Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [80]
On December 2, 1954, the Senate at last brought down the curtain on the peculiar political spectacle starring Senator Joseph McCarthy. Except for the absent Kennedy, every Democrat, joined by half the Republicans, voted for the condemnation. The controversial senator would live just two and half years longer, dying of acute hepatitis brought on by alcoholism. By that time, his anti-Communist crusade and his political significance both were long over.
The man in the New York hospital bed had missed the vote.
Kennedy tried to make light of it. “You know, when I get downstairs, I know exactly what’s going to happen,” he told Chuck Spalding upon leaving the hospital a few days before Christmas. “Those reporters are going to lean over me with great concern, and every one of those guys is going to say, ‘Now, Senator, what about McCarthy?’ Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to reach for my back and I’m going to yell ‘Oow!’ and then I’m going to pull the sheet over my head and hope we can get out of there.”
Jack left it to Bobby to carry the family’s continuing respect for their fallen Irish-American ally. In January, while Jack was recuperating in Palm Beach, his younger brother was honored at a Junior Chamber of Commerce dinner as one of the country’s “Ten Outstanding Young Men.” When the evening’s speaker, Edward R. Murrow, rose to address those in attendance, Bobby walked out of the room, a silent protest against a man who’d played a significant role in bringing down McCarthy. When the senator died in 1956, Bobby Kennedy flew to Appleton, Wisconsin, for the funeral and stayed with the mourners’ procession all the way to the gravesite.
Now Jack Kennedy had survived another brush with death. He was helped through the crisis by the one strong emotional reality of his life: old friendships. One name high on the list was Red Fay. “In January 1955, Bobby called to ask if I could come to Florida. The family was worried about Jack, and didn’t know whether he was going to live. The doctor felt that he was losing interest, and a visit from someone closely associated with happier times might help him regain his usual optimism and enjoyment of life. I flew to Palm Beach and spent ten days with him.”
It was an opportunity for someone who cared about him to realize what Jack was up against. Fay watched as his recuperating friend gave himself a shot as part of the treatment for his back. “ ‘Jack,’ I said, ‘the way you take that jab, it looks like it doesn’t even hurt.’ Before I had time to dodge, he reached over and jabbed the same needle into my leg. I screamed with the pain.”
Down in Palm Beach, with time on his hands, surrounded by Jackie and family members, he took up oil painting and spent hours playing Monopoly. His convalescence lasted for almost six months and was interrupted only by a trip back to New York for a second surgery. While in Florida he grew close to his new brother-in-law, the young Hollywood star Peter Lawford, who’d married Patricia Kennedy the year before. “I think we hit it off because he loved my business. He loved anything to do with the arts and motion pictures. It never ceased to amaze me.”
The British-born Lawford, who’d been in films since he was a young boy, observed Jack with an actor’s keen eye. He got as good a look at him as anybody. “I don’t think anybody ever made up John Kennedy’s mind for him. I don’t think anybody swayed him, including his father. I think he took what he wanted and then sifted it, you know, evaluated