusetts. Though she was afraid of the pregnancy because of how difficult her first one had been, Ethel was expected to help campaign for Jack’s election through the summer of 1952, just as all of the Kennedy women did: Rose, Jean, Pat, and Eunice. “They expect a lot of you in this family,” she told one friend. “And I can’t let them see me as weak. That would be the worst thing possi- ble.”
    On September 24, Ethel gave birth to a boy, Joseph Patrick (Joseph after Bobby’s deceased brother). Two months later, in November, Jack won his senatorial cam- paign.
    In January 1953, Ethel and Bobby moved their small fam- ily to Washington, D.C., where Bobby had just taken a job working for the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Government Operations Committee, known as the McCarthy Committee for its chairman, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Ethel found a modest four-bedroom home in Georgetown, which the couple would rent. While the surroundings in their new home weren’t opulent, Ethel couldn’t help but hire a staff of servants, who wore different color uniforms every day to work. It was a happy time for Ethel, Bobby, and their small family. Their life together was just beginning, and although they didn’t know it at the time, they would soon devote themselves to the most impor- tant of all family goals: getting a Kennedy elected to